Here’s a piece of wisdom for you: Life is funny.
Here’s another: Life is brief.
And one more: Life is beautiful.
Now, before you go accusing me of conflating wisdom with cliché — I acknowledge that the line between the two can be as thin as a doomed man’s smile, but bear with me — I hope to illustrate for you the essential perspicacity of these statements. And then you can accuse all you want.
Before proceeding with that, I have one caveat. This column is highly personal, meaning that I write it in full understanding and acceptance of the fact that it might turn out to be of interest to an exceedingly small number of readers.
Should you find — or if you have found already — that you fall into this category, please accept in advance my apologies, along with the assurance that I will be back on point next week. My only defense is that columns such as this are an occupational hazard for me, given that I pretty much can write what I want, and am not obliged to post five stories per diem on Roy Moore or UAB football or the number of days remaining before the annual spring practice pigskin tussles in Tuscaloosa and Auburn, or whatever the fad/outrage/prosaic oddity of the day might be.
Such being the case, I am devoting this week’s column to making mention of several people — excluding members of my family — who had enormous influence on my life and the way I have lived it. This list is not complete (space does not permit that), but these are people who took active interest in me at critical times in my life, offering not only advice, encouragement and caring support, but also admonition and correction. They nurtured and challenged me in ways that shaped, and continue to shape, my sense of who I am and what I might become.
Why am I doing this? The genesis of it was in a visit I enjoyed this past weekend, with my 12th grade English teacher, Yvonne Foster (of whom I will say more below) and her husband, Paul, who was the assistant principal of my high school. I had seen Mrs. Foster only once in the nearly 35 years since my graduation, and then only in passing, at the Peach Park rest stop off I-65 in Clanton, perhaps 20 years ago. But we were reunited through the miracle of Facebook about three years back, and have corresponded there frequently. Recently, she agreed to hear and share some thoughts about a project I am contemplating, which set the stage for a visit that was equal parts project discussion, fond reminiscence, and uncensored sizing up of the state of Alabama, the nation and the world. It was inspirational on several levels.
The other inspiration for this column was a blog post by a former classmate and forever friend that I saw on Sunday night, roughly 24 hours after returning from my visit with Mrs. Foster. Made in conjunction with a personal project in which she is involved, my friend’s post was titled “People Who Made an Impact on Me.” Scrolling down my friend’s list and descriptions of those people, smiling at those with whom I am familiar, I was stunned — and, to this very same moment and for the remainder of my life, overwhelmingly humbled — to find my own name.
My own (partial) list looks like this:
Suzanne Langcuster was my fourth-grade teacher at College Avenue Elementary in Russellville. If Mrs. Langcuster ever had a bad day, her pupils didn’t see it. She was unfailingly cheerful — but not cloyingly so — even when she had to be stern. She taught in a way that made you want to learn, generous with praise and gentle with correction, always seeking to help every student find the best in themselves and perform to that level. She made me realize that I was smart, while instilling the idea that being so put me in a position of obligation, not privilege.
It was the aforementioned Yvonne Foster who caused me, at the age of 17, to begin thinking of myself as a writer — and did it so impactfully that I have never since thought of myself as anything else. She was, and remains, a world traveler, and she conveyed a sense of adventure and discovery, and the knowledge of people, places and things that were not bounded by the limits of our small town. Through what we read in her class, and discussions of subjects that went far beyond our reading, she sought to breed in her students the confidence to live their lives boldly, joyfully, and without fear. She taught me that the greatest accomplishment one can hope for is to be oneself.
The first class I walked into my freshman year at Samford University was Advanced English Composition, as taught by Austin C. Dobbins. A noted Milton scholar and an exacting instructor from whom I eventually took every course that he taught, Dobbins was nearing retirement by the time I became a student of his — which in no way diminished his sheer presence, which could be highly intimidating if you didn’t know him, or even if you did.
Near the end of my sophomore year, Dobbins called me into his office after class one day. I figured he wanted to discuss something I’d written, perhaps even offer me a compliment. Instead, he told me he had concluded that the best thing I could do for myself and the world would be drop out of school and get a job digging ditches.
“You have a great deal of talent, Mr. Kelly,” he said as I sat there, stunned. “But you haven’t been applying it in my class this semester — nor, from what your other professors tell me, in any of your other classes either. I think that doing manual labor might teach you more than anything that this fine university has to offer.”
Talk about scared straight.
It was educators who helped me find whatever talent I may have had, and motivated me to begin developing it. But it was Sylvester Jones who taught me by example what it meant to live life on my own terms, and consequences be damned. We’d met in 1982, but it was two years later, with me at a highly transitional period — 22 years old, the lease on my apartment having expired while I was off in Texas working for the Gary Hart for President campaign, and I back in Birmingham with no idea what I would do next, or even whether I’d stay in the city — that Sly let me crash on the sofa of his Highland Avenue apartment for two months while I sorted out my life. From that summer until his death early on New Year’s Day 1997, at the far-too-young age of 44, he also taught me unfailingly how to be a friend.
It was out of both friendship and need that Sly in early 1987 brought me on as an intern with the Metropolitan Development Board, and hired me as its director of public relations later that year. He was serving as the interim director of an organization that was grossly underfunded and adrift in its mission as the lead agency for industrial recruitment in the Birmingham region. The new director who arrived in March 1988 was Ted vonCannon, a gregarious, fun-loving and highly perceptive Tennessean who had been instrumental in, among other things, putting that state on the map as a prime site for automobile manufacturing.
Ted revitalized MDB, and he taught me more about dealing with people — employees, clients, elected officials, business leaders, human beings in general — than anyone I have known. To this day, I have never met anyone who knows Ted that doesn’t like him. And while I can’t say the same thing for myself, I know that the development of my “people skills” benefitted tremendously from seeing Ted in action for the five years I worked for him.
One day in 1997, when I was writing about city politics for Black & White, I took a phone call from one Edward “Bubba” Thompson. At that time, Mr. Thompson had been retired for about eight years as principal of Birmingham’s Parker High School, a job he’d held for two decades.
“I read what you write every week,” he told me. “You’re good. But I can help you be better.”
And so he did. Virtually every Friday for nearly two years, I’d drive out to Mr. Thompson’s house on Bush Boulevard, where we’d sit out back and talk about what I’d written that week. After finishing his critique, he’d ask the same question each time.
“What are we going to do next?” When that was decided, he would offer his knowledge and insight about the subject at hand, which never failed to be accurate and incisive, not to mention instructive. I’d already been observing and writing about Birmingham politics — the history, the personalities, the dynamics — for years at that point, but under Mr. Thompson’s tutelage, the breadth and depth of my knowledge doubled and redoubled.
Mr. Thompson died in 2000. To this day, when I can’t quite get my arms around a particular issue or situation related to city politics and government, I wish I could drive out to Bush Boulevard, pull up a chair and ask him what he thinks.
To all of these folks — and others for whom space doesn’t allow on this day — all I can do is say, Thank you. I don’t know what my life would have been without you.
