You can be just an ordinary chap, sufficiently motivated, to reach challenging goals.
Sir Edmund Hillary
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Hello Jen
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Question: What is a 33 year old New Zealand beekeeper doing over 29,000 feet in the air?
Answer: He's standing on top of the tallest mountain on the Earth.
At 11:30 a.m. on May 29, 1953 Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay stepped on to the top of Mount Everest.
He wasn't Sir Edmund until he got to England and met a young woman named Elizabeth who had just been inaugurated Queen Elizabeth II. And she quickly knighted him.
Hillary had been climbing mountains since his youth and had, in fact, made several expedition climbs around Everest and other areas in the Himalayas before he ever set foot on the summit of Everest.
That brings to my mind so many other people, ordinary people, who do something extraordinary once that makes them famous. And I sometimes wonder what the rest of their lives were like.
How many other miles did the legendary messenger Pheidippides run before he was picked to bring the news of the successful battle of Marathon to the Greeks?
How many races did Roger Bannister run and win before he stepped across the finish line in less than 4 minutes?
How many hours did Neil Armstrong spend learning about space travel before he stepped on the moon?
How many wounds did Florence Nightingale patch up before she established her nursing school in England and write the book on contemporary nursing?
How much danger and brutality did Harriet Tubman endure before she escaped and began to rescue hundreds of slaves through the Underground Railroad?
How many hours did Rosa Parks spend sitting at the back of the bus before she took her rightful seat at the front?
These were ordinary people, like you and me, "sufficiently motivated" as Hillary put it, to face a challenge and win, not because they wanted to be famous, but because they believed in themselves and what they were doing.
There are many other heroes in the world who will never be famous, but whose lives are histories of problems solved, difficulties overcome and challenges met. Each of us may have an opportunity to join them. If it occurs, take it.
DB - Vagabond Journeys, and
never give up.
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Showing posts with label Rosa Parks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rosa Parks. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Purposeful Persuasion 7/08/09
Knowing what must be done does away with fear.
Rosa Parks
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Good day. I hope you can read this posting, because I still can't.
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This is a true story, told to me by the two people involved. I will try faithfully to reconstruct as much of it as I can remember.
Many years ago I was visiting my Aunt Emily at her place in upstate New York. While I was there Emily had invited this couple over for dinner. She told me the woman had been crippled for about 25 years, but that her husband would take her out in her wheelchair during the nice weather, they still went places and they had a fascinating story to tell. When they arrived I could see that she was indeed in a wheelchair and he was pushing her into Emily's house. I also noted that they were an elderly couple. After dinner Emily coaxed them to tell me the story of the burning house.
They had been living in a remote place down a country road. He drove home one afternoon to find that the house was on fire. He rushed inside and everything was burning, hot cinders were flying everywhere, pieces of the wall were braking off and the place was think with smoke, He rushed through the flames into the bedroom where his wife was lying unconscious in the bed, The room was full of smoke. It was painfully hot. A burning cinder had landed on the bed and a sheet was burning, He threw the sheet off, picked up his wife and carried her through the flaming house to a field across the road, where he stretched her out on the ground. Then he drove three miles to the nearest neighbor to ask them to call the fire department and an ambulance, which they did. He then drove back to be with his wife who was still unconscious. Soon fire trucks arrived and went to work on the fire. After that came an ambulance. When he saw the ambulance he picked up his wife and took her over to it, explained to the attendants what had happened. They put her on a stretcher and took her to the hospital,
He stayed until the fire was out but the house was destroyed. Then he went to the hospital where his wife was sitting up in bed wide awake.
She told me that when the bedroom was filling up with smoke she called for him but he wasn't there. She said she knew he would be back sooner or later. She said she must have passed out, when she woke up in the hospital she didn't now where she was. She was dizzy.and had a headache. She was glad to see him come into the hospital room. She was relieved that he was okay.
They had lost everything. A neighbor took them in and very soon he had found another place for them to live.
I asked him if he was frightened of the fire when he went into the house. He said no he was only thinking about getting his wife out of there.
It's an amazing story. But here's the most remarkable part. I asked him when all this happened. He said "Just last year." He was 78. His wife was 74.
Vagabond Journeys
_______________________
Look up. Things are looking up.
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SUMMER QUIZ
This is not a contest.
A young man out west just took home 88 million dollars from the lottery.
Whether you play the lottery or not, if you suddenly had 88 million dollars, or the equivalent of whatever your currency is, what are the first three things you would do with it?
You have all summer to answer if you wish.
7 responses so far.
DB
Rosa Parks
...............................................
Good day. I hope you can read this posting, because I still can't.
------------------------------------------------------------
This is a true story, told to me by the two people involved. I will try faithfully to reconstruct as much of it as I can remember.
Many years ago I was visiting my Aunt Emily at her place in upstate New York. While I was there Emily had invited this couple over for dinner. She told me the woman had been crippled for about 25 years, but that her husband would take her out in her wheelchair during the nice weather, they still went places and they had a fascinating story to tell. When they arrived I could see that she was indeed in a wheelchair and he was pushing her into Emily's house. I also noted that they were an elderly couple. After dinner Emily coaxed them to tell me the story of the burning house.
They had been living in a remote place down a country road. He drove home one afternoon to find that the house was on fire. He rushed inside and everything was burning, hot cinders were flying everywhere, pieces of the wall were braking off and the place was think with smoke, He rushed through the flames into the bedroom where his wife was lying unconscious in the bed, The room was full of smoke. It was painfully hot. A burning cinder had landed on the bed and a sheet was burning, He threw the sheet off, picked up his wife and carried her through the flaming house to a field across the road, where he stretched her out on the ground. Then he drove three miles to the nearest neighbor to ask them to call the fire department and an ambulance, which they did. He then drove back to be with his wife who was still unconscious. Soon fire trucks arrived and went to work on the fire. After that came an ambulance. When he saw the ambulance he picked up his wife and took her over to it, explained to the attendants what had happened. They put her on a stretcher and took her to the hospital,
He stayed until the fire was out but the house was destroyed. Then he went to the hospital where his wife was sitting up in bed wide awake.
She told me that when the bedroom was filling up with smoke she called for him but he wasn't there. She said she knew he would be back sooner or later. She said she must have passed out, when she woke up in the hospital she didn't now where she was. She was dizzy.and had a headache. She was glad to see him come into the hospital room. She was relieved that he was okay.
They had lost everything. A neighbor took them in and very soon he had found another place for them to live.
I asked him if he was frightened of the fire when he went into the house. He said no he was only thinking about getting his wife out of there.
It's an amazing story. But here's the most remarkable part. I asked him when all this happened. He said "Just last year." He was 78. His wife was 74.
Vagabond Journeys
_______________________
Look up. Things are looking up.
************************
SUMMER QUIZ
This is not a contest.
A young man out west just took home 88 million dollars from the lottery.
Whether you play the lottery or not, if you suddenly had 88 million dollars, or the equivalent of whatever your currency is, what are the first three things you would do with it?
You have all summer to answer if you wish.
7 responses so far.
DB
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Veritable Vision 11/09/08
Look with favor upon a bold beginning.
Virgil
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In my life time I have known of black men being lynched or burned to death, of being denied housing, denied education, the right to vote or even register. I have seen the signs on public buildings reading "colored entrance." I have seen job, housing, social and cultural discrimination of the worst kind. I have seen the looks of despair and failure on the faces and in the eyes of black men and women in the cities.
But I have also witnessed the Civil Rights Movement, Selma, Alabama, Rosa Parks, the rise of the ACLU, the SPLC, CORE, The United Negro College Fund, The March on Washington, Martin Luther King, Jr. for whom there are now high schools named and a national holiday. Lyndon Johnson and the signing of the Civil Rights Act, school desegregation, bussing, a frightened but courageous young girl being led to school by federal marshals, the rise of respect for black people in sports, the arts and government. And now, at last, a black President of the U.S. All of it in my lifetime.
I know there are people who are dissatisfied with the results of this latest election for the wrong reasons. But the fact is that the change my country needs has already begun and I give it my meager but honest support.
DB
Virgil
************************
In my life time I have known of black men being lynched or burned to death, of being denied housing, denied education, the right to vote or even register. I have seen the signs on public buildings reading "colored entrance." I have seen job, housing, social and cultural discrimination of the worst kind. I have seen the looks of despair and failure on the faces and in the eyes of black men and women in the cities.
But I have also witnessed the Civil Rights Movement, Selma, Alabama, Rosa Parks, the rise of the ACLU, the SPLC, CORE, The United Negro College Fund, The March on Washington, Martin Luther King, Jr. for whom there are now high schools named and a national holiday. Lyndon Johnson and the signing of the Civil Rights Act, school desegregation, bussing, a frightened but courageous young girl being led to school by federal marshals, the rise of respect for black people in sports, the arts and government. And now, at last, a black President of the U.S. All of it in my lifetime.
I know there are people who are dissatisfied with the results of this latest election for the wrong reasons. But the fact is that the change my country needs has already begun and I give it my meager but honest support.
DB
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