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Trusting Those Who Guide Us Through Life.

In a small chapel, a handful of men with clear eyes and wise souls gathered to honor one more of their fallen brothers. These are the Air Force Navigators, a brotherhood bound by their passion for thrilling flights, dangerous missions and the reward of a mission accomplished.

Not many left know how to use radio waves, constellations and planets, maps and sextants to find their way around the world in an airplane. As the flag-draped casket rolled in and the congregation rose, three men in the front row stood more erect, more attentive.

Paul remembers his friend Peter the best: “He picked me up in his Porsche on campus and drove to the base. He was flying from California to Hawaii and wondered if I wanted to tag along.”

Paul had just started his training, and Peter had been a navigator for six years. But Peter’s dream of being a pilot ended when, on a training flight, the pilot accidentally ejected shortly after takeoff.

“Pete looked up, and the pilot was gone,” Paul laughs, remembering the story. “And Peter had to think quick!” Peter ejected and survived, but a back injury left him unable to go to pilot school, so he remained a navigator and became a part of that enduring brotherhood.

It was 1966. Vietnam was a hot zone that needed supplies and daring crews who knew how to navigate large cargo planes in the dark without getting shot down. They used maps, a compass, a stopwatch and LORAN, a long-range navigation system that bounces radio signals off fixed points on land and calculates distance by the delay in the signal coming back so the navigator can triangulate the position of the plane.

“It’s not like driving a car down the road,” Paul says. “You hopscotch your way around the world in a propeller plane, sometimes for 20 hours straight. That’s a long time to bore a hole in the sky.” In the process, Paul and Peter became fast friends.

“After the war, we flew a lot of missions delivering cargo around the world and keeping sharp refueling B-52 bombers, F-4s, Warthogs and others,” Paul says. “We flew close enough that we could see the rank of the pilot while flying at 400 mph.”

Over the open sea, they navigated using the heavenly canopy, locating Jupiter and Venus and fixing their position with a sextant. There was always something to push them off course: headwinds, crosswinds, lulls, cloud cover and radio interference. When they were off course, they used a technique called dead reckoning, which meant using a previously known navigation point, then calculating wind and speed into an approximate new location.

“We didn’t have GPS,” Paul says. But what every great navigator had was an intuitive sense of direction. The navigator saw to it that the plane made it safely to its destination.

On the ground, Paul would often find Peter gazing up at constellations. They shared a love for the heavenly maps they had learned to read and were always awestruck by the phases of the moon, the way the planets moved in perfect order. They shared this love with their children.

“When all other systems fail,” Paul taught them, “celestial navigation is the sure thing. It can’t be knocked out by radio jammers. You can always count on it to get you home.”

As the pallbearers steadied themselves around the casket, Peter’s son spoke confidently into the small chapel's PA system: “Major, you are clear for takeoff.”

Chart Your Destination... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

CHART YOUR DESTINATION

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Dream Big.

“The Archer,” Paulo Coelho’s book of wisdom and parable of courageous living, has been translated into 88 languages in 170 countries. It has sold over 320 million copies. The spirit of the book is the story of us all, searching not only for joy in the small things, but meaning in our existence.

The story suggests that “living without a connection between action and soul cannot fulfill, that a life constricted by fear of rejection or failure is not a life worth living. Instead, one must take risks, build courage, and embrace the unexpected journey fate has to offer.” It is a lesson that transcends cultures and geography. And yet, Coelho decided that each translation of the book should include illustrations that reflect the culture of the language. So, when he and his publisher were looking for an illustrator for the Chinese version, they sought images with a sense of ancient wisdom, something inspired by indigenous legends.

As this concept evolved, Tanivu Nota was living in a small village tucked away in the mountains of Alishan, Taiwan. Tanivu’s creative inspiration comes from centuries of myths and dreams passed on through oral storytelling tradition. A member of the Cou (or Tsou) tribe, she grew up on the origin legends of her people, a beautiful story of how the great maple tree shook its leaves, and as they drifted down, they became the Cou people.

Tanivu is driven to capture the history of her people in art, working in her verdant yet isolated village. But word of this kind of talent spreads quickly. Tanivu’s art was shown to Irene and Corbett Wall, who were launching art and technology projects in the indigenous regions of Taiwan. They introduced the work to the Chinese Times, and the work caught the attention of Coelho’s publisher.

Like the character in “The Archer,” Tanivu summoned the courage to step into the light and share her talents with the world. Her first commission was on the largest stage. She threw herself into the project, inspired by the story and her heritage. She created 24 stunning illustrations that capture the details of life when you pay close attention. Color and deft strokes carry you through the story like wind and waves, the natural elements where wisdom begins. Her illustrated edition of “The Archer” was released in May 2022.

It is when we stay true to ourselves and honor where we came from that we find the pathway that leads us to our dreams. Tanivu now dreams of traveling the world and meeting new friends. As her art precedes her in this journey, she will find that dream fulfilled.

Dream Big... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

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DREAM BIG

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Running to Win isn’t Always Running to Come in First.

The marathon is one of the most difficult races in track and field, at a little over 42 kilometers (26.2 miles). Most marathoners will tell you their bodies hold up for the first 30 kilometers; the last 10 kilometers are all mental toughness. To be a world-class marathoner, you must run that distance in 2 1/2 hours. But for some, achieving a marathon finish is a lifelong dream.

Jacqueline Nyetipei Kiplimo’s dream of being a world-class runner began when she was a child in Kenya. She soon realized she had the talent and the willpower to compete. She also knew she would have to train full-time, which meant not being able to work to help support her family. But she was confident that she could bring home prize money.

Jacqueline traveled to China to compete in the Zhenkai marathon knowing she had a good shot at winning the race, but more importantly, the $10,000 prize that went with it. She was leading the women’s division when a male runner arrived at the water station at the 20-kilometer mark. The man was running at a good pace but had trouble staying hydrated because a birth defect had left him without hands, and he struggled to drink from the slippery plastic bottles. But any assistance from fans or race officials would result in his disqualification. Jacqueline noticed the man and immediately knew that he needed help. She grabbed a water bottle and helped him get the fluid his body needed to complete the race. Then she ran at his pace with the bottle and helped him sip while they strode along.

Runner after runner passed Jacqueline. Her hopes of winning were getting lost in the melee of runners ahead of her. With only 4 kilometers left in the race, and certain that her new friend would now finish, Jacqueline picked up her pace. Her long stride kicked in, and she weaved through the fading competitors to finish second.

That day, Jacqueline missed out on first place, but she finished with something more important: her humanity. When asked about the bigger cash prize, she said that money isn’t everything. She returned home with the smaller prize of second place, but to her seven younger siblings, she brought home something much more valuable to her seven younger siblings: the right example.

Set the Pace... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

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www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

SET THE PACE

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Lift Your Voice, Use Your Mind, Lift Others.

Anna Steed doesn’t look much older than her students, but she is a practitioner of behavioral and motivational science, an aficionado of oration, a shoulder to cry on, and the high school debate coach. Her class, which began as an elective class to give Black and Latino students exposure to skills that prepare them for college, has become the class on campus that creates winners.

Speech and debate test the teenage character perhaps more than any other activity. The shy, the vulnerable, the unsure and the introverted often have no desire to look up from their screens and engage in the oldest human interaction: persuasive oral arguments. It’s formidable territory for the average teenager. Research, writing, delivering a speech in front of your peers — it all sounds like the kind of class students would be most likely to skip. But Anna draws them in.

Classroom 161 is always full. Anna’s debate teams have a case full of trophies; most importantly, they have gone on to become leaders of their communities and examples to their families.

“This activity has changed my life. Just building connections with people I never, ever imagined building connections with,” relates Alexander Hernandez Gonzalez. Alexander suffered from social anxiety throughout his childhood. Then he discovered debate as a freshman, and it changed his life.

His teammate Bresean Chambers is a confident athlete who played on the basketball team until his senior year before devoting all his competitive time to speech and debate. “I came from basketball, but I would have to say, with my whole heart, this is the most fun I’ve ever had with any club I’ve ever been in.”

What drives young people to stand up and passionately deliver a speech in front of a crowd full of strangers, a panel of judges and opposing teams from more privileged high schools? The person who will always have their back: Anna Steed.

“I know that no matter what, Steed will always be there for me,” says Ariana Nungaray-Nunez, an alumnus of the class. Ariana is one of the proud and confident students who still refer to their teacher and coach as Mama Steed. When students need a lift, she is there. When they need a suit, she helps them find one. When they’re hungry, she takes care of that, too.

“I want them to just have the memory of making it through, succeeding in a place like that and expressing a story that leaves that place better,” Anna says.

That better place begins in room 161 when unsure and nervous students enter for the first time. After setbacks and adjustments, a lot of hugs, encouragement, and hours of late-night study and practice, they roll out a few years later with their shoulders back and a full tank of confidence, ready to take on the next stage of life. Look closely, and you’ll see a few tears. Mama Steed has prepared them for the competition of life. But it’s always hard to see your kids grow up.

Be a Mentor... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

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BE A MENTOR

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A Legend On and Off the Court.

Known for his unstoppable “skyhook,” Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was a graceful force on the court who held the NBA’s all-time scoring record for 38 years. The game changed a lot in those nearly four decades. But during that time, the man behind the competitive stare only got deeper, more pensive and more involved in communities, believing that “I can do something else besides stuff a ball through a hoop. My biggest resource is my mind.”

Soon, Kareem became a gracious force off the court. He is the author of 13 books and a comic book series. His writings add perspective on African Americans who fought in WWll, his experience with his mentor John Wooden, his time spent on an Apache reservation helping coach a youth basketball team, and street basketball, through a series of books for kids. His articles have appeared in Time Magazine, The Huffington Post, Newsweek and others. Alongside his six NBA Championships and six MVP awards are his two Columnist of the Year awards.

His writings are always thoughtful expressions on how to improve the human condition, particularly for those who begin their lives a few steps behind the rest. He has championed a more equitable health care system, improvements to education access, the rights of expression for artists and filmmakers, and anti-racism.

Kareem has long been involved in community projects, and his focus for the last 10 years has been on introducing underserved students to STEM. He aims to “give kids a better idea of where they can go with their education.”

Kareem’s Skyhook Foundation starts with giving Angeleno fourth- and fifth-graders “a shot that can’t be blocked.” It’s an immersive outdoor experience that opens young students’ eyes to the possibilities. The success rate of students participating in this program is impressive: They have a 96% graduation rate.

“It puts them on a path to becoming scientists, technicians and engineers,” Kareem says in an interview with CNBC. “Kids all want to become LeBron James or Jay-Z or Beyonce, and they really don’t have realistic ideas about what they can do with their educational opportunities.”

Kareem knows that getting an education is the key to a more fulfilling life. That’s especially important now, when the pandemic put nearly every secondary student behind academically. And those students who go on to pursue a STEM major make four times more money. But it’s more than income; it’s about getting a shot at opportunity.

“Everybody needs to contribute what they can,” Kareem says. And to show that contributing to our communities is greater than any award we receive, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, one of the greatest basketball players to ever play the game, sold his four championship rings and three MVP trophies for a whopping $2.8 million to help fund his projects.

“Great players are willing to give up their own personal achievement for the achievement of the group,” he says. “It enhances everybody.”

Take Your Best Shot... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

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TAKE YOUR BEST SHOT

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The Birth of Superman.

Young boys often dream of superpowers to solve their problems. “If I could just click my fingers, my homework would be done,” many have imagined. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster put their ideas down on paper.

It was 1933, and while the country was still in the throes of the Great Depression, Cleveland was thriving. Two kids growing up in a middle-class neighborhood, Jerry and Joe became friends on that awkward social island: high school. They escaped potentially embarrassing encounters by becoming obsessed with comics.

Joe was the artist and sketched all the time, using bits of any kind of paper he could find. He hung out at newsstands poring over magazines, especially “Amazing Stories,” and then took up a pencil or pen to recreate them at home. Jerry was the storyteller and the more ambitious of the two.

He describes how the creation of Superman came to him in the middle of a sleepless summer night: “I hop out of bed and write this down, and then I go back and think some more for about two hours and get up again and write that down.” The inspiration for Superman’s origin story started taking shape, and the next morning, “I dashed over to Joe’s place and showed it to him … we just sat down, and I worked straight through.”

As is often the case, when we experience something traumatic in life, we deal with the feeling through creative expression. Jerry’s father owned a haberdashery and had died during a robbery. A young child might process that experience by wishing something could have prevented it. For Jerry, out came the Man of Steel, who was impervious to bullets and had a penchant for protecting innocent people.

Creating storylines must have helped Jerry with the grieving process. Superman always wins. He stops trains and bad guys and cannot be killed. Like the best memories, nothing can take him away, and yet, being only a memory, he can never be completely there.

The story of Superman has inspired kids for generations. It has calmed their fears and driven their dreams. Most importantly, the Man of Steel has inspired us all to find our superpowers and use them to help others. So, the next time you are inspired to swoop in and save a friend from being bullied, or help the widow next door with your superpower smile, thank Joe and Jerry, two awkward high school kids who dreamt up Superman — making the world a little more safe and a little more fair.

Be Super... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

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www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

BE SUPER

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Respecting Your Customers.

Marketers often talk about meeting the customer’s needs or understanding the customer’s journey. Being a good corporate citizen means taking care of your community. But at the beginning of the 1900s, most companies were in a land rush for market share. Everything was about profits; that is, until the recession hit.

After 1929, banks closed, the stock market plummeted, and farmland went arid. Fifteen million people were unemployed. Rural America was hit hard. Eking out a living from land that had been over-farmed and over-grazed made for less and less productivity. And getting product to market amounted to mostly breaking even.

Farmers bought seeds and flour in bulk. No longer packaged in barrels, cheaper cotton bags were stacked at feed and supply stores. Soon, innovative mothers began using the empty flour and seed sacks to make clothing for their kids. It was common to see children wearing flour-sack shirts and dresses.

In today’s fashion world, where labels are a status symbol, consumers flaunt brands in big ways on every article of clothing. But during the Depression, flour and seed companies saw an opportunity to help struggling families. Wearing a flour-sack dress got you labeled as poor and sent you down a rung or two in social circles. So, the flower and seed companies started printing their sacks with smaller logos and pretty gingham patterns. They even published instructions for how to soak the logo out of the fabric and printed it in water-soluble ink. It wasn’t long before you couldn’t tell the difference between a dress made of a flour sack or store-bought material.

At a time when the country was trying to pull itself up by its bootstraps, companies were doing their part to help poor families feel a little less ashamed of the circumstance they found themselves in. As each of us goes to work, we can look around and see who might need a little help fitting in. We can make a difference by being the kind of friend who doesn’t judge them by the labels they wear.

Be The Good... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

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BE THE GOOD

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If You Don’t Know Anything About Orangutans, You Don’t Know Jack.

Jack is an ebullient red-haired young boy with a passion for the outdoors and all living things. At 8 years old, he learned about the plight of the endangered orangutan — and met a baby orangutan at the Memphis Zoo — and felt a kinship. Maybe it was the similarities: red fur, red hair, bright eyes, wide smiles and boundless curiosity.

“I think I might be related to orangutans,” Jack says with a smile.

Jack went to work reading everything he could about orangutans, their habitats and what threatens them. “I always say, education is the first step,” says Jack. “If we don’t know about an issue, how can we help it?”

All that research led Jack to write a children’s book, “Kawan the Orangutan: Lost in the Rainforest.” He sold 2,000 copies and used the proceeds to support conservation efforts by planting a tree for every book sold. Then he launched his YouTube channel, where he produces educational videos that are fun and feature conservation experts, book readings and everyday ways we can help our world.

Jack has quickly become the orangutan spokesperson. He not only presents to schools, museums and zoos around the world, but he also interviews experts in the field, from wildlife photographers to scientists to fellow conservationists. His work has been recognized by many organizations globally and made him a top 20 Finalist for TIME Kid of the Year.

Jack’s work has broadened to include conservation efforts for a number of animals. It turns out that when you look after the habitat of orangutans, you also protect many other species under the same geographic umbrella.

We live in a world where all living things are connected, interdependent. Young people like Jack feel that connection. They see the world as a whole, its health affecting the health of all people.

Jack also understands the joy of living. He loves to talk about the dedication of Orangutan parents, the playfulness of the young ones and the way they use their long arms to swing through the trees. He sees in their faces life as it should be: caring, compassionate and full of fun.

“I’ve discovered that if you want something to change, you need to do something about it,” says Jack.

Start With Yourself... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

START WITH YOURSELF

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Not Out of the Way, Along the Way.

On a cold November morning, William is up a little early. He packs his own lunch in a crowded kitchen while mom and dad get breakfast on the table for the family, pack lunches for the little ones and divvy out instructions for after school chores. William drops a sandwich into his backpack, says goodbye and plunges into the cold, dark morning.

School is only a mile away, but William’s route is almost two miles. He pulls his jacket around him, too light for the weather just like his mother warned, and heads away from the school for a few blocks. He hurries up a walkway. The lights inside the house are on, and he knows John will be waiting, that the front door will fly open just before he gets there, that he doesn’t really need to walk all the way up to the porch. But he does. The door bursts open, and John runs out without a coat. William tells John to go back inside and get a coat on. John’s mother says the same and holds the door open.

“Hi, William,” she says, smiling. William returns the hi, and John bounds out into the cold as if it is a summer morning. The two of them start their walk to school.

“John is a chromosome off, just one,” his mother likes to say. “But everything else about him is beautiful.” John walks excitedly toward school with his best friend William.

They won’t see each other much in school. John will spend most of the day in special education classes, and William will be in college-prep classes and working with the photography club after school. John will wait for him, sometimes helping move equipment. John’s mother knows that high school is a short time, that William will go on to college and that John will take a very different path.

William knows this, too, but doesn’t think much about the future when he’s with John. He takes him to the basketball games to shoot photos for the yearbook. John makes sure the equipment is safe, and he has no problem asking schoolmates to pause for photos.

Everybody loves John, but few take the time to actually be his friend. Except for William.

There are school dances, and games, and parties, but John doesn’t go to a lot of them unless it’s OK with his mother and she feels like it’s not too big of an imposition on William. But you’ll often see John in the middle of William’s group, and you’ll always see them walking to and from school together. It’s their ritual, the one John enjoys the most.

Having a friend can be the most important possession in life when you are in high school. It means a lot more good days than bad. When the weather turns even colder, and snow floats magically out of the dark morning sky, William says “no thanks” to people who offer him a ride to school. Walking with John, chasing snowflakes and walking off smiley faces in front yards, is worth the cold. It’s worth the time being with someone who is a little bit different, in a good way.

Be a Friend... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

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BE A FRIEND

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Love Rules.

Many of us dream of fame and fortune, of being alive on the big screen. Rick Moranis achieved the dream.

Moranis loved comedy and became a reluctant actor after being discovered on SCTV. First, he worked as a DJ in Toronto and began doing comedy specials for radio. Then, he was cast in several TV comedy pilots before being invited to join the cast of SCTV, Canada’s version of Saturday Night Live. In 1980, he was working alongside the biggest names in comedy: Steve Martin, John Candy and Martin Short.

He grew up in a traditional household and laughs about his father telling him: “You can be absolutely anything you want. A doctor, a lawyer, or an accountant.” He wasn’t interested in any of those choices. Moranis’ greatest talent was improvisation. His radio career began at age 16 when he took over a spot in the back room for his cousin, pulling albums, spinning records, doing the paperwork. Eventually, he began making suggestions to the deejays about what to talk about or how to introduce an album. He had a quirky sense of humor, and the deejays loved it. So, they asked him if he wanted to be on the air. As Moranis started college, he began writing what he describes as “terrible stuff,” but he had found a creative outlet and began to explore it.

It wasn’t until Moranis saw an old friend doing stand-up comedy that the path opened up for him. He and another buddy put together 30 minutes of material, stitched it into a series of sketches and did the routine at a comedy club in Toronto. People loved it.

When Moranis told his parents, he recalls, “My father nearly fell into his soup.” His parents would soon support his career choice, and Moranis moved rapidly into stardom, from sketches to blockbuster movies like “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.” Moranis plays hapless inventor and devoted father Wayne Szalinski, who shrinks his own children with an experimental ray gun. Much of the film involves Szalinski looking for his children in the backyard that has become a jungle to them. When he finally finds them and returns them to normal size, there is a wonderful family reunion. And not only does the family experience bigger-than-normal emotions, Szalinski uses the ray gun to oversize their meal as well.

This might be a clue as to why Moranis left show business. In 1986, he married Ann Belsky, and they had two children. Sadly, Ann died of cancer only five years after they were married. “I’m a single parent, and I just found that it was too difficult to manage to raise my kids and to do the traveling involved in making movies,” Moranis said. Turns out, he had an oversized love for his children that meant more to him than stardom.

Love... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

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LOVE

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How to Land an Airplane Without Landing Gear.

At 17 years old, most people are still struggling to parallel park. Yes, it takes a bit of practice. And once the car is parked, the day is packed with school activities and homework and just hanging out with friends. But at 17, Maggie Taraska had an outrageous goal in mind: Fly solo across the United States.

Both of Maggie’s parents are Air Force veterans, so the urge to be airborne is in Maggie’s genes. So she went to flight school, put in the hours with an instructor and started on her solo hours. But on her first solo takeoff, out of a small airport in Massachusetts, something didn’t sound right. The plane had lost one of the landing gear wheels.

“As soon as I took off, I heard something,” Maggie said. “I just felt something was wrong instinctively.”

The Piper Cub had plenty of gas, so her instructor had time to talk her through the maneuvers from the ground while she circled a few times to gather herself.

“I was just petrified. I was thinking about all of the bad things that could’ve happened; I was thinking about how my parents were on the ground and I knew that they were watching.”

Stress and panic can cause any of us to make rash decisions. It takes mental practice to calm down. Take a few breaths, focus on the moment, follow the plan. And remember to breathe. “I panicked a bit, but I followed my training.”

Maggie was a little shaky as she talked to the tower, but she executed a perfect belly landing that skidded on the infield grass. Her father couldn’t be more proud.

“By the time I saw Maggie on her approach, it was a better approach than I could’ve flown,” he said. Cheers erupted in the tower when she landed, and Maggie took a deep breath and climbed out of the plane.

Credit does go to the crew for talking her through the procedure. We all need someone to talk us through challenging times. But in the end, it was all Maggie at the controls.

We could all be forgiven for calling it quits after an ordeal like that. After all, it was a bit traumatic. So walking away would be understandable. But five days later, Maggie was going through her pre-flight safety inspections, checking under the hood, checking the wings, and especially checking the landing gear.

“It feels amazing,” she said about being up in the air again. “It feels really freeing.”

At some point in our lives, we will all be in a situation for the first time. It’s scary. But if you face your fears, the whole world opens up to you.

Stay Calm... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
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STAY CALM

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Laughter is the Best Medicine.

Steven Spielberg is one of the world’s most artful directors and storytellers. While he was in post-production with “Jurassic Park,” he was also shooting the epic film “Schindler’s List.”

Recreating such a horrific part of history, one that personally affected his own family, weighed heavily on Spielberg. He describes his state of mind while jumping between the films as having a “tremendous amount of resentment and anger.” The schedule alone would be stressful enough, but the subject matter of “Schindler’s List” left Spielberg emotionally depleted after each day.

So he turned to the good doctor, or at least the funniest man ever to play one: Robin Williams. Patch Adams is right. Laughter is the best medicine. Williams would call Spielberg just to lift his spirits.

“Robin knew what I was going through, and once a week, Robin would call me on schedule, and he would do 15 minutes of stand-up on the phone,” recounts Spielberg. “I would laugh hysterically, because I had to release so much … the way Robin is on the telephone, he’d always hang up on the loudest, best laugh you’d give him. He’d never say goodbye, just hang up on the biggest laugh.”

Spielberg and Williams only worked together on one film: “Hook,” starring Williams as the effervescent Peter Pan. They became friends, and later, William’s sensitivity to Spielberg’s emotions during one of his hardest times became essential.

All of us need a little pick-me-up now and then. Life is hard. A good laugh is good therapy. We should make the time to make each other laugh. To have a session of side-splitting therapy.

Friendship is best when we share the ups, the downs and everything in between. Delivering a good chuckle to a friend when they are down is a gift that makes the moment a little more bearable. Looking at the funny side of life requires our care and attention. As Robin said: “You’re only given a little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it.”

Laughter... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

LAUGHTER

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Pass It On^®

Overcoming Fear Sometimes Requires a Patient Friend.

Every day, there are 25,000 flights in America. Accidents are so rare that flying is much safer than car travel. But that doesn’t stop many people from feeling panicked when they are moving at 500 miles per hour, 33,000 feet above the ground. Not being at the controls makes us feel a bit helpless. That’s when the negative thoughts begin to swirl, and the cycle deepens until, even in a very safe place, we suddenly feel panic.

That’s what happened recently to a woman flying on a commercial airline. Many of us can go along doing ordinary things and suddenly be overcome with fear. The physical symptoms are real, and it requires a calming force to steady our emotions. In panic mode, the senses are hypervigilant. Every sound and movement feels like a threat. The passenger responded accordingly, jumping at every sound and the slightest turbulence.

Floyd Dean-Shannon noticed the woman’s distress. As a flight attendant, he has plenty to do during a flight. But he paused and spoke reassuringly to the woman. Floyd calmly explained what the noise was and that it was normal. The landing gear, the wing flaps, all perfectly routine sounds you hear as a plane flies.

As the woman began to calm down a bit, Floyd sat down in the aisle beside her and held her hand. He told her she was safe. He made her feel safe. He sat with her through the entire flight. At one point, Floyd learned it was another passenger’s birthday, so he led the plane in a song to celebrate — another way of making the woman feel safe by distracting her from her fears. He stayed by the woman’s side until it was time to land.

We all have friends who become distressed, who over-worry, who may struggle with some internal demons that keep them from enjoying life. Like Floyd, we can be open enough to see, to be there. We don’t have to be professional counselors; we just need to be friends.

In a world that seems most focused on what’s happening on a screen, we can look up occasionally and check on those around us. According to the Mayo Clinic, having a friend reduces the risk of many significant health problems, including high blood pressure and depression. And having a friend when you most need it not only gets you through the rough patches in your life — it also gives you the confidence to be a friend to others.

Be a Friend... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

BE A FRIEND

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Pass It On^®

The Calm in the Storm.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when the volunteers have moved on but the residents are still there, David parks his car beside an apartment building. The light is waning. The building is made of stone, one of the few on this side of New Orleans. He opens his trunk, drags out four grocery bags of food, closes the trunk with his elbow and enters the building.

It’s Wednesday, the day he regularly arrives after work. He doesn’t look back at his car. He doesn’t worry about it anymore. At first, someone would scratch the side of his door with a key or a rock every time he left it for the hour he was making visits. But the anger in the neighborhood has subsided, and he has become a regular. The scratches remain, and he just shrugs. It’s only a car.

The apartment building is home to four widows. They live week to week and look forward to David’s visits. He brings each a bag of food beyond the necessities, a box of cookies, fresh (not frozen) meat, cans of instant coffee, new dishrags and laundry soap. But mostly, he stays to talk.

They tell him that each storm seemed to take a little more of the neighborhood away. That people are angry at the world. That their community is trying to come back, but it’s taking some time. What they all miss is the sound of children playing in the street. They hope that comes back someday soon.

Cleaning up after a hurricane takes time. It’s more than pumping out the water and mucking out the mud. It’s more than replacing moldy carpets and furniture. A violent storm can test a community’s bonds. It leaves residents numb, with barely enough energy to take care of themselves, let alone help somebody else.

There’s always an initial push when they all clean up together. That first response is encouraging, life-affirming. But then the doldrums hit. The sails are no longer filled with optimism. David knows this. He has spent his life helping grieving people. So when he leaves the office on Wednesday evening, he stops by the grocery store, picks out favorite cookies and sauces, and drives to the apartment building where loneliness is a constant storm. He hikes up the damp stairs and delivers a smile, a hug, a long conversation and a few tokens of friendship.

This Wednesday, when David arrives at his car in the dark, a young boy is standing there. “I watched your car,” the boy says. “Nobody did anything.”

David looks at the boy and smiles. “You did something, young man. You did a good thing.”

The boy lights up. A little encouragement is rare these days; seems it, too, got swept away in the storm. Without warning, the boy hugs David, the tall stranger who quietly brings groceries to the widows and tells them everything is going to be all right.

And it is. Everything is going to be all right.

Encouragement... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

ENCOURAGEMENT

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Living Alone doesn’t Mean you Have to be Lonely.

Dan has always lived in Maine. He grew up hunting and fishing in the woods. He doesn’t mind the cold. The bugs in the summer don’t bother him. And being self-sufficient year-round is the lifestyle he has chosen.

Sometimes he picks up jobs as a laborer if he needs supplies, but mostly he lives off the land, heating his cabin with a wood-burning stove and chipping ice off the nearby river to access water. This is how he has lived for over 50 years. If you want to know how to weave your own rope or chink the walls of your log cabin, ask Dan. He’ll spend a day with you, helping you get the job done and teaching you along the way.

It’s a simple life, and Dan likes it that way. He’ll tell you he only takes what he needs, and he has become a bit of a sage in the area, teaching kids about nature and living in harmony. He’s good with hand tools and is always available to help dig a ditch for a neighbor or put in a fence line. But he’s getting old.

Dan doesn’t have the back he used to have. And while he would never ask for help, the community recognized that Dan could use a better solution to get water into his cabin, especially during the winter. But they also didn’t want to take away from Dan’s sense of self-reliance. So one October afternoon, 11 of his neighbors showed up with picks and shovels to dig a four-foot-deep trench a hundred yards to the river at the edge of Dan’s property. They had to get down below the frost line, dig a sinkhole protected by a rock bollard in the river and run the pipe into the cabin. They outfitted the cabin with a hand pump because Dan’s off-the-grid lifestyle meant there was no electricity.

The project was finished well after dark and just a few weeks before the first snow. Dan was ready: He treated them to roast venison, slow-cooked on a spit over an open flame. It is Dan’s way, a simple, grateful life.

You can still see Dan around town, loitering in the hardware store, offering advice or painting a widow’s barn in exchange for a couple of jars of canned peaches. As the town modernizes around him, Dan is a reminder of past values that never change: Be responsible for your own life. Only take what you need. Give help when it’s needed. Appreciate everything. Dan’s new water system is also a reminder that sometimes the help people need is help just being themselves.

The Right Helping Hand... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

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THE RIGHT HELPING HAND

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Pass It On^®

Never Give Up.

Preston Tucker was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame in 1999, quite an accomplishment for somebody who only built 51 cars.

What was it about him that made him so indispensable as an innovator? As the Hall of Fame puts it, “Tucker is described as a visionary who changed the automobile establishment.”

He grew up in Michigan — the heart of American car country. By age 16, he was flipping cars: buying clunkers, fixing them and reselling them. His mind was constantly at work on how to improve current designs.

He took a job at the Michigan police department because he wanted to drive a police car. Automobiles in the early 1900s didn’t come with heaters, and Michigan was notoriously cold in the winter. Young Preston cut a hole in the dashboard of a police car to let the heat from the engine into the cab. He was promptly banned from driving.

Tucker ran a gas station, sold cars, worked on race cars and never stopped dreaming. In those days, the steps to prototype were simple: Draw it. Build it. Try it. Refine it. There were no computer-generated models, just trial and error.

After a failed attempt at selling the military a faster tank with a rotating turret, Tucker turned back to car design, sensing that the American public would be ready for a leap into the future following WWII. His barn workshop would produce many of the innovations featured in the Tucker Torpedo, designs years ahead of their time: a padded dashboard, pop-out windshield, disc brakes, rear engine, and most famously, a cyclops headlight that turned with the wheels.

But funding for the company did not come easy. The SEC came down hard on Tucker, and he was distracted by mounting debt and legal battles. He won the battle but lost the war. He could only produce 51 cars before his company went bankrupt. Ironically, a Tucker is worth over a million dollars today. The 47 cars still in drivable condition would pay off the company’s debt with plenty left over for investment in future growth.

The Tucker automobile production building eventually became a Tootsie Roll factory. Many of the unique designs and innovations by Preston Tucker were adopted by other manufacturers and became standard. Automobile historians will say that Preston Tucker’s real accomplishment was changing the mindset of car makers from creating mere transportation to focusing on families and safety.

History turns on innovation. At a time when Detroit was making yesterday’s cars, Tucker was speeding into the future.

Never Give Up... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
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NEVER GIVE UP

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Pass It On^®

It’s Not Your Lifespan, it’s Your Wingspan.

Penny Doerge should have had a normal childhood, hanging out with friends and growing into adulthood before thinking about how she could change the world. But at an early age, Penny was diagnosed with neurofibromatosis, a condition that causes tumors and can lead to brain cancer.

The prognosis was not good. But Penny had a life to live and refused to live it in darkness. In fact, she chose to spread light to everyone around her.

During the pandemic, Penny created a series of small gatherings called adventure camps for the neighborhood kids. Each child had a COVID test at the door, and then the fun began. It was Penny’s way of creating connections to overcome isolation. For those who couldn’t attend, she made funny TikTok videos and shared her artwork for those who couldn't attend. She loved to use her creativity to make ordinary things beautiful.

When it was time for another surgery — she had 15 in all — Penny would go about it in a businesslike manner. No complaining, no crying, just get through it and get back to living. Her mother remembers, “Somebody said Penny was an actress and the world was her stage. She was joy personified.”

Her teachers remember her as a hardworking girl everyone wanted to be around. She was happy and beautiful and artistically gifted. And she used those attributes to lift others. “She was a little angel,” her grandfather remembers. “She was fun and happy. Penny taught us a lot.” Her father adds, “She taught us how to treat other people.

Sometimes a very special person comes into this life to remind all those around her what we should really be about. We should make time to create beauty, and to share it. Penny’s artwork made people happy. Her notes and videos made people forget about hard things and focus on good things. Her friendship brought a sense of hope to everyone who wanted to be close to her. Her pastor says, “Penny was and will continue to be a bright light for her family and friends.”

Penny died at the age of 16. “She made a choice to live her life with joy and optimism,” says her father.

That optimism continues to burn bright. Her family launched Penny’s Flight, a foundation dedicated to inspiring others to live life as she did, according to the family’s motto, “It’s not your lifespan, it’s your wingspan.” The foundation raises money for cancer research and also celebrates life by sharing the message: Spread your wings. Shine your light.

Comedian Jimmy Fallon and former NFL quarterback Eli Manning have picked up the torch of Penny’s cause. And so it glows. The brief life of a young girl touches thousands of lives and reminds us all that we can soar to new heights, no matter who we are.

Spread Your Wings... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

SPREAD YOUR WINGS

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Pass It On^®

Don’t Let a Bad Day Trick You Into Believing You Have a Bad Life.

A cancer diagnosis can bring you to the very edge of the cliff. It did for Allie Newman. A bright, athletic 16-year-old one day and a cancer patient the next.

Osteosarcoma isn’t a word that should ever be in a high schooler’s vocabulary. Allie got very familiar with it. It’s a degenerative bone cancer that requires aggressive chemotherapy. She endured 12 months of treatment, losing her hair, her strength and her appetite but never her positive outlook.

Then came the surgeries to replace her hip, her femur, her knee. On top of those were 10 maintenance surgeries. Allie became very familiar with hospitals. The endless trauma can take a toll, rob a person of optimism.

So when Allie found herself on the cliff edge, she had already made up her mind the first day she got her diagnosis. She had decided that she would live and love life, no matter what it brought. Yes, it was hard. But Allie also discovered new friends and the courage to finish college, to travel abroad, to sing at the top of her lungs, celebrate every new year of being cancer free and, yes, jump off literal cliffs. She jumped and screamed all the way down into the cool water. Her head bobbed to the surface, and she wanted to do it all again.

As Allie has realized, life is an opportunity not only to see what we’re made of but to help others see what they are made of. “Cancer changes people,” she says. “It sculpts us into someone who understands more deeply, hurts more often, appreciates more quickly, hopes more desperately, loves more deeply and lives more passionately.”

With that passion, Allie joined Teen Cancer America, an organization founded by rockers Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend that helps hospitals treat teenage cancer patients. Most hospitals don’t have special programs or facilities for 13- to 24-year-olds. Yet youth-focused programs and facilities help teenage patients better understand procedures, recover faster and have an overall better hospital experience. To date, Teen Cancer America has positively impacted 18,000 families by consulting with 97 hospitals and partnering with 30 to award grants.

You never know where your life will lead, what courage and determination you will have to summon. But when you are facing your fears, do as Allie says: “Take a second to smile, and give yourself a minute to truly reflect on all the good in your life right now.” And, if you are so inclined, jump off a cliff into the ocean, screaming for joy that you are here, that you are alive, that you can still love.

Resilience... PassItOn.com®

If your publication uses video, we produced the following inspirational video featuring Allie Newman. You can watch it below, or download the .mp4 file from this link and the closed caption file from this link for use in your content management system. This video is also on YouTube if your system can use video published there.

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

RESILIENCE

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Pass It On^®

A Custom of Respect.

Soccer is a passionate game. It’s one of the few sports where players are free to follow the flow as they play, being less constrained by a game plan and more dependent on their ability to communicate and create opportunities.

It’s also a worldwide sport, and fans are often just as impassioned as the players. At the World Cup, it is country against country. Emotions run high. National pride is on the line. And sportsmanship often gets lost amid the victors’ celebration and the disappointment of the not-so-fortunate. The 2022 World Cup was no different.

The Japanese national team has often seemed like outsiders looking in, as the European and South American teams have dominated world soccer for decades. So when Japan stepped on the field in the first round against powerhouse Germany, there wasn’t a lot of hope for the underdog.

Germany scored first on a penalty kick and fired several near-misses that would convince most fans that the Japanese just couldn’t keep pace with the Germans. But they did. Heroic saves and a relentless attack saw the Japanese team knot the score at one goal apiece. Then, late in the match, a pinpoint pass from midfield set up a two-touch strike, and Japan took the lead. They hung on for a historic win that had the whole world cheering.

With such an improbable and gutsy win, you’d think there would be pandemonium in the stands and in the locker room. Certainly, there were celebrations. But when the cheering died down and the stands were nearly empty, the Japanese team was tidying up the locker room. They swept and mopped the floors, folded towels and left thank-you notes to the host country. In the stadium, Japanese fans stayed behind to collect garbage and clean up the stands. While the win was totally unexpected, the show of respect and gratitude was even more so.

In sports, as in life, wins come and go. Triumphs and tragedies will always be part of our journey. But as the Japanese soccer team demonstrated, no matter the outcome, it is how we treat others that will be remembered most.

Respect... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

RESPECT

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Pass It On^®

To Stay or Run?

There’s a saying in the West that when things get tough, you have to cowboy up. In Wyoming, the history of cowboys braving the elements to sustain ranches during subzero weather, and fixing things on their own in the harsh landscape, is ingrained in the people. They are as independent as they are loyal; hardened physically by their labors, they still harbor hearts as big as the Wyoming sky.

In Powell, Wyoming, you’ll find a tight group of college wrestlers. After practice one autumn morning, four of them went out into the wilderness to collect the antlers shed by deer and elk. The group split into pairs to conduct their treasure hunt.

Five miles into the wilderness, Brady Lowry was attacked by a grizzly bear. The huge bear knocked him off a small ledge, breaking his arm in the attack. It happened so fast he didn’t have time to reach for his bear spray.

Teammate Kendell Cummings, who was a short distance away, charged the bear, trying to distract him.

“I grabbed and yanked him hard by the ear,” Cummings said. The bear turned from Lowry, reared up and attacked Cummings, swiftly knocking him to the ground. “I could hear when his teeth would hit my skull, I could feel when he’d bite down on my bones.”

The bear eventually left, and Cummings stood up, blood pouring from open wounds on his face and arms. He called to his teammate. “I think the bear heard me. It kind of circled around and got me again.” Cummings lay stunned and bleeding until the bear left again.

After several minutes, he got up and found Lowry, and the two bloodied young men began the arduous journey down the mountain. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, adrenaline dissipated their pain. But hiking down the steep and rocky slope soon became agonizing. Lowry used his cell phone to call their other two teammates, who met them on the trail. Cummings and Lowry were fading from loss of blood, so Orrin Jackson and August Harrison carried their teammates on their backs down the mountain to meet the Search and Rescue team that Jackson had arranged along the way.

After a cold, bumpy ATV ride, they were rushed to the hospital, and both underwent multiple surgeries. It wasn’t long before the rest of their Northwest Trapper teammates joined them in Billings, Montana, staying for two days and two nights until Cummings and Lowry were in the clear.

Lowry was emotional about the experience, and grateful that his friend and teammate had saved his life. “That’s what the wrestling team does — we go to hell and back with each other. We aren’t going to let one of us go down without helping.”

As the late autumn sun gives way to the crystallized afternoon air a week later in Wyoming, two intrepid wrestlers know it will take months to recover from their life-threatening injuries. But they also plan on returning to the team as soon as possible, maybe as soon as this season.

Courage... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
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COURAGE

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Photographs that Changed the World.

Walker Evans was born into an affluent family. His father made sure he had access to the best schools, even paying for him to study in Paris. Walker was a curious and artistically minded young man. At first, his sensitive nature led him to be a writer, but he struggled to find words to describe what he saw, recalling, “I wanted so much to write that I couldn’t write a word.”

So he went to New York City and took a job as a stock clerk. And in his spare time, he resurrected his childhood hobby: photography. He had no ambition to create high art; rather, he wanted to explore the essence of humanity. At the time, this was a peculiar ambition. Victorian notions of class distinction were still rigid. The upper classes were considered entitled to their social stations, and the poor were mostly ignored.

Walker Evans didn’t see it that way. And as the Depression ground down the masses, he set off to document more than their condition. He went searching for their dignity.

He captured the stern resolve of sharecroppers in the Dust Bowl, moving in with one family in Alabama for several weeks. His photographs shed light on the blight of poverty in America, on racism and classism. They forced a nation to confront the obligation of those it was dismissing.

At first, the photographs were considered too honest, and the collection sold only 600 copies when it was first published in 1936. But 30 years later, the world began to wake up to social injustice. In the 1960s, the work of Walker Evans was rediscovered, and with it arose a new ideal, one that sank deep into the hearts of all people. Each of us has an obligation to see to the needs of those less fortunate.

Old attitudes began to disappear, replaced by a new wave of altruism. Nonprofits sprang up that focused on making education more accessible, and new community centers and job training programs blossomed. Although the ’60s were a tumultuous time, some socioeconomic barriers began to come down.

Each of us has our talents, our circle of influence and that same pull to recognize the dignity of those around us. We can be a part of the solution, using what resources we have. A visit to one lonely neighbor, one struggling student, one family stretched thin financially can change their world.

Making a Difference... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

MAKING A DIFFERENCE

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Richard Scibelli, New York Times

Pass It On^®

Going the Distance.

Dillon Shije is soft-spoken and respectful in his conversations. He brushes off compliments on his college success with shy gratitude and moves deftly to give credit to tribal elders.

Dillon grew up on the Zia Pueblo Indian Reservation in New Mexico. He was the top Native American runner in the U.S. during his final two years of high school. He ran his way to Division 1 National Champion as a University of Colorado - Boulder student, his running life was featured in an article in the New York Times, and he was the subject of a documentary that highlights his senior year training on the dusty reservation roads.

Dillon runs like the classic long-distance athlete: lithe, rhythmic, flowing effortlessly across the terrain. His Native American upbringing teaches him to be at peace with himself, yet inside he feels the pull of competition.

“I don’t run to beat someone else,” he says. “I run to compete with myself, to see how fast I can become.”

When he was a young boy, the Tribal Elders told Dillon that he must become a leader — that he must focus on his studies, leave the reservation and go to college, grow and come back to teach others. It is the hero’s story: The boy leaves to take on the challenges of a wider world and returns with greater knowledge that blesses his people. And so it was with Dillon. He earned degrees in integrative physiology and history and returned to New Mexico to coach young people and work with Native American communities in the West, teaching both about respecting traditions, understanding ancestral challenges and working to build self-dignity.

Running is central to Dillon’s cultural and religious teachings. It is a spiritual experience that connects his present and future to the past.

“When we understand the traditions of our ancestors, we begin to better understand ourselves,” he shares. There is a focus on being at peace but also uneasy with one’s performance. The push to be more is ever-present. “I teach each of these kids that they are all to be leaders.”

His pride in his heritage is evident. He has put in the miles, one stride at a time, contemplating the future of his people. He brings back to them a gift of experience, and he makes it clear that each generation can go further than the last.

Dillon’s spiritual and physical practices have existed since the beginning of humanity. He runs into the future with a call to return to the traditional ways of respecting yourself, learning from collective history and living for others. As the sun rises in the early morning desert, you’ll see Dillon striding on a distant horizon, his breathing the act of an eternal connection, while a trail of young runners follows him into the future.

Lead... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
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LEAD

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Richard Scibelli, New York Times

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Finding Our Way.

Kala has deep ties to her Hawaiian roots. Her ancestors navigated the oceans for centuries using their knowledge of the stars, the sun, the currents and the wind. It’s not that she does it without technology, but rather uses the natural technology around her. It’s called Wayfinding, and was taught to her by her father. “My father was my foundation, my rock,” she says of her first voyage with him from Oahu to Lahaina in a traditional canoe “I knew we would be OK.” He taught her how to read the stars, the ocean swells and how to use them to hold the course. Over 200 stars have specific names and purposes when you are Wayfinding. You have to look at each and determine if they are rising or setting. “You know that this is this star and the direction it represents,” Kala says. “If you can do that, you can use it as a tool to orient.”

During the day, Kala uses the sun until it hits a certain height, when she gets closer to land she looks for certain species of land birds and stationary clouds that indicate there is land below. When Kala sails she feels “very connected to my past and where I came from. I feel very connected to the crew and the canoe. We’re a family.” The longer voyages require Kala to spend hours studying the day and the night skies. It was demanding, physical work. But it also had its moments of awe. For Kala, the beauty is in tying together the past and the present to enjoy the moment. So when she is not sailing, she is teaching Wayfinding skills to school-aged children in hopes of preserving the skills her ancestors relied on.

It’s easy to get lost in the immediacy of the technology of our day, to be consumed by screens and miss the nature that unfolds around us. But if we will take the time to look up, to see the stars and the sun, the way the clouds move, the miracle of life beneath and above us, we will discover something deep inside us, something that will always lead to happiness.

Find Your Way... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

FIND YOUR WAY

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Pass It On^®

A Most Unlikely Friendship.

Every Thursday afternoon, the food pantry at the local high school opens up to provide fresh food bags for families who can’t stretch their budgets far enough to get their meals to last through the weekend. Nearly a hundred families rely on the extra food. Some are between jobs, some got hit hard with medical bills for a few months, and some are new to the neighborhood, placed there by refugee services.

On one breezy afternoon, two young mothers walked in together, each with a toddler in tow. There was nothing different about their dress, but their manner revealed a shyness that they struggled to overcome. When they spoke, it was clear why: Their accents were thick, even though they were trying hard to make their English sound American. They were uncertain of being understood. But the pantry is run by grandmothers who are never pressed for time when it comes to conversations. So they sat for a moment and told their story while the little ones were held in arms so very familiar with children.

The two lived in apartments in the basement of the Methodist Church. They had been in the United States for one month. Their husbands were well-educated but working labor jobs to pay for food and save for more typical apartments. And they were out of diapers.

Both had fled the war in Eastern Europe, one family from Ukraine and one from Russia. They ended up in the same church basement and discovered that they needed each other. They became fast friends. Their children played together. They shared meals and navigated their new world together.

There were no bombs or soldiers or rations in their new neighborhood, only a chance to start over. Friendships are sometimes hard to come by, yet matter so much to each of us. A good friend gives us strength, love, laughter and the courage to keep trying.

These two families — worn down by uncertainty and war, thrown together in a new country, a new community with a new language — found so much in common. And isn’t that what we all need? A friend who faces the same life challenges, even if the forces above them have different political views. We are, after all, just mothers and fathers, friends and neighbors.

Friendship... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
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FRIENDSHIP

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How Far Would you go for a Friend?

On a typical day, off the coast of a small Brazilian island, Joao Pereira de Souza was headed out fishing. He was disheartened to find that an oil spill had contaminated the waters. Staring out at the waves with their greasy sheen, he decided it was not a good day to fish. But walking the beach that day, he found a struggling penguin, covered in oil and starving.

Pereira took the penguin home, gently cleaned it and spent the next week nursing it back to health. He named it Dindim, a Portuguese word meaning “ice pop.”

Dindim is a Magellanic penguin, a species known for living in the seas of South America. In order to breed, they must return to Patagonia, 8,000 kilometers (5,000 miles) from Pereira’s home. Pereira patiently took Dindim back to the ocean and taught him how to swim again. Soon enough, it was time for Dindim to return to life in the wild. Pereira watched Dindim swim away, believing it would be the last time he saw him.

But the next June, Dindim returned. The two shared a tender beak-to-nose greeting, and Dindim stayed for a month, waddling around the fisherman’s house. The time to leave arrived, and Pereira thought this surely would be the last time he would see Dindim. But 11 months later, the penguin with a long memory returned again.

It is a common belief among scientists that animals have short memories. So a couple of them put a tracking device on Dindim to see if it was indeed the same penguin that returned year after year. To their surprise, but not Pereira’s, Dindim returned, year after year, for more than a decade.

Love and nurture create a bond so deep that we can’t always explain it. It’s just something we feel, something we long to provide. And when we do, it lasts much longer than we ever expected.

Pereira and Dindim share a bond that bridges human life and the natural world. Their friendship is hope personified.

Remember Your Friends... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

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REMEMBER YOUR FRIENDS

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Pass It On^®

The Science of Happiness.

Kate is a bright young woman with an intense focus on academics and a long-term goal of becoming a neuroscientist. Her path is charted very carefully, each day according to schedule. She meets after school with the Brain Club, a group she started that discusses neuroscience and trades academic papers like baseball cards. It’s the kind of group you would never imagine in high school: mature beyond their years and led by their own initiative.

It would seem there was no room in Kate’s schedule for fun, let alone helping others. But then she found out about an elementary school hit hard by the pandemic, then inflation, and now a recession. It sits in the middle of a working-class neighborhood stirred with a mix of ethnicities and wrung out by hours working physically demanding jobs. Most families were doing the best they could just to put a few groceries on the table.

Halloween was approaching, and many of the families didn’t participate because they lacked costumes and couldn’t afford to give out candy themselves. So Kate called the principal. She was told the families wanted their kids to have fun on Halloween, but they also needed more books in the home.

So Kate went to work. She began with the Brain Club and then branched out to other clubs. They would sponsor a trunk-or-treat event featuring games, candy and book giveaways. It was a huge organizational challenge — one that only a very organized person could handle. So Kate put her smarts to use. She arranged for groups of her peers to decorate their cars and create games. She found a DJ and rounded up boxes of costumes for the kids. She even got the local police to decorate their cruiser. And she went to work getting kids books donated.

At dusk on Halloween, the cars arrived in the parking lot. A course was laid out, beginning with choosing a costume, then on to collect candy, play games and dance with high school students who also wore costumes. The little ones were delighted. They’d never had such a great party. And at the end of it all, they signed up for the book club: read a book, then exchange it for another.

The principal said it was the happiest she’s ever seen the kids. As for Kate, she took careful notes on how happiness affects your attitude toward life and learning. She also got a lot of hugs from little princesses and superheroes.

When you take the time, you can make somebody’s world better.

Happiness... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

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HAPPINESS

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Let the Music Move You.

Perhaps it started when Bob Geldof, first known for his punk band The Boomtown Rats, sang about a senseless act of violence in 1979 in his hit “I Don’t Like Mondays.”

The roots of his empathy ran deep. Geldof’s mother died when he was 6 years old, and he was bullied throughout his childhood. So while his music career was moving forward, Bob Geldof saw the unfairness in the world.

After performing at a charity concert for Amnesty International, he mobilized the music industry around the food crisis in Ethiopia. The 1984 effort created Band Aid, which brought together two dozen artists to record “Do They Know it’s Christmas?” It became the fastest seller of all time in the UK and sold nearly 12 million copies worldwide.

But it wasn’t enough. Economic realities in Africa created a food disparity that left most of the population starving. Geldof threw himself into the cause, using music as the solution. He formed Live Aid in 1985 and brought together the best-loved pop groups of the day for a live, 16-hour London concert broadcast on the BBC. Between numbers, Geldof delivered impassioned speeches calling for donations. He later said, “Mankind at its most desperate is often at its best.”

Geldof was desperate to create change. Live Aid raised over US $200 million. But there was still more to do. Geldof sought solutions that went beyond donations. He was appointed to the Commission for Africa by then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The commission dug deep into the root causes of poverty and drew up a detailed plan to reform trade rules, cancel debt and provide a continuation of aid. More concerts followed, and change began to take root.

Perhaps more important than the money raised is that a generation grew up knowing they could make a difference. From the street musicians to the live concerts in parks to the stadiums filled with fans, each is a nod to the work of Bob Geldof and the musicians he gathered for good. One song, one musician, one fan can, in Bob Geldof’s words “tilt the world a little bit in favor of the poor.”

Give... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
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GIVE

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Ramping Up to Help those in Need.

Colleen isn’t well known to her neighbors. She’ll wave when they pass, but mostly she keeps to herself. In her mid-sixties, her husband is mostly homebound with health issues, so she takes care of him and reminisces about the business they built together but had to sell so she could be his caregiver. The kids visit, bringing the grandkids, but time is pressed for young families, and Colleen often spends afternoons alone, sitting on her porch. That’s where she got the news.

Colleen’s son called her, hardly able to speak. His wife had been in an accident that killed her and their young son. That left him alone to care for his disabled daughter, who needed a wheelchair to get around. He was distraught. Quickly, they planned that he and his daughter would move in with Colleen and her husband and try to make things work. It wouldn’t be easy, but they could manage.

The day Colleen’s son arrived with his daughter, he struggled to lift her wheelchair up the stairs. Across the street, Sheila was just leaving the house. She had a full schedule but noticed the scene. She paused and crossed to help. Emotions were still raw, and vulnerabilities were open and unmasked. Colleen burst into tears. As the story spilled out, a friendship began. Sheila cried with Colleen. She couldn’t imagine how Colleen and her son could manage to get the wheelchair in and out of the house twice a day. So she put the word out to neighbors. Carpenters needed to build a wheelchair ramp. No pay.

The next day, three carpenters showed up. They met Colleen. They met the bright girl in the wheelchair. They drew up plans and debated designs and materials. They made Colleen laugh, and then cry again because they were so kind. They recruited more help, and their daughters came over to welcome the special new girl to the neighborhood.

Ross, the lead carpenter on the project, hugged Colleen and told her how lucky she was. Ross had a disabled daughter who had died years before. He misses her every day.

“Doing something for this special girl feels like I’m doing it for my own daughter,” he said. “It does a heart good.”

Put Your Heart Into It... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

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PUT YOUR HEART INTO IT

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Teamwork that Saves Lives.

The magic of baseball is its fluid connection between players, each in the right position at the right time, playing their part to perfection; the flawless relay throw, the squeeze play, the three-bagger and the rally-killing cry of Tinkers to Evers to Chance on the double-play. When a team is in sync, there is nothing more breathtaking than baseball. But it takes a lot of practice to look effortless.

That’s what was happening — practice — one afternoon when the Valley High School team was distracted by a scream for help. Coach Brett Sawyer heard the commotion and saw the entire team sprinting toward the parking lot, jumping over fences.

One of their schoolmates was pinned under a car that had accidentally backed over her. One of the players, Chas Roberts, remembered afterward, “You had to do what you had to do to save someone’s life.” The players quickly surrounded the car, each taking a hold, and lifted the car. An assistant coach was then able to pull the girl out from underneath the car. She is expected to make a full recovery.

Maybe it’s the connection human beings have with each other, rushing in to help when it’s needed. And maybe playing together as a team became instinctual because each knew what to do. Or maybe it’s both. Maybe, deep inside, we all know that we are on the same team.

The next day, the varsity team lost their last game of the year. But winning was a little less important to them that day. The coach was proud of them for what they accomplished and said, “To be honest, we might not have the best baseball team around, but we sure do have a great group of guys.”

The magic of life is the fluid connection between people: how they love, how they share, how they help. There is nothing more breathtaking than the game of life well played.

Teamwork... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

TEAMWORK

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When the World Says You Can’t, Listen to the Inner Voice that Says You Can.

The wind roils the Midwest plains as if it is searching for someone or something to carry away. Dust and chaff funnel into blinding clouds. The clatter of storms overhead makes it impossible to hear, and herds of bison grow restless. The Omaha tribe has wandered these plains for generations, and now, it seems that the winds have brought back one of their own. Susan La Flesche has returned to the village where she was born. Not as a visitor, but as the region’s only doctor.

When Susan was 8 years old, she waited at the bedside of an elderly woman writhing in pain. A doctor was called for. They waited. A messenger was sent. The doctor still didn’t come. Susan provided what comfort she could through the night, but by sunrise, the elderly woman had died.

The episode both haunted and motivated Susan. She threw herself into her studies and earned her way to what is now Hampton University in Virginia — a historically Black college with a program for Native American students. She learned French in addition to the Omaha, English and Otoe languages she already spoke. She often quoted Shakespeare and scripture. And she finished second in her class.

Susan would never forget the childhood she enjoyed, full of powwows, buffalo hunts and the people she loved. But there was further to go. She enrolled in the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, a tedious train ride away from the world she knew. It was 1886, and the Victorian age held stiff against the progress of women. In her graduation speech from Hampton, she told the East Coast audience, “Give us a chance.” Three years later, she was a doctor.

Returning to the plains to serve her people was a difficult task. She opened an office in the government boarding school and began seeing patients. The lines were long, old and young seeking reprieve from cholera and tuberculosis as well as a slew of other ailments. Susan worked long hours at her office but also braved the wind and snow, walking miles to make house calls. Her work was more than as a physician. She often acted as lawyer, accountant, priest, political liaison and counselor as she helped the Omahas navigate the new world.

The wind that whipped across the plains was the wind of change. And Dr. Susan La Flesche was determined to spend her entire life helping her people navigate the storms.

Press On... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

PRESS ON

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Taking Care of the Most Vulnerable.

In northeastern Australia, you’ll find the Tablelands, an area rich in diverse plant and animal life: lush vegetation, lots of rain, brightly colored birds and scores of shy nocturnal animals with big eyes.

Most unusual, and beautiful in its own way, is the flying fox. Its face is narrow with a collar of red fur, cute as a puppy. Arching out of the shoulders are paper-thin wings, black as the night. When hanging from a tree, the flying fox’s wings swaddle it like a baby while it sleeps. At night, the flying foxes take to the skies by the thousands in search of fruit. But along the coastline, a parasite has moved in, and many of the flying foxes are being infected. That’s where Pam Tully comes in.

Mothers carrying babies fall paralyzed from the trees, and each day, Pam walks miles in the rainforest, collecting babies still clinging to their dying mothers. It’s arduous, humid, exhausting. Pam relies on a few volunteers to help rescue the flying foxes during the migration season. Usually, they are college students who come Down Under for a semester of life in the rainforest. Canace came from America to lend a hand to her aunt Pam, and to look for some kind of purpose in life after her mother passed away.

Losing your mother is never easy, but for a teenage girl, the loss at a time of emotional need and guidance is particularly devastating. Going off to live in wilderness half a world away seemed a good thing to do. Pam accepted her with open arms and invited Canace to stay as long as she wanted. After all, she did need the help. So Pam taught Canace to feed the baby flying foxes, keep them wrapped in nappies, nurse them back to health and coax them back into the wilderness to rejoin their families.

Day after muggy day, Pam led Canace through the rainforest, collecting babies and bringing them back to the shed where they were treated by a veterinarian, fed every two hours by bottle and even taught to fly. Each flying fox released back into the wild was a victory. And each time one winged away, the loss Canace felt seemed just a little bit less.

We never really get over the loss of a loved one, but when we take care of a vulnerable creature, or reach out to somebody else who is hurting, the wound heals just a little bit, and the hurt becomes a memory of being loved.

Take Care... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
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TAKE CARE

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The Curse of Texting and Driving.

Coming of age is that time in each of our lives when we begin to see the possibilities. The world opens up in ways that matures our vision, gives us a sense of responsibility and gratitude. Connor Thomson had just started college and loved being at that phase in his life where he could eat all the pizza he wanted, yet engage in adult conversations with his parents about the responsibility to make life better for others. Connor’s optimism was contagious. There was so much he could do, so much he could become.

But it all ended one night when Connor was distracted while driving in a Colorado canyon. A young man, who emanated so much light, suddenly went dark.

Connor’s father, David, took it particularly hard. A father sees more than his own traits in his son; he sees greater possibilities than he achieved. Taking that hope away left David feeling adrift. But Connor’s optimism was one of those traits passed on to him by his father. So David got to work.

First, he established the Honor Connor Scholarship Fund to reward students who served in the community. Next, he went to work creating a research-based curriculum that educates University of Colorado Boulder students and their families about the dangers of texting and driving. It includes a very simple three-part pledge: to not text or use social media while driving, speak out if riding with a driver who is distracted and encourage friends and family to drive phone-free.

David now collaborates with lecturers at various colleges and high schools, ensuring young minds understand how statistically at risk they are when they text and drive. He’s become a passionate advocate for preparing young people to drive safely and not impulsively reach for their phones while they’re at the wheel. “I just don’t want other parents to go through what I did when I lost Connor,” says David. “It’s just so preventable.”

While every constructive endeavor reminds David of the loss he suffered, he is encouraged knowing that more young people with so much to offer the world will be around to do good. “I get to be a part of what Connor would have done,” says David. “And that is a small consolation.”

Don’t Drive Distracted... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

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DON'T DRIVE DISTRACTED

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Cross Safely.

Ron had a good life as a sales rep and as a father. When retirement came around and the kids were grown, Ron looked around his community and saw a lot of aimless young boys just wandering the streets after school. So he checked in at the local community center and volunteered to coach a youth team. And another, and another.

As the sports changed with the seasons, Ron picked up new crops of boys, added a few of their parents to help out and taught the same principles: hard work, fair play, discipline and accountability. In his mid-70s, Ron strode up and down the sidelines, the hardwood, the dugout, shouting instructions to his boys and moving them into the best position to be successful.

Mistakes were shrugged off with lighthearted comments: “I think your batting helmet was on backwards for that swing.” And the classic: “Did I tell you to drop the ball?” There would be a bit of laughter, and Ron would always retort with a half-smile: “Don’t drop the ball unless I tell you to.”

The boys learned not to take mistakes too seriously, but to recognize them and work on changing habits. They learned that everybody gets a turn and deserves to be supported. When one quiet boy recovered a fumble for the first time, he was so overcome by his teammates lifting him onto their shoulders that he burst into tears.

Another boy, whose parents had just split up, decided he’d sit on the bench for the game. Every time a player was subbed out, the player sat next to the boy and put an arm around him. It was the kind of family he needed at the moment.

Every new season began the same way, with Ron giving each boy a nickname: Thunder, Superman, Rocket. It was a way of joining the family, of starting fresh, of being part of a group that would stand beside you. For 10 years Ron raised hundreds of boys on the philosophy that they will do great things if you just give them a little encouragement and a lot of practice time.

Ron retired when he had a mini-stroke. He didn’t tell anybody; he just lay low for a year. Then one of his former players spotted him working as a crossing guard. It was something that got him out of bed in the morning, still wanting to keep kids safe. Word spread, and most mornings, former players drove by and honked their horns or bent their jogging routes to go past him and say hello. It wasn’t orchestrated — just one of those things that happens when bonds are strong and memories swell up gratitude in your chest.

Mentoring... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

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MENTORING

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Are You Smarter Than a Seventh-Grade Business Owner?

Ask just about any 12-year-old what their favorite time of the day is and you’ll get a resounding answer: lunch! But for Alejandro Buxton, it’s a bit different. He can’t wait to get home to dive into his candle-making business. Alejandro has a goal of being a bright light in the world. He also has a little sister for an assistant and a mother who is good at taking directions and giving a little advice.

It all started when Alejandro discovered that commercial candles gave his mom headaches. He figured there must be a way to make an all-natural candle that was safe. So he dug into the world of wax and found a soy-based wax that is chemical-free. He also found natural oils to add scent, and Smell of Love Candles was born.

Alejandro sells his candles at local fairs and to his neighbors. Then his online orders began picking up. In the fall of 2022, he started seventh grade — and opened his first retail store, becoming the youngest leaseholder at Tysons Corner Center, a regional mall outside Washington, D.C. As his candles become a much bigger operation, he is always experimenting with new scents like Donut Kill My Vibe, the perfect after-school scent that gets you in the mood for a snack.

He started his business to build his college fund. But running a business is about more than making money for Alejandro. He sets aside a portion of the profit to give back to the community. Some of the money supports the local homeless shelter, and some goes into a scholarship fund for kids who need a little help with college.

“My future goal is to just help people around the world,” Alejandro says. His mother, Patricia, is impressed with her son and loves to spend time with him as his business grows. She says it has strengthened their bond to be together and see how his mind works, adding, “It’s been really inspiring.”

Alejandro has big goals. And an even bigger heart. With all the problems that seem to rob many of us of the motivation to move forward, Alejandro has chosen to focus on a solution that works, not only for him, but as an inspiration to others, no matter their age.

Be a Light... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

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BE A LIGHT

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You’re Never Too Old to Make a Difference.

We all hope to retire one day, enjoying a life of leisure and spending more time with family and friends. In their golden years, veterans of wars long past often reconnect with their combat pals to enjoy the forever bonds that come with military service and relax.

Not Captain Sir Thomas Moore, better known as Captain Tom. He had grown a bit bored during the COVID pandemic. His 100th birthday was approaching, and he was a little restless. So he decided to do a small walk for charity: the length of his backyard garden, 100 times a day, with the aid of a walker. He set a goal to raise a dollar for each length he walked.

As sometimes happens with remarkable events, the media picked up the simple story of a centenarian walking for charity. He appeared in his uniform for photo shoots, bedecked with medals earned in World War II. Back then, he spent most of his time in India and Burma as a member of the Royal Armoured Corps. His task was to set up a program for training army motorcyclists. In Burma, he survived dengue fever and, after recovering, worked as an instructor and technical adjutant in the Armoured Vehicle Fighting School. When the war ended, he came home, but he never forgot his comrades or his motorcycles. He raced competitively for years before settling into an ordinary life.

But when the pandemic hit, and Captain Tom was rehabilitating from a broken hip in isolation, he decided that he could cheer folks up and raise a little money for the National Health Service that was so badly needed during the crisis. He determined to walk every day, to encourage the world to keep moving forward, one labored step at a time.

He soon became a symbol of the fortitude the world needed. Each day he walked, viewers were inspired by the arduous steps that took him around and around his small garden. It was a simple act of courage, the straighten-your-back-and-carry-on message the country and the world needed. Millions of dollars poured in to provide the needed support for overtaxed health care systems. Queen Elizabeth knighted Captain Tom for his efforts, and his spoken words, along with Michael Ball singing “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” became a No. 1 single.

It was all quite overwhelming for Captain Tom, who said, “It has gone far beyond my wildest expectations. I want to thank everyone from the bottom of my heart.”

Captain Tom passed away from COVID shortly after his 100th birthday, a soldier and a servant to the end.

Exceed Expectations... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
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EXCEED EXPECATIONS

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No Matter Who You Are, You Can Always Help.

We all like our heroes bigger than life. Muhammad Ali looms large not only because of his incredible boxing skills but also because of how outspoken he was. Most people loved it: the stealthy puncher, the quick feet, the facial expressions that animated the ring, and the mouth that never seemed to stop moving. Most delightful was the way he played off the bloviating Howard Cosell, with whom he shared a friendship that lasted decades. The clowning and television antics became great entertainment.

But behind the bravado and made-for-TV rhymes was a man who cared deeply about others. On Jan. 19, 1981, Ali got a call from his longtime friend and biographer, Howard Bingham. Just a few blocks from Ali’s residence, Binham had happened on the scene of a man perched precariously on a ledge, threatening to jump. A crowd had gathered beneath the man, waiting to see what would happen. Within minutes, Ali was racing toward the building. He ran up the stairs, stuck his head out the window next to the man and called to him: “You’re my brother! I love you, and I couldn’t lie to you.”

“Joe,” the man on the ledge, was taken aback by the celebrity boxer talking to him. “Why do you care about me? I’m a nobody,” he said.

Ali talked to him for 20 minutes, gaining his trust where others had not succeeded. Finally, Joe opened the emergency door he had locked and let Ali in. As Ali embraced the man like a child, the crowd below chanted “Ali! Ali!”

Ali personally drove the man to a psychiatric hospital and promised him that when he got out, he would go home with him and show the man’s neighborhood that he was a friend of the greatest boxer of all time. What is perhaps most remarkable is that three months earlier, Ali had suffered the worst loss of his career, a beating by Larry Holmes. Yet Ali didn’t wallow in self-pity. He saw another human in need, a stranger, and he went to his aid.

Sometimes in our lives, we may feel like we have lost more than we can stand. But there is always somebody who has lost more and needs a little help from us. We need to be ready to make a difference. As Ali said: “Don’t count the days. Make the days count.”

Reach Out... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

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REACH OUT

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Finding a New Family at the Mountain Man Rendezvous.

At the edge of Yellowstone National Park is a broad swath of golden grass that every year becomes a scene from a lifestyle that ended over a hundred years ago. It happens at the end of summer: Buckskin-clad mountain men and women gather with goods to sell, spending the warm days on hand-carved stools telling stories. Under one canvas tent, you’ll find Grizz, a slightly built man with a gray mane and beard, hands thick and calloused from years of working tough leather into satchels and saddles. His blue eyes are set above cheekbones weathered by the sun and hold the secrets of a life ridden hard.

“I was in the Marines, in Vietnam,” he says. But that’s all he’ll give away about the war. “It’s not something anyone can relate to unless they were there, so I don’t talk about it,” he continues, protecting the brotherhood bound by common tragedy.

The leather around him has been worked and worked until it is supple, the hand-stitching perfect. There’s dye in the cracks on his fingers and palms. “I got married after the war,” he shares, “had a daughter.” But it didn’t go well. The daughter passed away — he won’t say how — and he started drinking hard and using drugs to close all the wounds that had never healed.

It didn’t work. His wife left, and he found himself a vagabond, the living dead cut off from society and slowly dying of survivor’s guilt. That’s when he stumbled on a Rendezvous in the Midwest. He found people who taught him a trade, gave him a new name, let him talk about anything but war and hurt. He started to feel at home.

The word rendezvous means a meeting place or a place of coming together. The Mountain Man Rendezvous is a kind of family gathering, and being in a family comes with its own kind of pain. A couple in the group that moved about the country had a premature baby, two-and-a-half pounds. “They named her Itty Bitty,” Grizz says. “She shouldn’t have lived a day.”

In the anguish of uncertainty, Grizz spent his time fashioning a tiny pair of moccasins and a little medicine bag for the babe. “It’s only a leather necklace,” Grizz says, “until you put something sacred inside it, something that reminds you of how your life is connected to something greater.”

That’s when the darkness poured out of Grizz’s soul. He was suddenly unburdened because his sorrow had someone else’s sorrow to attach to and fly away, like the early-morning swallows looking for a new home.

Grizz smiles. Something he has done a lot of in the past 30 years. Itty Bitty has children of her own now. Something he shares in but doesn’t talk about. But if you look closely, you can see the whole story in his transparent, blue eyes.

Second Chances... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

SECOND CHANCES

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The Last Person you Think of Should Probably be the First.

Marcus is a handsome, athletic kid. His friends are on the basketball and track teams. He plays tennis and competes in the state tournament every year.

Marcus’s neighbor, Conrad, also wants to compete, but he has rheumatoid arthritis(RA). Although it pains him just to walk, he endures days at school walking from class to class, and weekly injections into his toes. But he doesn’t miss a game. He loves to watch his school compete.

Marcus has known Conrad since elementary school. They’ve always been friends, but their abilities separate them. High school is a time of defining yourself, finding out who you are. And that means a lot of kids are focused on themselves.

Marcus is different. He sees Conrad in pain, and sees his frustration at not being able to play sports. So, one night a week, Marcus brings his friends over to Conrad’s for a video game competition. The contests are as loud and rowdy as a high school basketball game. They often go late into the night, occasionally lasting past midnight on a school day. But nobody is complaining, especially Conrad’s mother. “We are trying a lot of different treatments, seeing a lot of doctors,” she says. “Conrad is in constant pain, and all he wants is to be a kid. These friends, they make him forget the hurt.”

Finally, the doctors hit on a combination of medications that relieve the pain. Conrad walks without pain, then begins running. He joins the cross-country team, and despite his long legs, he has to learn the form of running. After a childhood of walking gingerly and taking small steps, Conrad has to retrain his stride. And he has to get into shape. He pushes himself every day, building his lungs, strengthening his legs and core. His uniform hangs on his slight frame, but he runs. He knows what pain feels like, and running for Conrad is no longer painful. It is elation; it is joy; it is the rewarding breath of effort that means you’re alive.

Conrad doesn’t win, not once. But Marcus is there with a group of athletes in the stands, cheering for the kid who always finishes in the middle of the pack, sucking wind and smiling. Friends motivate us. They remind us that our best doesn’t have to measure up to somebody else’s best. Just being is enough.

Friendship…PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
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FRIENDSHIP

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If You Love Dogs, You’ll Love this Story.

There is much we can learn from dogs. In childhood, they are our best companions, seeming to understand our every emotion. They accept us when we feel left out, wait hours for us to return from school or work, and even become the comfort we need to overcome shyness by nudging us into new friendships. And for adults, they remain our devoted friends. It’s no wonder we have such affection for them.

Capitan was a beloved German shepherd with a glossy, dark coat and kind, knowing eyes. He was always at Miguel’s side, the two of them inseparable as Miguel pushed into his later years.

When Miguel passed away, Capitan disappeared — only to turn up later at the cemetery, lying on Miguel’s grave. He grieved the separation that death brought, and despite many attempts to bring him home, Capitan always ran away, back to the cemetery 15 blocks from the house.

Such devotion not only touched Miguel’s widow and son; it also touched the cemetery caretakers. They made sure he had his vaccinations and was fed daily, but Capitan didn’t roam the grounds and attach himself to new friends. He stayed close to the gravesite, sleeping there every night and sitting vigilantly during the day.

Capitan became an icon of loyalty. But what will always remain a mystery is how he found his master’s grave in the first place. Miguel died in a different town and was transferred directly to the cemetery. There was no wake at home, no procession for Capitan to follow, yet he located the companion he was so loyal to.

For us humans, we can more easily locate those we love. We can move our way into their lives more often. We can be more vigilant in our friendships, standing watch over memories and protecting affections. Capitan reminds us that no matter the difficulties that separate us, there is always a way to get back to unconditional love.

After 12 years at Miguel’s gravesite, Capitan also passed away. He was mourned as a community member, beloved to many in the town and an example of the love that connects all living things.

Loyalty…PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

LOYALTY

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Listening to the Music Inside.

Fairfax, Oklahoma, is a long way from the bright lights of Broadway. In 1925, the distance seemed even greater. But Maria Tallchief could feel music deep inside her. Something longed to express itself.

At a very young age, Maria studied music and dance, encouraged by her mother to find herself in the motions she loved. In her early teens, she and her family moved to Los Angeles in search of opportunities. Maria pursued all forms of dance but was drawn specifically to ballet. She worked relentlessly under the most renowned teachers of the day, but the opportunity she longed for would not arrive until she moved to New York City.

The big city can be daunting for a teenager, especially a dancer auditioning daily while keeping up with training. Still, Maria’s success began to build. As she traveled the globe dancing at various theaters, she became a household name — a name she refused to change when some suggested that her American Indian heritage might be standing in the way of her success.

At age 19, Maria Tallchief became a member of the New York City Ballet and later one of its principal dancers. She brought her role to life in “The Nutcracker” and helped make it the amazing success that it is today.

“Above all, I wanted to be appreciated as a prima ballerina who happened to be a Native American, never as someone who was an American Indian ballerina,” she said.

Maria Tallchief had accomplished her dreams at a very young age dancing for the New York City Ballet, but there was more. She became the first-ever prima ballerina from the United States at a time when that honor belonged mostly to European dancers. And she did it without ever giving up on her heritage. She retained her Osage name, proud of who she was and where she’d come from. She never stopped listening to the music inside her, remarking, “A ballerina takes steps given to her and makes them her own.” Indeed she did.

Later in life, Maria Tallchief taught hundreds of young girls to follow their dreams. Her work was inspired in part by her belief that “very often you are in the right place, at the right time, but you don’t know it.”

Be the Hero of Your Story…PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

BE THE HERO OF YOUR STORY

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A Diamond in the Making.

Danielle Hatherley Carroll is an artist. She shares her talent with others, taking groups on field trips around various locations in New York City, setting up easels and enjoying the company of a variety of people as she captures the beauty of the city.

Art can often be about discovery and connection. And real life can often be about loss. When Danielle returned home one night, at first she didn’t realize that somewhere along the day’s painting journey, she had lost her wedding ring.

Then, at 3:30 in the morning, she sat up in bed, panicked at the feel of her empty left ring finger. She tried not to wake her husband but was caught heading out the door. When Danielle admitted what had happened, her husband got out of bed, and the two of them went out to search dumpsters.

The last place she remembered the ring on her finger was in Battery Park, when she was washing up. By the time they got there, all the garbage cans had already been emptied. Desperate, Danielle wrote a note and put it on the windshield of a nearby garbage truck, hoping against all odds that someone might be of help. “Help,” the note read. “I believe my wedding ring might be in this truck.” It was all she could do.

Parks and Recreation employee Gary Gaddist discovered the note in the early morning. He gave Danielle a call, and she explained the whole story.

“I had to go to Randall’s Island, and when I got there I showed the guys the note,” Gary recalls. They told him, “If you want to look for a needle in a haystack, go ahead.”

Now, this is New York City, and tons of garbage is moved every day, in multiple directions. Gary only knew that somewhere in the hub, among hundreds of piled-up bags, he was looking for a clear plastic garbage bag stuffed with a day’s worth of artist’s rags. He was up to the task.

At 8:00 that morning, Gary called Danielle with the good news. She burst into tears and took a cab to meet Gary. When asked why he would take the extra time to help out a stranger, Gary simply said, “It’s a love thing. I could tell she and her husband love each other. I’m glad I could help.”

Lend a Hand... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

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LEND A HAND

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Recognizing the Need.

In a quiet Northern California neighborhood, Michael seemed like a typical 11-year-old boy. His family made use of the California sunshine to grow citrus trees and roses. All seemed well from the outside, but Michael was troubled.

Since his adoption at 3 years old, Michael never really connected with his parents. There was a sternness about them that his sensitive nature couldn’t comprehend, and he was left to himself to sort out confusing emotions and the need for connection.

“I could have ended up making a lot of terrible choices,” Michael remembers.

Without the bond a young boy needs at home, Michael often found himself down the street at his best friend’s house. Of course, the two boys laughed, looked at comic books and ate junk food. But the real reason Michael liked his pal’s home was because of Mr. Christensen. He was the kind of father who understands boys.

With Mr. Christensen, the boys spent hours in the garage tinkering on an old roadster. They roared up the California coast with the top down, feeling the salt breeze wash over them, the engine too loud to allow for any conversation, which was fine with Michael. He didn’t yet know how to express his emotions; for the time being, just being able to feel them was enough.

“To know someone cares enough about you to not talk means the world to a boy who doesn’t have the words yet,” Michael says.

They rumbled over dirt roads and explored secret canyons. When the car was in the garage, there were conversations about how things work mechanically, about being patient, doing things right. Most summer evenings ended with a game of King of the Hill in the front yard. The boys charged at the stout Mr. Christensen. He laughed when they bounced off his grand belly and picked them up by their ankles. They wriggled loose and came at him again.

For many young boys, the language of bonding is writ in the wrenches they turn, the wrestling matches, the hours of watching clouds race by overhead. Mr. Christensen understood that boys need time to learn this language. He knew a boy learns respect and responsibility by being loved in an unspoken way.

Some 50 years later, Michael remembers his time with Mr. Christensen. “My own father couldn’t raise me, so I was adopted out. My adoptive father did his best but never allowed a relationship to form between us. Luckily for me, I had Mr. Christensen. I have tried to be the kind of father he was, teaching, having fun and spending time.”

Love... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

LOVE

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Taking Care.

Life never really turns out the way we expect it to. We have dreams and expectations. And dream-come-true stories are everywhere — except, it may seem, in our own lives.

It would be easy for most of us to feel like we somehow got shorted in life. Not Barbara. As a child, Barbara never quite found the bond with her parents that all children need. Her father left the family early, and Barbara’s mother worked menial jobs and jumped from marriage to marriage.

Barbara looked for stability in marriage herself, hoping a husband could share the load and fill in the empty spaces of her life. But soon after her son was born, her husband left, and Barbara now had two people to take care of on her own.

“I couldn’t let my life keep me from caring about other people,” she says. “Maybe it’s unfair or just the way it turns out for people, but I still had a son.”

Barbara raised her son the best she knew how and “he turned out pretty well,” she says, smiling. And after the hard years of making ends meet and giving him a good start, she made a career change.

“I never thought I was supposed to feel sorry for myself,” she says. “And I like people.”

Barbara became an in-home caregiver for elderly people in their last year of life. She spends 10-hour days, six days a week, with people who have Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, sometimes sleeping on their couch when they are afraid to spend a night alone. Most don’t have families close by, and Barbara becomes the one person they rely on for everything: meals, bathing, bathroom duties, daily walks if they are capable, cognitive exercises like crossword puzzles and re-learning family faces.

She only charges what the family can afford and only works with one client at a time. “They become the family I never had, over and over again,” she says, laughing.

The spaces left empty by Barbra’s childhood are filled with memories shared with her from lives waning in the twilight. For 30 years, she has been making people feel good at a time when most would just be waiting to pass, alone and unnoticed. To see their faces when they are with Barbara, you’d think the last years were the best.

“I’ve found something I never had,” Barbara says. “We make each other happy.”

Family... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
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FAMILY

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Playtime is for Everybody.

Gordon Hartman just might be the leading candidate for “Dad of the Decade.” When his daughter Morgan was growing up, Gordon was heartbroken after watching her on the playground. Other children refused to play with her, mostly because her disabilities meant she couldn’t access the places where they were playing. The family tried other places but were never satisfied.

“What we found was there was no place that was an ultra-accessible, fully inclusive park,” Gordon said. So he went home and sold his construction business, bought an abandoned quarry, and went to work building an entire amusement park for disabled children.

All kids need playtime, and Morgan was no different. The park — named Morgan’s Wonderland — finally offered Morgan that opportunity. What the Hartmans discovered is that kids without disabilities enjoy the park just as much, and they interact a lot more with everyone when all are included. In fact, three-quarters of the park’s visitors are not disabled. And that makes it all the more fun.

Everybody enjoys the rides, from the carousel to the train. Each ride is specially designed to accommodate wheelchairs. Even the water park provides waterproof wheelchairs.

Watching the kids play together without barriers makes you realize that we are all the same, and having fun is for everybody. But it doesn’t end there. One-third of the staff also has special needs. Seeing the way they interact also puts a smile on your face. They take their jobs seriously, and they make sure everybody is having fun.

How does it feel to see kids of all abilities having so much fun? “It feels fantastic because we get to see people who are not given the opportunity to experience the types of rides we have, get on a carousel, get on a train easily, go fishing,” says Gordon.

The park has been visited by people with special needs from over 67 countries. “When we opened this, we didn’t know if it was going to work,” says Gordon. “All we wanted to do was bring people who have special needs and people who don’t have special needs together and play.”

Just look at the smiles at Morgan’s Wonderland, and you’ll see how much good it does.

Inclusion... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
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INCLUSION

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For Soccer Superstar Cristiano Ronaldo, Every Day is Mother’s Day.

At his peak, Cristiano Ronaldo was considered the best professional footballer in the world. He has made over 1,100 professional appearances and scored more than 800 goals. To see him play, you would say he was born for the game. But that would discount all the struggles and hard work he has gone through to become the player that he is.

Cristiano was born into poverty on the Portuguese island of Madeira. His mother worked as a cook; his father was a gardener. He shared a room with his three older siblings. His mother, Maria, remembers very well the poverty they lived in, along with her alcoholic husband. She planned on terminating her last pregnancy. Their poverty was too much, and her husband’s alcoholism was debilitating. Desperate, she went to the doctor, but he refused the procedure, and one of the world’s greatest soccer players was born.

Ronaldo’s soccer life began with a small club at the age of 12, but shortly thereafter, he was diagnosed with a heart condition that should have ended his career. However, he underwent surgery to cauterize multiple cardiac pathways and resumed training a few days later.

At age 16, he left school to focus on soccer full-time. Soon, he was moving up the ranks, getting noticed by scouts in the premier league. He had incredible quickness with the ball and was the type of player a club could build an attacking style around. He signed with Manchester United at age 18.

With his success in the league came big paychecks and fame. But he never forgot his humble beginnings, or his mother’s sacrifice to raise him. She has been by his side throughout the entire journey. When asked by a journalist why his mother still lives with him, he said: “My mother raised me and she dedicated her life for me. She would go to sleep hungry, just to let me eat. We had no money at all. She worked seven days a week and nights as a maid to buy my first shoes so I could be a player. All my success is dedicated to her. She is my refuge and my greatest gift.”

Love Always... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

LOVE ALWAYS

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Going Deep to Deliver Kindness.

Although Enzo held several free-diving records — his deepest dive without the aid of breathing apparatus was 101 meters — it was the lives of sea creatures that concerned him most. Enzo dedicated his life to educating the world about the link between healthy seas and healthy humans. He often quoted Vangelis: “Until a man learns to respect and speak to the animal world, he can never know his true role on Earth.”

While diving in the Mediterranean with his daughters Rossana and Patrizia, Enzo was in the water preparing to dive. He felt a nudge on his back and turned to see a male dolphin beckoning to him. The dolphin dove, and Enzo followed.

About 12 meters down, Enzo was led to the dolphin’s mate, who had become entangled in a fishing net and would soon drown. Enzo quickly surfaced and returned with his daughters and a couple of diving knives. They freed the dolphin and helped her to the surface. He recalls: “As soon as she was on the surface, after breathing out foam and blood, she gave birth to a dolphin calf under the watchful eyes of her mate.”

Enzo and his daughters marveled at the miracle they had just witnessed. While they were still in the water, the male dolphin circled around and touched its beak to Enzo’s cheek, like a kiss of gratitude.

The world is full of opportunities that lead to miracles if we only follow those nudges. Next door is a neighbor who needs a smile and a conversation, a child who needs a little reassurance, or a young mom who just witnessed her own miracle and would love to share it with you. Or perhaps even one of our wild siblings, ready to share its world.

Be Present... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

BE PRESENT

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A Hero for Accessibility.

This is the story of Jennifer Keelan, a young girl who had dreams of one day attending college and living a fulfilling life. She did graduate from Arizona State University with a degree in family and human development. But her life has been anything but typical.

At age 2, Jennifer was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, a condition that affects the motor cortex of the brain and leaves her using a wheelchair. Jennifer was a bright and courageous girl, yet when she attempted to attend school with her peers, she was relegated to separate classes for students with disabilities, regardless of aptitude. She found herself unable to attend some school functions, use transit systems and access government buildings.

Jennifer accepted the limitations of her physical life, but not the limitations of the physical world around her. She became active in campaigning for the Americans with Disabilities Act. She engaged in peaceful protests and, at age 7, was arrested in Montreal, a moment in history that shocked North America.

At age 8, Jennifer traveled to Washington, D.C. The shy, unassuming, yet determined little girl caught the attention of the country when she crawled unaided up the Capitol steps. It worked. Jennifer met with Congress, and President George H. W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act into law.

Jennifer remains an activist today, making sure all people with disabilities are treated fairly and have equal access to public places, schools and businesses. The only barriers that remain are those of perception.

Jennifer wants all of us to know that physical disabilities are not a barrier to friendship, career opportunities or love. Jennifer is 39 years old and still sharing the message of inclusivity. For her, like all of us, making a difference begins one step at a time, no matter how hard it is.

Acceptance... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

ACCEPTANCE

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No Strings Attached.

On a Saturday afternoon, you find most kids outside playing made-up games or dangling from monkey bars. Kids were made for the outdoors, with their boundless energy and the ease in which they make friends. It’s no different for Kameron, a normal, fun-loving 7-year-old girl who loves to draw out the world’s longest hopscotch on the sidewalk.

In between jump-rope contests, basketball shootouts and skateboard races, Kameron takes time to do something special for her neighbors. Kameron’s community is home to a good mix of young families and wizened elderly neighbors whose children have long since left home. Kameron first starts waving to them. Most of them smile back.

Then Kameron decides that some of them need a little cheering up. So she runs home, grabs her violin and makes the rounds. “Can I play you a song?” she asks, after knocking on the door.

Gustav smiles wide. He has a beautiful mop of white hair and a mild accent. He grew up in Scandinavia and is a wood finisher. His wife Vivian has a smile that fills their tiny home. She peeks at Kameron from beneath Gustav’s right arm. She stands awkwardly, bent at the waist and her ankles rounded out. It looks terribly uncomfortable. Vivian has had muscular dystrophy for over 20 years. Gustav is her full-time caregiver. They’ve replaced their daily walks with afternoon drives, but even those are getting too difficult for Vivian.

Gus lets Kameron in, and Vivian takes hold of both their elbows and shuffles to her chair. On the table beside her is a photo of her with Gus when they were young and adventuresome, traveling around Europe, Egypt and Iceland. In the photo, Vivian is stunning, and Gus is dashing and handsome.

“Want me to play your favorite song?” Kameron asks. “Of course,” Gus answers. It is the only song Kameron knows.

The small violin rests seriously under Kameron’s chin. She plays as best she can, scratching out the notes to “Edelweiss” in her best beginner effort. Vivian taps her knee visibly to keep rhythm for Kameron. Gus holds Vivian’s other hand. It’s not the performance that is moving, but the tune of memories it brings, flooding back with the sound of a full orchestra.

“You’ve been practicing,” Vivian says.

Kameron smiles. “See you next week!”

Happiness... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
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HAPPINESS

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How to Honor Your Mother.

When Warrick Dunn was a sophomore, he led his team to the state championship. When he was a senior, his mother, who worked in law enforcement, was shot and killed, leaving Warrick to care for his five brothers and sisters.

It’s a lot of weight to put on a young man’s shoulders, but Warrick handled it well, still graduating from high school and earning a scholarship to Florida State. At the same time, Warrick had to grow up fast, take on adult responsibilities while still charting his own course. He used his mother’s life insurance to fulfill one of his mother’s dreams: to buy a house for the family. And as a freshman, he led Florida State to a national championship.

His effort paid off with an NFL contract, and in his first year for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Warrick not only continued to take care of his siblings, he began Warrick Dunn Charities to help single mothers achieve first-time homeownership. He spent 12 years in the NFL, even though many thought he was too small. Perhaps being underrated drove him, or maybe it was the need to provide for his family and make his mother proud. Whatever his motivations, Warrick achieved rare greatness as an athlete and as a human being.

Adversity comes in many forms, and often to the people we least likely expect. Warrick’s drive and example not only help single mothers but also inspire them to continue their upward journey. Over 90% of them are still in their homes, working hard, getting an education, taking care of their families and thankful for the start that Warrick Dunn gave each of them.

On the field, Warrick Dunn played cornerback, quarterback and running back. Since retiring, he has been playing give-back. Since 1997 he has helped over 200 single parents and over 500 dependents achieve first-time homeownership. He works closely with Habitat for Humanity to build and furnish the homes and provide down-payment assistance. He also works with other professional athletes, guiding them to make a difference in their communities.

Perhaps most remarkable, Warrick Dunn later met with his mother’s killer and offered forgiveness. Seems life is too short to harbor hate and bitterness. For each of us, we can face our challenges, great or small, with the same courage.

Be Great... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

BE GREAT

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Bringing the Moon to your Living Room.

14-year-old Philo Farnsworth wasn’t looking up at the sky while plowing the field at his father’s farm in Rigby, Idaho. He was looking down at the straight furrows that coursed over the earth.

That’s when he had an epiphany: The same way the plow went back and forth over the field, an image could be scanned electronically and then transmitted line by line, much like furrows in a field. It was a vision of the first transmittable TV image.

Philo was a curious boy and was often lost in thought. When he was 12 years old, he was delighted to find that the farmhouse his family moved into was wired with electricity. He also discovered other treasures in the house: a cache of electronics magazines, a burned-out electric motor, and plenty of bits and pieces to tinker with.

He fixed the motor and converted his mother’s hand-powered washing machine into an electric-powered one. At 14, he showed his high school teacher a handful of sketches of an electronic television system inspired by the furrows in the field. Encouraged by his science teacher, Philo covered several blackboards with diagrams.

Then Philo’s father died when he was in high school. Philo went to work supporting his siblings and mother while keeping up his studies. He started a radio repair business; it failed. He briefly attended college, but his mind was on television, and so he dropped out and began looking for somebody to fund his ideas. That opportunity came, and he traveled to Berkeley, California, with his new bride Pem to set up shop together.

The TV tube Philo developed would become the standard in broadcasting. Yet Philo Farnsworth spent years defending his patent and rebuilding his business after an economic crash.

The years had been turbulent. Like all of us, he had his share of challenges, perhaps more. But he kept pushing forward and registered hundreds of patents. Finally, on July 21, 1969, Neil Armstrong stepped out of Apollo 11 onto the moon’s surface in an area called the Sea of Tranquility.

Philo Farnsworth was sitting in his living room with his wife Pem, watching the live feed — the image transmitting quickly, row by row like the furrows in a field. He turned to her and said: “Pem, this has made it all worthwhile.”

Dream Big... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

DREAM BIG

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Education is for Everyone.

Priscilla Sitienei is not your typical grade-schooler. She’s a little taller. She knows a thing or two about life — she was a midwife for 65 years — and she’s a little slower on the playground than the other students. But Priscilla, known affectionately as Gogo, does know the value of an education.

“I want to inspire children to go to school,” she says. So she puts on her blue uniform and sits at the same wooden desk each day to learn math, English and science. In her class are seven of her great-grandchildren.

Headmaster David Kinyanjui says Gogo, which means grandmother in the local Kalenjin language, has been an inspiration. “Gogo has been a blessing to this school. She has been a motivator to all the pupils.”

In addition to reading and writing, Gogo participates in PE and drama. And because of her experience, she also tells stories to the students about the old ways, keeping the history alive. An 11-year-old girl says she is Gogo’s best friend “because she tells us stories and we go to PE together.”

Education around the world has become more accessible in the last 20 years. It is one of the best tools for lifting the underprivileged out of poverty. It’s also an individual choice, and that’s what makes Gogo such a marvel. She sings and dances with the other students, doesn’t mind asking for help from a classmate and doesn’t hesitate to keep the other kids in order.

A young classmate says: “We love Gogo because when we make noise, she tells us to keep quiet.” Time is valuable to Gogo. She wants to make the most of it.

And so should we.

It's Never Too Late... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

IT'S NEVER TOO LATE

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Using the Write Words

The story of Phillis Wheatley and how she overcame the scrutiny of 18 men deemed “the most respectable characters in Boston” to publish a book of poetry that lives on today

Phillis Wheatley was sold into bondage at the age of 7 in the area of Senegal and Gambia. She made her way to Boston on a slave ship called the Phillis, and thus that became her first name. She was sold to a merchant named John Wheatley, who needed a servant for his wife, hence her last name, Wheatley.

Phillis showed incredible intellectual abilities and was tutored by Susanna Wheatley, the merchant’s wife, who educated her in several languages. Phillis was particularly fond of poetry and at the age of 12 began reading the English poet Alexander Pope. She loved his writing. She loved the beauty of words and their multiple meanings and the way, when strung together, they create deep emotions. So she began writing her own poems, and at age 13, became the first published African American poet. The year was 1767.

Phillis Wheatley became the symbol of anti-slavery for abolitionists who pointed to her literary prowess, yet no publishers would take on the project of her anthology. That is, until she traveled to England with the Wheatleys, and several wealthy patrons took interest in her work. One publisher committed to publish her work if it could be proven that Phillis was actually the author.

Upon her return home, a jury of 18 literary men were chosen to judge whether or not the 18-year-old African American woman was a fraud. Imagine being put on trial for the works of your heart. Phillis captured the fire of existence and creativity in bondage. “Imagination! who can sing thy force?/Or who describe the swiftness of thy course?” she wrote.

The panel of “men of respectable character” were impressed in their interviews with Phillis Wheatley. She won them over, and her anthology was published as “Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral.”

Soon after its publication, the Wheatleys emancipated Phillis, yet her career was interrupted by the Revolutionary War. She wrote of George Washington: “Proceed, great chief, with virtue on thy side Thy every action let the goddess guide.”

The words we choose can be inspiring to those around us. They uplift and provide a higher voice that guides us to places yet to be imagined.

Express Yourself... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

EXPRESS YOURSELF

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Pass It On^®

The History of Us.

James (not his real name; he prefers not to be known for his work off the field) is a college football coach. He knows that in football, you are judged by winning and losing. But in life, character endures. So James focuses on teaching players about their past so they can improve the future.

Football brings kids from all different backgrounds together and requires them to sacrifice for each other, be selfless and do the job they are asked to do. Creating a team from players with disparate racial, socioeconomic, religious and geographical backgrounds and different styles of upbringing can be quite challenging.

James has found that most kids coming out of high school don’t know much about their history, the history of the country they live in, the history of their teammates. So, one night a week, he leads a class that focuses on Black history, Hispanic history, Polynesian history, American history, world history and religious history — and how those lessons inform the decisions we all make today.

What emerges is not a discussion on diversity but rather on unity. Turns out that every one of us is different in some way, and our shared experience grows out of our ability to take those differences and turn them into advantages. Respect grows with understanding.

This past year, James’ team had its best year ever in the program's history. The team is one of the most diverse in the nation. Yet the two words most often heard uttered by the players describing the program are “love” and “family.” One alumnus returning to the team, now as a coach, said: “It’s like coming home. This is where I learned to change who I was, to become a man. I want to help other kids do the same.”

Each of us has a history, good or bad, that can teach us something about ourselves. But most importantly, when we learn the history of others, we discover a world that makes room for all.

Unity... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
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UNITY

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Give Peace a Chance.

We don’t always realize it, but our upbringing can be our biggest advantage later on in life. What we learn from parents, friends and the community we grow up in can teach us things that make a difference at the right time.

Guy Gabaldon was born in 1926 in Los Angeles. He started shining shoes to help his family when he was 10 years old but quickly joined a gang. At age 12, he was fostered by the Nakano family. He attended language school with their children, where he learned Japanese, along with their culture of respect and ancestral traditions.

But at the outset of WWll, the Nakano family was sent to an internment camp. Guy moved to Alaska at 16 years old to work in a cannery until he was old enough to join the military.

A year after his training, the U.S. was fighting from one Pacific island to the next until they reached Saipan, an island in the Northern Mariana Islands. Guy arrived as U.S. forces were being reinforced and Japanese commanders were shouting orders to fight to the last man.

Civilians were caught in the chaos, and many Japanese troops were holed up in caves. It would be a bloody ending for all Japanese on the island.

Remembering his adopted family, the Nakanos, Guy left his post one night and shouted to the Japanese soldiers, guaranteeing their peace. He brought two prisoners back that first night and was sorely reprimanded by his commander. The next night, he went back out — against orders — and negotiated with a Japanese officer. Over 800 Japanese soldiers and civilians surrendered.

The U.S. commander then gave Guy permission to act as a “lone wolf,” convincing civilians and soldiers to give up the fight. This unabashed and cocksure 18-year-old kid is credited with the surrender of over 1,300 Japanese soldiers and civilians and was later awarded the Navy Cross.

War is a messy business. It hardens men and women and calls on them to make choices most of the rest of us will never have to make. Yet, in the fog of uncertainty, we can still follow our moral compass, respect human life and honor our heritage and those who raised us. We don’t have to be perfect in our efforts, but we can stand up for what’s right in any situation.

Peace... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

PEACE

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Our Local Heroes in Scrubs.

Before the pandemic, most of us took nurses for granted. After all, we only saw them when we were about to experience some kind of pain. They were kind, reassuring, and prepped us for what was about to come. Still, many of us were too self-focused to appreciate them fully.

Then the pandemic hit. Nurses became the frontline defense. There weren’t enough of them. They weren’t trained to handle a pandemic of this proportion — nobody was.

They’d seen plenty of blood before, and offered their share of comfort, but the weight of hospitals overrun with grieving families and the worry for their own families was nearly apocalyptic. Yet they responded. And they are still responding. Meet three of them:

Claudine Bruff-Lopes is a registered nurse (RN) in Brockton, Massachusetts. In the midst of the pandemic, she sent her 8-year-old son to live with her parents while she worked for three months straight, with no days off.

“I worked full-time Monday through Friday. On Friday, I would get off at 5 p.m. and take a nap before picking up an 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift. I would work Saturday and Sunday, then back to my full-time job on Monday,” Claudine explains. “Patients needed me; they needed a compassionate nurse to hold their hands during this crazy time. I prayed for the world … but the world needed me to take care of its sick, too.”

Krystal Burdine is a licensed practical nurse (LPN) in Cincinnati, Ohio. She was drawn to health care after personal tragedies in her family motivated her to be more than a bystander. She lost a sister to cerebral palsy and her mother to a heart attack and watched her diabetic father’s health decline.

“My early life forced me to come up with a solution to help others in any way possible,” Krystal says. “During this pandemic, I am constantly challenged to put my skills to the test. On a daily basis, I nurse severely ill patients at their most vulnerable state. To me, nursing is something deeply personal. It is about making a difference in people’s lives.”

We sometimes forget that during the pandemic, there are other needs as well. Denise Pegram, an LPN in Reading, Pennsylvania, works in a residential care facility. While she was working in the dementia unit, one resident was very difficult to deal with.

“I made it my mission to work with this resident to see if I could somehow make her day and put a smile on her face. I made time to sit down and talk to her.” Denise discovered that this person was really just lonely and misunderstood. And yes, she did eventually smile.

We all need a hero in our lives; someday, it will be a nurse.

Gratitude... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

GRATITUDE

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Everybody Can Be a Hero.

Children need heroes. They help kids cope with the world around them, providing a little bit of hope and a lot of entertainment. The classic heroes are always on the side of justice and compassion. They make things right no matter the odds. And in our world of uncertainty, our kids definitely need a bit of help keeping their balance and looking forward to a better future.

Even more, for some kids, the odds just seem to be stacked against them. They lie in hospital beds through long illnesses, away from playgrounds and classrooms where their friends can embrace them. Some kids will return to hospitals again and again as they go through treatments for cancer or kidney diseases that make them regulars. It’s a tough road, and the pandemic made it even rougher by limiting the number of visitors a child patient could see.

So imagine being a 6-year-old child in a hospital bed when Spiderman knocks on your window!

Having Spiderman close gives you the courage to face the coming days, and it certainly brightens the moment he pays you a visit. That’s why recently, for four hours, Spiderman and Captain American dangled from the roof of Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. The kids were thrilled. The staff cheered. And the parents cried. It was one of those magical moments when everything that’s right with the world converges into an explosion of emotions. Kids and parents find a little more hope, a little more courage. And healthcare workers find themselves smiling, a relief that has been a long time coming.

Farther south, another team of window washers also made their appearance as superheroes at a hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida, and the children were ecstatic. The distraction from their pain is beneficial to their mental health and even helps them heal faster. But most importantly, it makes them happy.

We can all be somebody’s superhero for a day, an hour or just a moment. Distracting someone from the pain they are feeling with a little something to cheer them up just might make their day. And you don’t have to dangle from a rooftop to do it.

Be Super... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

BE SUPER

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Including Everybody Means Everybody.

Annemarie Carrigan is your typical millennial. She has dreams and plans; she is self-confident and wants to make a difference in the world. And she has Down syndrome. She talks openly about her father being a little too overprotective, but she does smile as she says it, and childhood photographs of the two show just how close they are.

Annemarie has an intuitive sense of what a good story is. Growing up, she says, she felt isolated and yearned for the chance to express herself.

In an interview, Joey Travolta, who founded Inclusion Films, asked Annemarie what her dream job would be. Annemarie answered confidently, “To be a journalist.” Joey hired her on the spot to write a review of “Carol of the Bells,” a story of inclusion and understanding featuring the young actress Andrea Fay Friedman, who also has Down syndrome.

Annemarie was ecstatic. She begins her review with a personal insight: “I instantly related because of my own issues with acceptance, isolation and loneliness.” The movie features some complex emotions featuring overprotective parents, anger, resentment and forgiveness. Annemarie dissects these emotions in a very tender way, seeing the perspective of the overprotective parent and their worries that grow out of love, and the perspective of the child who wants to be independent yet still loves her parent. Annemarie’s emotional intelligence leaves us all wondering if we can be a little more patient—taking the time to feel what others are feeling before we react.

Annemarie’s journey continued when she was asked to star in the movie “Normie,” a powerful story that challenges what it means to be normal. It’s won several awards at independent film festivals and made Annemarie somewhat of a celebrity. But it’s the learning experience she cherishes most. “The first day I filmed ‘Normie’ was the very first time I let everything out and spoke about how I felt,” she recalls. “It was like an emotional volcano exploding … it felt great to tell the truth. I really want to help people who are fighting loneliness, too.”

Inclusion Films teaches writing, filming, editing; everything you need to know to make a good film. Joey Travolta does it in a way that focuses more on his students discovering their own story, building confidence and having a chance to participate in the world around them, rather than just being a bystander. These neurodiverse individuals — who are sometimes viewed only by the disabilities they live with — offer insights many of us might miss. Turns out that when life brings challenges in one aspect, you are often compensated in others.

As we make room for everyone to tell their stories, we each play a bigger part in our own.

Inclusion... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

INCLUSION

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Turning Tough News Into Hope.

When we think of 11-year-old girls and their mothers, the first things that come to mind may be tutus, soccer games, kitchen science experiments and crazy photo faces. There’s a special bond between young girls and their moms before life fills up with more demanding schoolwork, career choices and the stress of being a grown-up.

For Jordan Phillips, recently honored by the Barron Prize, taking on adult emotions came sooner than expected. Her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer when Jordan was 11 years old. The thought of losing her mother at such a young age must have been troubling for Jordan. But instead of waiting out the process on the sidelines, Jordan decided to join the fight against cancer so that other kids wouldn’t have to experience the angst she was going through. But how do you help when you are only 11 years old?

Jordan loves to sew. She wanted to make something to sell but also advertise the need to help. While trying to piece together a solution, she hit upon the ubiquitous coffee cup. Everybody seems to be on the go in the morning with their cup of take-out joe. So Jordan designed a coffee cup sleeve and created her nonprofit Cozys for the Cure. It was a hit. Today, Jordan has raised over $120,000 to help fund breast cancer research.

It all started with a desire to help. Each of us has the ability to make a difference, to pitch in, no matter how old or how young. “Cozys for the Cure has taught me that my passion and purpose lie in helping others,” says Jordan. “I’m excited to continue this project for years to come and to focus my career on leading companies that address social problems and create change.”

Jordan’s mother won her fight with cancer, but unfortunately, many more women and mothers will be affected. With kids like Jordan in their corner, perhaps the next best treatment will come a little sooner, save a few more lives, and mean mothers and daughters will have a little more time to have fun together.

Do Something Great... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

DO SOMETHING GREAT

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Bigger than Life.

Sadio Mané is the Senegalese star on Liverpool’s football club in the Premier League. In 2019, he was crowned Africa’s greatest player. To watch him play is to be in awe. His speed, direction changes and vision of the field are almost otherworldly. He competes with intensity but is so fluid it seems as if opposing players are somehow weighed down, and the ball is magically attracted to Sadio.

Playing among the best in the world is a dream of thousands of youngsters. To be one of the best must elevate one’s ego to gigantic proportions, especially when you consider Sadio earns $10 million a year.

So it surprised fans when Sadio Mané was photographed with a phone that had a cracked screen. Fans joked that surely he could afford a new phone, even a more updated one. Sadio’s reply put life in perspective. The phone was a gift from a friend, and he valued friendship over things.

Then he went on to say, “Why would I want 10 Ferraris, 20 diamond watches and two jet planes? I starved, I worked in the fields, played barefoot, and I didn’t go to school. Now I can help people. I prefer to build schools and give poor people food or clothing. I have built schools and a stadium, provided clothes, shoes and food for people in extreme poverty. In addition, I give 70 Euros per month to all people from a very poor Senegalese region in order to contribute to their family economy. I do not need to display luxury cars, luxury homes, trips and even planes. I prefer my people receive some of what life has given me.”

Whoever we are, we must not forget where we have come from. Sadio was born in the very poor village of Bambali in Senegal. His father died when he was 7 years old. He left his village at 15 to pursue his dreams of playing soccer. After a few years in developmental leagues, he worked his way to the semi-pros, where a scout spotted him and signed him to his first pro team at age 20 for 4 million Euros. His career has been a steady climb, but he has never forgotten who he is. He most recently built a school and a hospital in his home village of Banbali.

To see Sadio Mané play is to see his life’s work: moving quickly, humbly to get the job done, making unselfish passes and scoring when his team needs him most. And smiling at the end of a match when he has expended all of his energy and knows he has given his best.

Give Your Best... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

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www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

GIVE YOUR BEST

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Fix it Yourself.

Drew and Cindy are unassuming and polite, and they go about their business without judgment. Drew was a contractor in the Midwest and made a good living. He’s barrel-chested and has the thick forearms and fingers of a man who has worked with his hands for decades.

When his children were grown and raising families of their own in various places around the country, Drew started thinking about a change of life. He and Cindy had been good at raising kids, setting them on a productive path. So the couple started thinking about how to spend the next chapter. As most often happens, a friend of a friend of a friend had an idea. This friend mentioned teenage mothers, most of them runaways, and how they needed support, a place to live, a fresh start.

The idea became a plan. Within a year, Drew and Cindy had moved a few hundred miles away and were living in a cheap hotel while Drew built a home for pregnant teenage girls who had been kicked out of their own homes or had run away. With the help of friends and guidance from the proper state authorities, Drew built a long dormitory, a couple of classrooms and a community kitchen large enough to have informal discussions around an immense kitchen table.

One of the first girls to move in was Erin. When Erin was 14, her mother left home and never came back. Erin lived with friends for a year before getting pregnant in her sophomore year of high school. With no place to go, she found Drew and Cindy. There was no judgment about her situation, no shaming, only help.

Soon, other girls moved in. They all had similar stories: drug addicts for parents, abuse, neglect. At Drew and Cindy’s, they found family. They shared chores, took classes to earn high school degrees and certifications, and had regular visits from social workers, volunteer teachers, nurses and a doctor. Disagreements were talked out, feelings shared. They began to see life from the other side of the reality they had lived. Drew and Cindy lived in an upstairs apartment, and there were lots of late-night chats and tears. Growing into responsibility can be painful.

At age 15, Erin gave birth and made the difficult decision to find adoptive parents for her little boy. She agonized, met young couples unable to have their own children and tried hard to see the future. And then she found the perfect fit. A couple in their early forties was looking for a little brother for their first adopted son. Erin, her son, and the would-be parents sat around the big kitchen table. Cindy sat beside Erin, and Drew held the baby. It had been a long vetting process, and the day had finally arrived. The couple smiled and then made the most amazing suggestion: “We’d like to adopt your baby … and we’d like to adopt you, too.” There were lots of tears, and lots of paperwork to do, but Erin had finally found the family she had so longed for. Thanks to Drew and Cindy, who had seen a problem and taken the initiative to fix it themselves.

Initiative... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

INITIATIVE

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Courage in a New World.

We like our heroes larger than life, and we like them to be uncompromising in their determination. Mary Fields was tall, and as a recently freed slave in the 1860s, she was also fearless. She was good with a gun and not above a good fight. It was said that she “had the temperament of a grizzly bear,” which is probably how she survived the lawless West with its array of characters, each looking to get the jump on greenhorns.

Mary worked her way northwest on riverboats and taking odd jobs until she reached Toledo, Ohio, where she ended up in a most unlikely place: the Sacred Heart Convent. Here she was taken in by Sister Dunne, but Mary was quick to make a stir with her hard drinking, cursing and difficult nature. Yet she worked hard and fastidiously kept the convent gardens beautiful, albeit sometimes by cursing out nuns who crossed her lawn.

When Sister Dunne caught ill in Montana after being called there to start a school, Mary was off to take care of her. Sister Dunne regained her health, thanks to Mary’s devoted care. But it wasn’t long before Mary’s temperament got her kicked out of the newly established convent. Apparently, the bishop didn’t take kindly to her cursing, drinking, wearing men’s clothing and pulling a revolver on one of the janitors during an argument.

Turns out that Mary’s temperament and skill with a gun suited her perfectly in a different job as a mail carrier. It was a dangerous and arduous job. Mailbags were unloaded from a train onto a stagecoach and driven over rocky roads into a no man’s land where it seemed there were more bandits than settlers.

Mary was an imposing figure, with a rifle across her lap and a revolver on her hip. She scared off would-be thieves with her accurate shooting and drove the stagecoach hard through barren lands, often without stopping to rest. On days when the snow was too deep for the stagecoach, Mary strapped on snowshoes and carried the bags of mail on her back. She became as legendary as Paul Bunyan, braving every obstacle and maintaining the lifeline of communication between relatives, friends, businesses and the law.

Stagecoach Mary became larger than life on the trail, but she was even bigger to the locals. Children loved her, and she was always kind and generous to them. She was often treated to free meals at restaurants and drinks at the saloon, where the regulars chatted with her until closing time.

Through her grit and steady devotion, Mary “Stagecoach” Fields forged a path into the heart of the West that many would follow. When she died, the funeral was the largest her town had ever seen.

Grit... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
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GRIT

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Jessie Rees Foundation

Pass It On^®

Never, Ever Give Up.

Life can feel terribly unfair. And yet for some people, when life hands them the worst possible circumstance, they are at their absolute best.

Jessie Joy Rees is just such a person. The blonde-haired, California kid with the big personality as fun as a day at the beach became the voice of courage for kids with cancer. How can so much good be packaged in one so small? Athletic and outgoing, Jessie had her whole world in front of her, until she was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor in 2011.

Three weeks into her treatment, Jessie asked an uncharacteristically mature question for such a young girl. She looked out at the other children who were also going through cancer treatment and asked her parents: “How can we help them?” Jessie’s heart was bigger than any tumor. She wanted to comfort other kids who were going through treatment; she wanted them to be happy, no matter what. The morning after her diagnoses, Jessie was at the kitchen table assembling bags of toys for other cancer patients. “She was determined to make other cancer kids happy,” her father Erik tenderly remembers. “How could we not help?”

12-year-old Jessie had a 1% chance of beating cancer. So, she decided to make the most of her time. The packages became hospital-safe plastic jars stuffed with toys, crafts and activities to surprise children while they are in the hospital for treatment. Aptly named JoyJars® using Jessie’s middle name, JoyJars contain a little bit of fun during mundane days, but mostly they contain a little bit of Jessie’s optimism that fills the room every time one is opened. One mother sent a tender thank you: “JoyJars have helped lift our spirits during Travis’ ongoing battle with his brain tumor.”

It is a special soul who can radiate so much good in so short a time. Jessie Joy Rees passed away less than a year from her diagnosis. But her parents keep the joy alive. More than 400,000 JoyJars have been delivered to children undergoing cancer treatment in all 50 states and over 50 countries. For each, there is a bit of Joy to help them through the tough times. And to give them courage, there’s also a bracelet stamped with Jessie’s mantra: Never Ever Give Up. “Jessie would never ever give up,” says Erik. “And neither will we. Every child facing cancer should know they are loved and supported.” For more information visit www.negu.org

No matter how long or short our lives turn out to be, there is always room for a little joy.

Never Ever Give Up... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

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NEVER EVER GIVE UP

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Sometimes the Wrong Direction is the Right Way.

Twenty years ago, Gladys Hankerson, who lives in Florida, dialed up her sister in Maryland for a chat. Or so she thought. But she misdialed the area code and reached Mike Moffit in Rhode Island.

Mike says Gladys was a bit embarrassed but very sweet. Gladys loves her sister and, of course, tried to call again a few days later — and made the same mistake on the area code. Mike answered again and recognized Gladys’ voice. They had a nice chat and laughed about it.

Before long, Gladys started calling Mike just to say hi. And Mike began to call Gladys just to check in. Then one day, Gladys’ son called Mike to tell him a close family member had passed away. They realized their friendship had deepened — and it carried on for 20 years.

“He’s a very nice person,” Gladys says of Mike. “I love him to death.” They finally met when Mike was on vacation with his family in Florida and decided to stop by her house. “He made my day,” Gladys says. “I hugged him, he hugged me, and we took a picture.”

Across the country in Arizona, in 2016, Wanda Dench sent a text to her college-aged grandson inviting him to Thanksgiving dinner. But she got the number wrong and reached Jamal Hinton. When Hinton asked who had sent the message, Wanda sent a picture of herself.

“You’re not my grandma,” Jamal texted back. “Can I still get a plate tho?” Wanda replied: “Of course. That’s what grandmas do … feed everyone!” And for six years, Jamal has celebrated Thanksgiving with the Dench family.

For this group, 2020 was a tough year. The small family gathering was also to honor Wanda’s husband Lonnie, who had recently passed away from COVID-19. It meant a lot to have Jamal there to remember Lonnie. “We’re more of extended family and, best of all, friends,” says Jamal.

In yet another community, Robert’s wife asked him to drop some books off at a local elementary after a book drive. When he carried the books to the classroom on his lunch hour, the teacher mistook him for one of the volunteer tutors.

“Thank you for coming,” the teacher said. “Isabella is struggling with comprehension and is a grade level behind. Here is a book and her worksheets.”

Robert thought, “What the heck, I have time. I’ll just sit down and help.” Robert, an artist, sketched out drawings of words and illustrated their meanings. Isabella was delighted.

“I think that’s when the light went on for her,” Robert says. For a full year, Robert tutored Isabella on his lunch hours. Her reading comprehension quickly caught up and then shot past grade level. “It made my day, seeing her learn so fast,” Robert says.

Sometimes life puts us in places where we are supposed to be. Whether we were headed that way or not, we just need to make the best of it.

Make a New Friend... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

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MAKE A NEW FRIEND

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Pass It On^®

The Little Things that Make the Biggest Difference.

Jadav Payeng lives in a remote part of India, in a place mostly unknown to the rest of the world. The Brahmaputra River is one of the largest rivers in the world. It begins at the base of the Himalayas, at the confluence of a fan of rivers that drain snowmelt. In the midst of this miles-wide river, there is an island, Majuli. And on that island is a community of fishermen. This is where Jadav was born.

At 16 years old, Jadav noticed a number of snakes washed up on the dry sandbar after a flood. Villages redirecting the river upstream had created more forceful currents around the island, and erosion was quickly taking its toll on the land and the natural habitats of its fauna. In fact, much of the island had become barren sand, and an entire community was at risk of being displaced.

Jadav also noticed that nobody was doing anything about it besides watching their part of the world disappear. So, he started planting trees — every day, one or two or three at a time on the barren sandbars. He took note of how they grew, harvested their seeds, grew saplings in his hut and planted before going off to work.

Standing beside one of the first trees he planted 40 years ago, Jadav will tell you that it is a little thing, something anyone can do. The tree is easily five times Jadav’s girth. It stands in the middle of a forest the size of Central Park: 550 hectares. There are now native grasses that have taken root in the shade and varieties of native trees grown from seeds that have washed ashore. The forest has become home to myriad animals: deer, Bengal tigers, Indian rhinoceros and even a herd of 100 elephants that visit every year. But most importantly, the island that is also home to a few hundred people is holding its own against the elements.

Each of us has our row to hoe in this life, a small piece of the world to cultivate. By doing the little things right, we take care of those around us and those who will come after us.

Caring... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

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CARING

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The Brotherhood in Sports Goes Beyond the Field.

At first glance, rugby appears to be an orchestrated bash of bodies. But take a closer look and you will see that there is a front line, or line of scrimmage. You’ll watch players with the ball try to advance with no blockers in front of them, but lots of support behind them. There are lots of strategies and even set plays, but the essence of the game is that one player moves the ball as far as he can until he is stopped; at that point, his teammates support him while another takes up the ball and pushes forward.

It is a game that requires complete trust in the players behind you. Players love the game because of the camaraderie. Someone always has your back.

In the junior leagues, the phrase you’ll hear most often shouted by coaches is: “Go with him!” Players must learn to follow and support a teammate at all times and all costs. When a player is down, their teammates form a ruck, or a kind of huddle, over them to protect them and the mission of moving forward. Protecting a mate in this way often means an opposing player is going to run into you at full bore to try and disrupt the ruck. It’s a price you pay for your teammates.

It’s no wonder that rugby players form a strong bond among themselves. They are almost always in a supporting role. So it’s no surprise that, 15 years after playing together in college, a team remains close as siblings. And so it was for Stan’s team.

Stan was a tall, fit, handsome young man who succeeded in business right after college. He has a young family, and he has cancer. But he also has his brothers from the team. When he was hospitalized during the pandemic, none of his team brothers was allowed to visit the hospital. So every day, they donned their old jerseys and stood atop the parking garage, where Stan could see them through his window.

Even with a breathing tube in his mouth, Stan’s wife says, he smiled. The next week, tears formed in his eyes. Stan was getting weaker. The lads from his team showed up every day, arms clasped in solidarity. They were standing that way on a rainy day when Stan passed.

“It meant everything to me,” his wife says. “To see the support day after day. My kids see those young men as heroes. His rugby brothers take turns calling them to see how they are doing.”

Life is just shorter for some people than others. But we can all make it richer, more meaningful, by “going with them” through difficult times.

Lift... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

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LIFT

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Something Healthy for All of Us

Most of us have memories from childhood that go something like this: You’re not leaving the table until you eat all your vegetables.

How lucky we were to have nutritious food, even if we had to learn to like it. According to the Houston Health Department, for nearly one-quarter of children living in Houston, Texas, the choice to eat healthy doesn’t exist. They don’t have access to fresh produce, only canned and packaged goods. A lack of fresh meat and produce in your diet can lead to increases in depression and obesity and greater risks for heart disease and cancer. A poor diet is also tied to poor performance in school for young children.

Annie Zhu was shocked to find out so many children in Houston lived in food deserts — areas without access to fresh food. She was also shocked to see how much fresh food supermarkets discard every day. So she and her twin sister Shirley went to work.

First, they partnered with the Houston Health Department to distribute food at community centers. With the help of Second Servings, they collected surplus food from grocery stores and began organizing monthly markets. They even connected with human service agencies to provide help beyond food. Lastly, they developed (and coded) a simple app that tells people when and where the markets are. Since the food is fresh, it needs to be picked up right away, so they developed the text and messaging app Fresh Hub.

Each month, Fresh Hub organizes high schoolers who don green shirts and go to work setting up stands of fresh produce, baked goods and packaged meats. The Zhu sisters and the green dream team have distributed over 1,500 pounds of food. And while families are collecting food, volunteers are entertaining kids with art projects that teach healthy eating.

At the end of the day, Annie says the two are happy to be making a difference. “Frustration over the unfair circumstances built into society led us to meet incredible people,” says Annie. “I know I’m not alone on this journey to help the underserved — and I know my journey has only just begun!”

Good for you, Annie and Shirley, for doing something that’s good for all of us.

Be Healthy... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

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BE HEALTHY

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More Than Just Dancing

JuJu loved to dance. She had a smile that filled the room and moved as if she was actually creating the music. But when she was away from her high school dance class, she was more reserved, a little bit guarded — something the group of girls in her class noticed.

JuJu’s real name is Julie. She hid behind the nickname, creating a bubbly persona that concealed the pain she was experiencing at home. Her father struggled with mental illness and found his refuge in alcohol. Julie kept schoolmates at a distance but let JuJu out when the music was on.

Corrina, one of the other dance students, picked up on Julie’s closed nature outside of the dance room. When she found her at lunchtime, sitting alone, earphones in, ignoring the world, Corrina sat beside her. At first, they talked about dance and music. As the conversation turned to siblings and family, JuJu steered the subject back to dance.

Corrina could tell that Julie needed a friend — actually, a few. So she included Julie in the group of dance kids and started hanging out after school. Julie soon became part of Corrina’s family, spending after school hours there and sometimes spending the night on weekends when she didn’t have the strength to face her own family.

Slowly, trust between the two girls developed, and then a sister-like bond. One night, Julie tearfully talked about how desperate she felt at home, how her father was slowly killing himself, how she also had dark feelings that she couldn’t control. She also said she felt more a part of Corrina’s family than her own, that when she was there, it was like she was floating above the darkness. With Corrina’s encouragement, JuJu got professional help. She learned how to let go of what she can’t control, and how to connect more deeply on an emotional level.

High school ended, college followed, marriage, kids. Julie’s father did die too young. And Julie was supported by Corrina’s family, the family Julie felt most comfortable in. There were many times when Julie would lean on Corrina and her parents for advice during life decisions.

Julie had two girls and a family of her own, built on the same trust and open relationships she had learned from Corrina and her parents. But when her daughter reached her teenage years, she was plagued with mental illness issues that seem to run in families, and she isolated herself.

Julie remembered how she had isolated at the same age and how a friend had taken note and taken care. So she took her daughter frequently into the wilderness for hikes, biking, skiing and long conversations. The daughter learned to trust her mother again, and she agreed to get professional help.

One day, Julie and Corrina took their two daughters hiking to the top of a nearby peak to catch the sunrise. As they sat catching their collective breath, Julie inhaled deeply, feeling the early morning sounds like music. “I love that you can always trust the sun to rise again,” she said — and they all agreed.

Inclusion... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

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INCLUSION

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Let the Kids Give it a Try

Dasia Taylor is your typical high school student, with one exception. She cares about the rest of the world — and she’s doing something about it.

Dasia became very interested in science because of how it benefits people. When she started chemistry class last year, she sat in the front row, wanting to absorb as much as possible, not knowing yet how she might apply her altruism. When the teacher announced the upcoming science fair, Dasia was all in. She stayed after school and pored through science and medical magazines, looking for an idea.

Then she found an article on sutures that change color when an infection is present. The so-called smart stitches work, but the technology is too expensive for developing countries, where infections in surgical incisions are a major cause of new illnesses and even death.

There had to be a solution that would make it to the people who needed it most. “I said, hey, I can do it better,” remembers Dasia.

Dasia looks at science from a different perspective. Not having a million-dollar laboratory makes you look for solutions in new places. Dasia describes her project as “a novel suture additive.”

That novel additive is beet juice. For six months, Dasia stayed after school, cutting and boiling beets and soaking sutures in the mixture. Beet juice is organic, and it changes color when human tissue changes pH levels during an infection. That means patients and doctors can see when an infection is starting before it gets out of hand. And treating an infection early can be the key to beating it.

For Dasia Taylor, the best solutions are the ones that help the most people. Her focus now is getting the color-changing sutures to developing countries.

Often, we think of high schoolers as being too young to solve the world’s problems. But there are a lot of kids out there like Dasia. It might be time to let them give it a try.

Science... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
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SCIENCE

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Billy Mills

Billy Mills was born on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation for the Oglala Lakota people. His mother died when he was 9 years old.

Hurting from the loss, young Billy took up sports, believing an article given to him by a Jesuit priest that stated that Olympians are chosen by the gods.

“I wanted to be chosen by the gods,” remembers Billy. And it had nothing to do with the Olympics. “I thought if I was chosen by the gods … perhaps I would be able to see my mother again.”

At first, he tried boxing, but after six losses and zero wins, he decided it wasn’t for him. Neither was basketball, or football. So Billy started running. “It felt spiritual,” Billy says. The life of a long-distance runner can be a lonely path you cannot share. That’s where Billy discovered his oneness with the earth. His Lakota name means “Respects the Earth.”

Billy ran his first race in jeans and basketball shoes. He finished dead last but fell in love with the sport. Then his father passed away, and with a broken heart, he stopped running. Being orphaned at 12 and feeling alone, Billy didn’t run again until he reached high school. That’s when a coach encouraged his students.

“One of you can do something magical in sport. One of you can become a great athlete,” the coach said.

“I felt it was my dad speaking to me,” Billy remembers. He came out of high school with the fourth-fastest mile in the nation. He went on to the University of Kansas and trained hard, hoping to make the Olympic team. He finished second in the trials and was on his way.

At the start of the 10,000-meter race in that 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games, Billy Mills, an orphaned boy from unknown Pine Ridge, South Dakota, lined up to run for his country, his parents, his people. As the race wore on, runners fell behind, lap after lap, until four led the pack. With one lap to go, he was nudged out of his lane from behind, then bumped off his stride again. He was struggling at a distant fourth place.

As he lapped one of the slower runners, he recalls, “I look, and out of the corner of my eye, on his jersey, I saw an eagle. It was my dad. ‘You have the wings of an eagle.’”

In the last 100 meters, an unheard-of Billy Mills broke into a dead sprint from lane four and strode his way into the history books with an Olympic record. He later found the runner he had passed and looked closely at his jersey. There was no eagle.

“It was simply a perception,” Billy remembers. “Perceptions create us or destroy us, but we have that opportunity to create our own journey.”

Believe in Yourself... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

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BELIEVE IN YOURSELF

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Beatrice Shilling

Beatrice “Tilly” Shilling had a penchant for speed. In 1913, at age 14, she bought her first motorcycle. She tinkered with it and roared around the English countryside, eventually racing for the British Motorcycle Racing Club.

Tilly might have been fine living an adventurous life, racing around tracks at 100 mph. But the war changed the world and nearly everyone who lived through it. Rolls Royce was making engines for the Royal Air Force. The Spitfire was speedy and highly maneuverable, and there was a great need for engineers to keep up with production and innovation. Tilly soon proved her mettle and moved up the ladder quickly at the Royal Aircraft Establishment. She was a no-nonsense, self-confident, tireless tinkerer who stood up to top brass the same way she had lapped men in motorcycle races. When Spitfires were stalling during extreme dives at the Battle of Britain and costing the lives of pilots, Tilly led a team of engineers tasked with finding a solution, fast.

For Tilly, the key in motorcycle racing and engineering was the same: Stay calm and keep it simple. She developed a thimble-shaped carburetor insert that prevented the engine from flooding on extreme dives. Equipped with this simple device, the Spitfires could compete with the Luftwaffe, and the rest is history.

Perhaps the unsung hero in this story is Beatrice Shilling’s first boss, Margaret Partridge. When Tilly was fresh out of secondary school, she got a job at an engineering company installing wiring and generators. Margaret — herself an electrical engineer — took it upon herself to nurture the next generation of women engineers and encouraged Tilly to study electrical engineering. Armed with a little extra confidence, Tilly enrolled at Victoria University of Manchester and became an electrical engineer, her first step toward a career in aviation engineering and the legendary solution that helped win the Battle of Britain.

Without that bit of encouragement, who knows how the whole world would have turned out — let alone Beatrice Shilling.

Encouragement... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

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ENCOURAGEMENT

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The Art of Pitching.

Summertime brings out miniature baseball players, sliding in the dust, chasing errant balls and constantly adjusting caps. It is the season for kids to be out in the sun, working on eye-hand coordination and, most importantly, dugout chants. A game with so much time spent standing around requires clever chants to keep young minds occupied.

But not every kid is so easygoing about the game. Spencer is tall and lanky. At 11 years old, he throws a mean fastball — straight down the tunnel to the strike zone. Spencer is the kind of kid who takes everything seriously. He irons his uniform, makes sure the stripes on his socks match perfectly, keeps his cap clean and his glove oiled. Anything out of place, and Spencer loses control with wild throws that have the umpire ducking for cover. Coach Dan knows this. So he uses Spencer as a closer, pitching the last two innings to ensure the win. It’s as long as Spencer can focus without falling apart.

That’s why, when the championship game came around, and Coach Dan’s team was up by three, Spencer took the mound. He promptly struck out the first two batters. And then it happened; perhaps he noticed a stain on his shirt or a fly on his sleeve. Spencer walked the next five batters. His face was purple, and there was no replacement pitcher left. Coach Dan shouted encouragement, but balls were flying into the backstop like random mortar shells.

Finally, Coach Dan called a timeout and walked to the mound. A few more walks and the championship would be lost. So he put his hands on Spencer’s shoulders and tried to steady the young pitcher.

“Look,” he said. “I know what’s wrong. Your lead foot is facing the wrong way.” And with that, Coach Dan pulled down Spencer’s left sock. “That will remind you to step in the right direction.” At first, Spencer was mortified at being unkempt. But Coach Dan smiled at him. “This always works,” he said. “You’ve thrown a lot of strikes. You can throw three more.”

The next pitch was a strike. Spencer’s teammates cheered loudly. On strike two, the entire team, and Coach Dan, pushed their left socks down to their ankles. On strike three, they all rushed the mound, and Spencer hid his face in his perfectly starched jersey. Facing down a batter is one thing. Facing down failure in front of all your peers is something quite special.

Confidence... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

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CONFIDENCE

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For the Cost of a Box of Cereal.

Julian was having a difficult day at work. Projects were due, and his boss had just made major changes to a spreadsheet that would mean a long night. Julian isn’t the type to get angry, but he does get withdrawn. Taking a deep breath, he gathered himself and went out to grab a late lunch that would also serve as dinner. He needed the break, but he didn’t feel like fast food. So he stopped in a grocery store and grabbed a couple of pieces of fruit and a plastic-wrapped sandwich. He kept to himself as he waited in line to make his purchase.

The last couple of years had been difficult for Julian. He works in the tech industry, where pressure is high, but companies are volatile, expanding and contracting. Julian had just made his second career move and was pushing hard to catch up with the demands on his time. The request to work late did not come at a good time. His young family also needed attention; his wife was looking forward to some time off, but with the new job, it would be months before they could get away.

He put his few items on the conveyor belt at the checkout, barely noticing the woman in front of him. She was frantically counting change in her pocketbook, digging in every corner. When she laid it all out, there wasn’t enough. She set a small bag of oranges aside, then a box of cereal. She had just enough for milk, eggs and a loaf of bread. Embarrassed, she apologized to the clerk.

That’s when Julian noticed the tears in her eyes.

Julian handed the box of cereal and the bag of oranges back to the clerk. “I’ll pay for these.”

There was an awkward pause. It was clear that the woman had never needed this kind of help before. Julian didn’t ask questions. “My kids love this cereal, too,” he smiled. “And they need the oranges.”

The woman thanked Julian and walked out. He would never see her again. Maybe she was traveling, or changing apartments, or had a pile of medical bills. It didn’t matter to Julian. People sometimes need help.

Before he left the store, Julian went back and grabbed a box of cereal for his kids. The next morning, instead of getting to the office early, he had breakfast with his family. They were delighted to have their dad — and their favorite cereal — waiting for them.

Sharing... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

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SHARING

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The Future Belongs to Kids.

The Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes features some pretty remarkable kids. Teens are cleaning up our oceans, feeding their underserved peers, creating tutoring networks and collecting donations for the homeless. Many have used their screen time to mobilize volunteer efforts in ways that the previous generation just couldn’t do.

One prizewinner stands out not only for her innovative thinking but also for her inspiration. Jordan Reeves was born without the lower part of her left arm. When she was 11 years old, she invented a prosthetic arm that shoots biodegradable glitter. Her invention got the attention of Marvel Comics, which created a superhero based on Jordan. She also helped Mattel design a Barbie that uses a prosthetic leg. She spoke at TEDxYouth and wrote a children’s book that helps kids understand how to talk about disabilities.

Most of us would have been happy that the message of inclusion is getting out there. And it’s pretty cool to be a media celebrity. But that’s just the beginning for Jordan. Her dream is to help kids with disabilities design their way into a world where they don’t always fit. The mission of her nonprofit, Design With Us, is to “build solutions to help bring extra joy to disabled young people. We believe sharing design and STEM knowledge empowers youth to create their own solutions.”

Jordan has teamed up with industrial designers and created virtual and in-person workshops for disabled youth, mentoring them in the process of bringing their inventions to life. Now, hundreds of supporters around the country are bringing disabled kids into the conversation of inclusion.

Sometimes, it’s all too easy to focus on the challenges facing our kids. But as we do, let’s not forget the kids like Jordan who are turning those challenges into opportunities.

Opportunity... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

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OPPORTUNITY

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An Impossible Journey.

In May 1869, John Wesley Powell, a former Union Army major who had lost most of his right arm in the Battle of Shiloh, led 10 explorers in launching four heavy wooden boats loaded to the gunwales with 10 months of supplies.

Three of the boats were made of oak, more suitable for cruising lakes than busting through rapids. None of the men were experienced boatmen. The one-armed captain of the crew had maps with gaps in them. Still, it was the grandest expedition since Lewis and Clark. Over 500 rapids and 1,000 miles of unknown currents awaited them.

We all do the best we can to prepare for what life throws at us, and adapt when we fail. Though Powell had boats custom-made for the journey, they were heavy. He recruited men who knew how to survive in the wilderness but had never navigated a river. He packed so much food it nearly sank the boats from the start. He hastily added two crew members just days before launch, planning on hunting game to augment their rations. In hindsight, he should have failed, swallowed up in the rapids, dead of exposure or starvation. Instead, he began in Green River, Wyoming, traversed the length of Utah, cut across the top of Arizona and staggered ashore at the mouth of the Virgin River in Nevada.

Much of the journey was spent repairing boats damaged while portaging around rapids and carving new oars out of driftwood. Food was lost or spoiled, game was scarce, and Powell went inland to negotiate with the Indians for food. The expedition spent days in freezing water and 115-degree heat. Three men deserted the cause along the way. The crew slept on boulders and pulled on wet clothing the next morning. And most of the time, they had no idea what lay ahead. But at the end of the arduous journey, they had successfully adapted to the challenges and mapped a wilderness previously labeled as “territory unknown.” As the West expanded, Powell’s maps would be invaluable.

As we go through the turbulence in our lives, we too often focus on obstacles rather than finding ways to adapt and appreciate the journey. None of us is fully prepared for what lies ahead. Yet with a little ingenuity, we can make it even when others quit. And along the way, we can find time to look up and see the grandeur that is life. Even amid all the difficulties, there were times between the thundering rapids when John Wesley Powell was enraptured by the beauty of his surroundings: We glide hour after hour … as our attention is arrested by some new wonder.

Beauty is in the living of life, in looking beyond the challenges to the wonder of the small moments we achieve—sometimes against all odds.

Perseverance... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

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PERSEVERANCE

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A Lesson We Should Never Forget.

In 1988, Charles Kuralt discovered a story of heroism that would have disappeared from history were it not for the determination of a former Russian prisoner who vowed to thank the men who saved his life and the lives of many of his comrades. During the 40 years of the Cold War, Dr. Nikita Aseyev kept the names of the American soldiers safe and close to his heart.

Kuralt was in Moscow to cover the Reagan-Gorbachev Summit when the stocky Dr. Aseyev bulldogged his way into the pressroom and demanded to be heard. Kuralt listened.

“For more than 43 years, I have waited for this chance, and now it has come,” Dr. Aseyev began tearfully. What unfolded was the story of ordinary men: Two farmers from the Midwest, slaughterhouse workers from Chicago, a doctor from Texas and a Jewish doctor from New York City, all thrown into the war against fascism, and all imprisoned in a Nazi POW camp. In Stalag-B, Russian and American allies were separated by two barbed-wire fences about 8 meters apart.

The 8,000 Russians were treated much worse than the Americans. Receiving only one liter of soup a day and one liter of water, they were slowly starving to death.

As the only dentist in all the camp, Dr. Aseyev was allowed to work on the Americans. They sympathized with the plight of Russian prisoners and hatched a plan to smuggle parcels of their Red Cross rations to the Russian side. In one night, the Americans threw 1,300 parcels over the fence to the Russians when a sympathetic Nazi guard turned his back. (The guard was later executed for his leniency.)

“Do you know what that food meant on our side of the wire, where men were dying every night of starvation?” Dr. Aseyev asks. And, of course, prisoners on either side would have been shot had they been caught. The all-night operation carried on monthly for three years.

Forty-three years later, Kuralt’s story ran on television. A few of the Americans who had taken part in the operation agreed to be interviewed. William Jarema of New York arranged to fly to Moscow and meet with Dr. Aseyev. They embraced in the eternal bond of brotherhood — weeping, touching faces, trying to speak — but no words could find their way to the surface through all the emotions.

What they both sought to express was what William had felt when he first found out that Dr. Aseyev was alive. Tears rolling down his cheeks, William had told Kuralt, “These are tears of joy. We were like brothers.”

Humanity... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

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HUMANITY

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Overcoming Our Own Worst Mistakes.

There’s a story in football that goes all the way back to 1929. Roy Riegels of Cal picked up a fumble and nearly returned the ball to the endzone … for the opposing team. He had to be tackled by a teammate and earned the nickname “Wrong Way Riegels.” He was so distraught that his coach had to talk him into returning to the game.

Scoring for your opponent is unforgivable for fans. We lay our dreams at the feet of kids playing a game and suffer meltdowns when mistakes are made. Similar to Riegels, Kaelin Clay of the University of Utah caught a pass across the middle in a game against Oregon. The speedster sprinted 70 yards to the endzone. But in a premature celebration, he let the ball fall from his hands, just inches from the goal line. The ball was scooped up by Oregon’s Joe Walker, who ran the length of the field for a touchdown.

But, unlike Riegels, Kaelin Clay gathered himself quickly, took responsibility for the blunder and finished the game with several key catches that set up scores. It wasn’t enough. Clay will candidly tell you that the loss to Oregon was his fault. Still, he learned from it.

“Life is crazy,” Clay says. “Things change. That moment right there helped me realize that no matter what happens, just keep pushing, because something good will happen in the end.” Clay made all the highlight reels for all the wrong reasons. But he didn’t quit. He pushed harder.

They say sport mimics life. At the very least, it intensifies living, subjecting our souls to the scrutiny of perfection. But perfection doesn’t exist for any of us. Our best is all we have to offer. Resigning to failure will never deliver the gift that comes when we overcome; a process that requires us to be accountable to ourselves first, and next to the teammates who accompany us on this journey.

Children, in particular, fall victim to the discouragement that comes with falling short. Many don’t have the skills to move on. They suffer mentally and emotionally rather than rebound. Kaelin Clay speaks to them: “I tell them things are going to happen; you just have to keep pushing. It’s going to be all right, and it happens for a reason.”

Kaelin Clay went on to become an All-American. He played in the NFL for four years. Maybe none of that success would have happened if he hadn’t learned from his mistakes.

Overcoming... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

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OVERCOMING

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The Least Likely to Help.

Reggie spent his college years on the ski team. Summers, he worked odd jobs and water-skied. His life was perfect, as he describes it. Outdoors most of the time, doing homework with buddies at the ski lodge. He moved on to law school and started his own practice so he’d have time to ski. His kids learned the art of the graceful turn in waist-high powder, and all were easily identified by their raccoon faces and smiles that hold memories of the latest best ski day.

But as Reggie’s practice grew, he found himself taking on clients who needed help but had no money. His wife jokes that she made Reggie promise that at least half his clients could pay their bills. Reggie became the skiing lawyer who took care of people who had been wronged by employers or spouses. He didn’t move up the corporate ladder or house-jump with each raise in pay. In fact, his income mostly stayed the same, his house modest. The only thing that really grew was his Christmas card list. Clients remembered Reggie for his tireless advocating of their cause when they had nobody else to turn to.

At about the time grandkids were raiding the pantry and Reggie should have been slowing down, he found out he had cancer, the kind that progresses slowly and doesn’t yield to treatments. Reggie will tell you that he never really set out with a plan, just a set of standards to live by — foremost of which was to treat others the way you wanted to be treated. The law is mostly absent any mercy, but Reggie had made sure that those who needed an advocate had one, somebody who was sympathetic and could step in for them where nobody else would.

Reggie traded in his ski days for long days on the couch. Sometimes sitting up, mostly lying down. There were months spent in the hospital, drug trials, loss of appetite, exhaustion. But through it all, Reggie kept up the clients he cared about most, the ones who needed him. There were widows whose pensions were at risk and laborers whose wages were being withheld. There were couples who couldn’t afford an adoption attorney and small-store owners who needed help with lease agreements. Surrounded by artwork by his grandkids and get-well posters lay Reggie, his knees propped up and his laptop open, case files stacked on end tables and the ottoman close to him. And in the middle of it all, Reggie’s smile was as big as a grin after the perfect powder day.

Give Back... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

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GIVE BACK

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Everybody Gets on Base.

From the heartland to urban parks, the release of school kids onto the baseball diamonds signals the beginning of summer. There was a time when baseball was the only summer game. But with competition from soccer and lacrosse, the clap of leather gloves in around-the-horn warmups is not as omnipresent as it used to be. Still, America’s game is a place for young boys to prove themselves in their pre-adolescent tribes.

Tim was one of those boys. His build was slight, unfinished. Some boys seem to have the makings of athletic ability through every growth phase. Tim seemed to be growing in odd ways: long arms and legs, thin shoulders, more teeth than space allotted in his mouth. No meat on his bones. But he loved baseball. And game after game, he stood at the plate, dropping the heavy bat into a half swing at the first three pitches. Strikeout after strikeout piled up in the stat sheet. The desire was there, but the body doesn’t respond to dreams and wishes. It needs to be trained. Progress was slow. Tim was determined. The strikes continued.

Tim practiced his swing every day, and every strikeout brought two things to the surface: determination and a few tears that Tim quickly wiped away before returning to the dugout. His teammates encouraged him. His coach worked with him. Even opposing teams held their breath, wishing for a hit, just one hit for a boy who seemed to deserve it more than any other 10-year-old kid in the world.

What teammates and parents and even the coach never saw was a gray van that pulled up each game in the parking lot adjacent to left field. Inside was Tim’s father, too weak from the advancing cancer to get out of the van. It’s a tough assignment to watch your kid strike out, even tougher when you don’t have the strength to pitch to him.

But life sometimes pushes you along in the right direction, and toward the end of the season, Tim stood at the plate as determined as ever. On the first pitch, the bat fell from his shoulder in a downward swing and somehow made contact. The ball dribbled down the third-base line, and Tim galloped to first. He stood on the bag wearing a smile as big as the outfield. He didn’t have the chance to advance, and when the pitcher retired the final out, Tim ran straight into left field, climbed the fence and dove into the front seat of a gray van, into the arms of a frail father whose wish for his son had finally materialized.

Sometimes it is more than a game.

Love... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

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LOVE

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Beyond the Moon with an Eye on Mars.

The billionaire space race is on. And it rivals the competition between Russia and the USA in the early ’60s. In Trekkie language, space is “the final frontier.” What has changed since those early days of Star Trek and Apollo missions is the hairstyles and the technology, but not the imagination of space dreamers everywhere.

Tiera Fletcher grew up in a suburb of Atlanta. At age 11, her list of dream future occupations skipped right past firefighter and dolphin trainer to scientist, inventor, architect, mathematician — anything in the field of science.

But you don’t just jump from 11-year-old dreamer to NASA engineer in one giant leap. Tiera’s mother is an accountant, and her father a construction worker. At an early age, they taught her how to add and subtract, calculate and measure things. She added up coupons and totaled receipts. She took an interest in architecture and how it related to building things. By the time she was 11, her focus was on aerospace, and she participated in a program for young science minds sponsored by Lockheed Martin.

Over the years, Tiera graduated from MIT, interned at Boeing and now works on the Space Launch System for NASA, aiming to put people on Mars. It takes a lot of drive to accomplish what Tiera has done. But it also takes the encouragement of good parents, a strong community and peers who have the same aspirations.

Encouragement is contagious. More than a pat on the back, the best kind of encouragement is specific to a task. It teaches, congratulates and acts as a pick-me-up when failure strikes. Imagine the type of world we would have if every parent encouraged their children the way Tiera’s did; to learn something new, to get good at it, to keep trying. “My parents played a key role in cultivating my love of mathematics and science,” Tiera says. “My favorite teacher taught me how to bring my dreams into an actual project, something that could truly change the world.”

At 22 years old, she is the youngest engineer at NASA. Today, Tiera dedicates part of her life to encouraging young students to engage in the sciences. With all that she has accomplished, she still has a big heart for the big dreams of little learners.

Encouragement... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

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ENCOURAGEMENT

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Road Trip Across America.

The early morning sun shelters behind the Rocky Mountains, and it’s not until you reach Wyoming that it’s up full. Seeing America by car has re-emerged. Perhaps pent-up travelers want to move about with no schedules and restraints. In doing so, you discover things that can’t be seen from 30,000 feet. It is time for the classic American road trip — a journey that so often reminds us that despite our differences, we are family.

In Rawlins, Wyoming, a father, his son, and the teenage grandson stop at the convenience store for a mid-morning donut. They kick the dirt off their boots on the running board of the pickup truck. They are already sweating. The young man grabs the door for his elders, smiles and heads straight for the chocolate milk. Somewhere west of North Platte, Nebraska, farm families and workers have gathered at weathered picnic tables surrounded by the haze of a smoker stuffed with brisket. By Iowa, it’s evening, and small town streets are buzzing with kids on bicycles and teenagers lined up at burger sheds while their parents stretch out on the grass.

The next morning, the wind is blowing, laundry is out on lines, truckers are moving to the right lane to let you pass. Each stop for gas and food reveals more groups on the road. Old and young, pillows on the dashboard, bicycles strapped to the back, stiff-legged drivers making their way to restrooms. At first glance, it’s like a family reunion. Seems everyone says hi or howdy or how’s it goin’?

Diverse in looks and backgrounds, united in the common need to reconnect, to belong, to talk about the rain, traveling with kids, where the best burgers are, and where everybody is headed. In Indiana, Amish folk work the fields and tend to the horses while a few young children play hide-and-seek in the corn. Chicago rises out of the alfalfa fields of Illinois, and city dwellers spray the streets from fire hydrants for the community’s children. A fuel stop in Albany leads to the best ice cream stand and more waves and “safe travels” from the adults. There are stops in Massachusetts where college kids are returning to school—moving tubs of clothes and small mattresses accompanied by their parents. They borrow rope and buy duct tape, and everybody smiles at them, remembering the freedom of youth.

Up the coast in Maine, the hamlets are teeming with families from Camden to Kennebunk. The most crowded spot in small-town bookstores is the children’s book section. Inland, on the byways to Rangeley, Maine, lemonade stands appear at the edge of long rolling lawns, and there’s a creamery along the fenceline of every dairy farm. It rains, but people still gather. Neighbors and tourists, family vacationers and retirees, orchard keepers and maple-syrup makers chat and get to know each other because after all, everybody has come from somewhere, has a friend or family member somewhere, and that’s good to talk about. It’s what we want to talk about.

At the top of Maine, just a few miles from the Canadian border, is a small lake. Families gather there in the summer, some from many states away. The sun breaks through the trees in the morning, becoming a million points of light all scattered on the water’s surface. It won’t be long before the stillness gives way to the echoes of children laughing, and people gathering in groups they’ll call family no matter where they’re from. And all of them will breathe a sigh of regret when it’s time to go back to where they came from.

Family... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
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FAMILY

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Being a Mother…

Li lives in a small New England town. She had two dreams growing up: to be a nurse and to raise a family. She got through nursing school OK; she says the classwork was much harder than being with patients. She got married, and the road ahead seemed cloudless and bright; it always does when things are going according to plan.

But somewhere along the way, the marriage went south, and a year later, she injured her back and couldn’t work. The story could end there. Many do. Life just doesn’t seem to work out the way we want, no matter how hard we work or how tightly we hang onto our dreams.

As Li pushed herself in rehab, her body strengthened, and so did her resolve. She found work at a home for disabled children that didn’t require her to lift patients, and there she found her family. For 30 years, she took care of kids that were too difficult for their own parents to raise. She nursed their skinned knees and wounded hearts. She helped them through confusing emotions and the frustrations of being different. But most importantly, she met Julian, a 7-year-old boy with learning challenges and a smile that melted her heart.

“I had to adopt him,” she recalls. “He had been in 37 foster homes in six years. The goal was to raise him to be independent.”

Every day, Julian went to work with his new mother Li and came home to the stability of a room of his own, a box with his favorite things and the love of a mother. Still, it wasn’t easy. Julian was prone to outbursts or withdrawing.

“There was so much that Julian had to learn emotionally,” Li says. “But I had time, and he was willing.”

Over the years, their bond grew tighter. Julian earned his independence. He found a job and a place to live and became an adult. “All those things nobody believed he would ever become, he was doing,” Li says.

Eventually, Li’s back prevented her from doing much work at all. After all those years of lifting and helping others, Li found herself unable to do much physically. Her back deteriorated, and she needed help with the chores that come with daily living. And there was Julian. Who would check in on him?

But life has a way of surprising us, turning just the way we need it to. Julian checked in on his mother every morning before work. He tended the garden, shook out the rugs, lifted the laundry baskets. And after work, he held his mother by the elbow and helped her to the chair on the porch where she used to sit and watch him play. “He still melts my heart,” Li says.

Love... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
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LOVE

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Pass It On^®

Reach for the Stars…

Wally Funk became the oldest person to visit space. She’s 82 years young!

Better late than never. Probably the last thing Wally Funk wants to hear. She just flew into space at age 82 after completing her spaceflight training in the 1960s.

Age doesn’t seem to discriminate when it comes to dreams. Bill Hatfield was the oldest person to sail around the world single-handedly at age 81. Yuichiro Miura is the oldest person to summit Mount Everest. He did it at age 80. And Leroy “Satchel” Paige played his last major league baseball game at age 59.

Wally Funk and 12 other women, known as the Mercury 13, went through astronaut training together in the 1960s. Wally had plenty of experience in the air by then. She left high school at age 16 and entered college to get her pilot’s license. She became a professional aviator at age 20 after being named the Top Pilot two years in a row at Oklahoma State University. In addition to her lengthy aviation career, she also raced airplanes, often winning.

Still, airplanes weren’t enough for Wally, so she walked through the doors at NASA and volunteered for the “Women in Space” program. Her application to become an astronaut was denied three times.

Working in aviation kept her close to her dream, and she flew, a lot, logging over 18,000 hours. At 81, she was still flying every Saturday as a flight instructor.

And then the call came. On a long shot, Wally had bid for a seat on Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin. “No one has waited longer,” Bezos said via Instagram.

When Wally got the news, she only said one word: “Finally!”

While many dreams never do come true, pursuing them is almost as rewarding as achieving them; sometimes, a dream is worth the work and the wait. Wheels up, Wally!

Dream... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

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DREAM

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Stay Curious.

So little was known about the depths of the sea in the mid 1930s. An entire world lay beneath the ships, yet it was mostly inaccessible. Staring out at endless ocean waters had spiked the imaginations of sailors for centuries. Tales of fantastic beasts and cursed currents filled their minds and kept them planted firmly on the decks. But for Jacques Cousteau, a curious incident with a borrowed set of swim goggles set his mind reeling. “The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever,” he recorded.

It was by accident, literally, that Jacques Cousteau took that first plunge. He was enrolled in the French Naval Academy with his heart set on becoming a pilot. But a car accident cut short his dream leaving him unable to fly, so he changed his plans and dove into the sea.

For five decades Jacques Cousteau never lost his passion for the water planet. He explored as deep as the depths would allow, first developing the aqualung, improving on other SCUBA designs, and later using deep-sea submarines. Sea life always filled him with wonder. There was so much to observe, so much to write about and photograph. From oceans to the great lakes, to the world’s largest rivers, Cousteau wanted to see it all.

From the Manatee to the starfish, the iridescent algae and the graceful octopus; the water world is home to some of our most magnificent and delicate creatures. And Jacques Cousteau wanted us to know how precious each one is. The beauty of the under water world was his passion. He devoted his life to documenting and protecting it. To see a whale breach or raindrops of jellyfish ride the currents was the greatest affirmation of the diversity of life in a grand tapestry we all belong to. Cousteau knew that awe and wonder inspire us all to be better human beings. To feel nature is to feel the warmth of a world we long to belong to. Sometimes it takes a plunge into the ocean, and other times, it just takes a look at the treetops as we walk by.

Wonder... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

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WONDER

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Taking Responsibility.

Maria and her parents moved to the US from Brazil one year before the pandemic. Better education opportunities lay ahead, and they were excited to get Maria into an American high school to prepare for college.

Each parent got a job, and Maria hit the books. She also signed up for a service club because she wanted the social interaction, the chance to work on her English skills and to be a part of the community.

“I love to serve,” Maria says, smiling and pulling her auburn hair back behind her shoulders. “I think it is my thank-you for the opportunities I have.”

She worked in the local food bank with other kids her age, organizing bags for families who were having a hard time making ends meet. But when the pandemic hit, she found herself at the food bank for another reason: to bring home groceries to her parents.

“We were all shocked when my mother lost her job. My friends at the food bank got me through it.”

Luckily, her father kept his job. And with classes moving online, Maria was able to secure a full-time job and do her class work at night. She earned just enough to cover a few utilities and help with the rent. It would have been easier for Maria to just drop out of school, but her goal in coming to America was to go to college. Three of her courses were college prep classes that demanded a lot of work. During her senior year, Maria worked 40-hour weeks and studied even more. Yet, in her spare time, she packed food bags for others before taking hers home.

Just before graduation, Maria came into the food bank. One of the volunteers started getting a bag ready for her.

“I don’t need one today,” Maria said. “My mother got a job. I’m here to help.”

Maria supported her family for eight months. She graduated on time and got scholarship offers from three different colleges. She moved to part-time work and has completed her first semester of college.

“My family means everything to me,” she says. “They sacrificed so I could be here. I was happy to help. I’m always happy to help.”

Responsibility... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

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RESPONSIBILITY

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The World Awaits You.

The name Jeanne Baret is hardly a household name. She was born in rural France in the mid 1700s and her family teetered on the edge of poverty. But Jeanne was an unusual woman -- curious, intelligent, and determined to leave her small village to see what lies beyond. Little did she know how far she would go. Ambition can be like a mighty storm that sweeps you away to unknown places. And so it was with Jeanne.

Jeanne’s first big adventure was to leave her rural village for a nearby town, which at the time seemed a world away. She found work as a housekeeper for Botanist Philibert Commerson, a stoic and deliberate researcher who also suffered ill health. He came to rely on Jeanne for more than house cleaning. Recognizing her intelligence he made her his assistant and they soon moved to Paris.

It was in the midst of the Enlightenment, and appetites for exploration were at an all-time high. King Louis XV agreed to an around-the-world expedition to establish trading partners and show off a little naval power to the world. Philibert Commerson was commissioned as botanist for the two-year journey. To make the trip, he would need his assistant. Except she was a woman, and women were prohibited from those roles.

Seemingly resigned, Commerson boarded the ship with his many cases and the aid of his cabin boy. Conditions aboard an 18th-century vessel were miserable at best, crewed with hardened men in cramped conditions who lived by their own code. The expedition set sail. It wasn’t long before Commerson’s cabin boy was outed as a woman. But it was too late, and Jeanne was too indispensable to be left at the next port.

History is vague on the partnership between Jeanne and Philibert. Perhaps not giving Jeanne Baret the credit she deserved. After all, it was unusual for a woman to accomplish what she did, not only circumnavigating the globe but also contributing to the journey’s botanical discoveries.

Though unschooled, Jean became a major contributor to the expedition through diligent study and hard work. Ambition was her mentor, and she became an equal collaborator to the stoic botanist, leaving her name, and her inspiring story, in the history books.

Ambition... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

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AMBITION

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Born to Make a Difference.

Kids these days. Seems they spend most of their time with their noses pointed at their phones or their eyeballs frantically moving to the flashes of video games. It’s easy to be a bit pessimistic about the future. But if you look closely, there are young minds solving major world problems.

Jahkil Jackson distributes “Blessing Bags” for the homeless in Chicago: toiletries, snacks, socks and other essentials. Jahkil started his work at 9 years old.

In Bali, preteen sisters Melati and Isabel Wijsen began a campaign to clean up the beaches and rid their country of plastic pollution in 2008. Bali is now plastic-free. But they are not done. They are now focused on the rest of Indonesia.

And speaking of cleanups, Ryan Hickman was 7 years old when he started Ryan’s Recycling. He collects over 200,000 bottles and cans a year from 50 customers.

In Sierra Leone, Kelvin Doe started bringing electricity and a community radio station to rural villages by making batteries and a transmitter out of recycled materials. He was 13 years old. Most importantly, Kelvin showed other children that they can make a difference. (Today, Kelvin is a songwriter and engineer, still working to inspire young people)

Teenager Boyan Slat has raised over $13 million for his project Ocean Cleanup that uses the ocean’s natural currents to collect plastic pollution.

At age 15, Ann Makosinski invented a flashlight that uses body heat for power to keep batteries out of landfills.

Kids around the world are raising millions of dollars for cancer research, literacy and environmental causes simply by running lemonade stands, sewing headbands and selling bracelets.

So the next time you get a little worried about what today’s kids are up to, rest assured they are using whatever resources they have to make life better for their generation, and beyond.

Hope... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

HOPE

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Pass It On^®

Laughter is the Best Teacher.

Miss Arbury teaches history at the local high school. On the excitement scale, learning history for most kids sits somewhere between math and art. A few cool things and lots of facts to memorize. And yet Miss Arbury’s classes have been the favorites at her school for over two decades. Students arrive early, sit quietly, and wait for class to begin. What could possibly make rowdy high school students so suddenly eager to learn?

When all are settled, Miss Arbury enters the classroom decked out in the full regalia of a British soldier during the revolutionary war. There are a few snickers as she approaches an old boom box. She pushes play and throws herself into a cheesy rap about the Boston Tea Party and the Declaration of Independence. She then challenges students to a rap off where they have to rhyme their responses to taxation without representation. Miss Arbury is not a good dancer. She looks nothing like a British soldier. She is short, a little round and by her own admission is mostly tone deaf. But the kids love it. And they know to come prepared with their own rhymes about world history.

At lunch time the cafeteria is abuzz with kids laughing about Miss Arbury’s history class. She dresses up as a witch when teaching about the Salem Witch Trials. Wears a Winston Churchill mask when discussing the Battle of Britain. Her British accent is not even close, but the kids remember what she teaches.

At the end of the semester the lesson becomes clear. In order to make the future better we have to understand the past. Having a good laugh along the way makes the lesson much easier to remember. “I try to launch these kids into the future with a better understanding of how far we’ve come and how much more we can do,” Miss Arbury says. And then adds wryly: “You know, the court jester always taught the most profound lessons.”

Humor... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

HUMOR

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Sometimes, Quiet Listening has the Power to Save a Life

For most of us, teaching seventh-grade English would be akin to an eternal assignment teaching flying monkeys to sit still. Just thinking about it, we might feel Dorothy’s terror at being carried away. But not for Miss Smith.

For 40 years, she stood in front of her classroom, tapping the blackboard where an inspirational quote was drawn neatly in D’Nealian cursive. “Open your notebooks and write,” she would instruct. If a student was late, she would simply say: “Write about why you are tardy.” The content and style didn’t matter. It was the connection of thought to paper that was the aim.

If you scribble long enough, those thoughts will turn into feelings, and feelings on paper become visible, tangible enough to examine. The angst of seventh grade, that cusp of puberty and blender of emotions, needs an outlet. Miss Smith knew this. She knew students in the throes of adolescence needed to develop their own guidance systems, or they would be tossed about by the forces that surrounded them. Most of the quotes she carefully wrote on the chalkboard were affirmational, inspirational, and encouraged self-reflection. Most of the notebooks were filled with the kind of drivel you would expect, like looking forward to tacos for lunch and describing in detail the teacher’s desk at the head of the classroom, or worse, line after line stating I don’t know what to write today.

Regardless, Miss Smith read every entry and, in neat red handwriting, jotted notes of encouragement and praise. Some students who wandered through her class went on to become journalists and fiction writers. But those were not the ones who needed saving.

Before she passed away, she reminisced about the thousands of students she had. Most were flying monkeys, bounding off to other places. And there were the writers who made her proud; they sent her letters thanking her for getting them to think. But the ones she remembered most were those who found a way to release emotions through pen on paper. Pen because it is permanent, and you can’t change the past; you have to just move forward in a new way, with a new sentence. There were the boys who couldn’t find the courage to stand up to an abusive father but found refuge in a few words that discharge negative feelings. There were girls in angst over rejection by peers, and some who had deep traumas. The first sentence in their notebooks read, “Please don’t read this.”

These were the students, the children fighting to become adults, that Miss Smith focused on. She would read Shakespeare and ask how Romeo must’ve felt being rejected by his friends and family, how Juliet felt not being able to express love to her own mother. The archetypes in literature gave permission for emotional growth in a safe way, and the words inside those notebooks became more and more personal as the year went on.

The letter Miss Smith remembers most was from a young man named Rob, some years after he quietly wrote meaningless sentences in his notebook just to get by in her class. He told her his parents were alcoholics, that there seemed to be no future for him, that he knew he was a mistake to them. But she made him feel like he was more. He said he’d stayed alive to see what that more was going to be.

Mentors... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

MENTORS

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The Simplest Word in our Language Can be the Most Inclusive

Junior high school can be a punishing place. It’s where extroverts thrive, introverts are pushed aside and class distinctions are sharply defined as adolescents try to find a place to belong.

Jennifer moved from Cincinnati to a small town in New England in the seventh grade. Not an easy transition, since nearly every kid at the school had grown up in the town and social groups were well established. Jennifer walked the hallways alone for the first few days. Ate lunch alone. Walked home alone. On each corner of the town square sat an old stone church, four different denominations. It felt to Jennifer that every family had their place, and “no vacancy” signs were posted on every clique at school. Then one day, Cathy, the girl next to her in class, said “Hi.”

A simple greeting can become a life preserver. The two talked, and it turned out they had much in common. More friends were introduced, including a boy nicknamed Gizzy, who lived next door to Jennifer. Their bedroom windows were only 12 feet apart. That made for the kind of meandering, late-night conversations where budding teenagers try to uncover meaning in the vortex of new emotions with a little darkness and distance between them to temper their vulnerabilities.

Cathy, Jennifer and Gizzy remained good friends through high school, those years on which it seems so much of our life depends. There were all the friend things: Football games and swimming holes and school dances, events that shape your social life if you are included. But high school doesn’t last long, and soon Jennifer went west for college. She called Cathy, sent pictures, met a boy and got engaged. A friend 2,500 miles away is still somebody to share secrets with, and those growing-up years create bonds on the most fragile introductions. That word “hi” can do so much for a person over the years.

Five years out of high school, Jennifer called Cathy. “Hi” was all she could say before bursting into tears. Jennifer had just gotten the news: Gizzy had died in a car accident. That “hi” was all that needed to be said, because behind it were all the emotions of “I need you. I want to be near you, somehow. Stay on the phone even when I’m not talking.”

“Hi” can mean so much at the right time. Even the entire span of the country doesn’t diminish true friendship. Like those conversations at night with a little space and moonlight between friends, love can find its honesty and its forever.

Who will you say “hi” to today?

Hi... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

HI

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Pass It On^®

How One Life Can Change a World

On the choppy waters of the Bay of Bengal, somewhere between Rangoon and the northeast coast of India, a ship packed with migrant workers returns to Andhra Pradesh. One of the workers stares out at the waves and has a dream about the 2-year-old son he hasn’t seen since birth. The dream is filled with colors—and promise.

When he returns to his village, the man requests a meeting with the elders. Although he is low in the caste system, the father declares his son to be the chosen one of the village. After much time in the small Hindu temple, the elders agree, and the young son, Sam (as he would come to be known), becomes the only child in the village chosen to go to school. They christen him in the river with rose petals and perfumes, and in a few years, they buy his school uniform and books. At 5 years old, Sam walks through the jungle to another village a few miles away.

“I cried every morning because I was afraid,” Sam remembers. “And I cried on the way home because I couldn’t be with my friends, only with my books, until late in the evening.”

Callings come in many ways—that inner voice that touches your passion and ignites your soul. For Sam, his calling was education, even as he learned English by scratching out sentences on a cracked slate.

“I talked to the monkeys when I walked home alone until I wasn’t afraid anymore,” he says. “I taught them English grammar.”

As he grew older, the next school was even farther away, a two-hour walk each way.

“Even though many in my village resented me, and I often felt alone, I kept going,” says Sam, who continued his schooling even when his father died, leaving the family to fend for themselves for survival. “I knew that I was chosen to do something for them, even if they didn’t understand it at the time.”

When Sam finished public school, he was accepted to a small junior college. It meant he would have to leave his mother and brother living at the lowest level of poverty in the village. He wouldn’t see them for two years. But his soul was good, and he was patient, even as his heart hurt. After a year of college, one of his professors pressed Sam to apply to American universities. A year later, Sam boarded an airplane for the first time with a National Scholarship under his arm and headed to Oklahoma.

In college, his soul lit up, and he reveled in learning all he could absorb. From there, it was on to Washington, D.C., for a doctoral degree and a career in the Education Department.

Finally, Sam could fulfill the dream his father had for him: to bring education to the village. For years, the students had gathered on a hard-packed dirt lot and traced the alphabet in the dust. Sam never bought a house but, instead, lived in apartments and sent most of his money back to the village to build a new school and pay for teachers. A brick building went up on the dirt lot. Computers arrived, along with electricity and the internet. Sam returned every summer to work with the minister of education and invite every child to school, regardless of their place in the caste system.

“I have much,” he says. “So I give much.”

His father would be proud.

Giving Back... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

GIVING BACK

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Pass It On^®

Extending a Hand Even During Personal Struggle

For years, Arthur ran a car dealership in a small town on the edge of the Australian Outback. The lot was full of the kind of vehicles that could take you into a stark landscape, and at night, the sky overhead blossomed with stars, anchored by the Southern Cross.

Everybody in town knew Arthur. He was fair dinkum, as they say, genuine and straight-up honest. He strolled the streets of the town, a handsome figure with handsome children in a climate that was much like him—warm, mostly, without much variation. And while he had employees that loved him and were as warm as he was, one mechanic was, as his son recalls, “recalcitrant.” The son asked why his father kept the man on. The only answer he ever got was, “Ahh, he’s all right.”

It seems unfair, what happened next. Arthur lost a son in a car accident, on the way to church no less. And it left Arthur cloudy for some time. His employees did their best to keep his spirits up, but it was a grief that stays around, an unwanted visitor. Yet Arthur never lost his smile. Not long after, Arthur’s wife got sick, the kind of illness that doesn’t go away, only gets worse. It required more time at home and less time at the dealership. The employees did the best they could, except for the mechanic. He was difficult as ever, but Arthur saw something deeper in him that he hadn’t seen before. What pain had the mechanic been through that caused him to harbor bitterness? Arthur would never know.

As his wife became bedridden, Arthur sold all the cars and trucks on the lot and shut down the dealership. The employees all found work at other lots, except for the mechanic. While Arthur cared for his ailing wife, he kept the mechanic on the payroll for over a year until he found work. It’s the sort of thing you rarely hear of. But Arthur was his only safety net, and his heart could not let a man be forgotten, no matter how recalcitrant he was.

Arthur tenderly took care of his wife for seven years until she passed away. His life consisted of cleaning and caring and sitting with her in the sun. The mechanic softened just enough to visit a couple of times, but he had not yet learned how to be fully grateful. That was OK with Arthur. He had done what he knew was right, and in the end, he wanted to be fair dinkum with everybody, even the ones who couldn’t appreciate it yet.

We often reserve compassion for those who we believe deserve it. But real compassion is when we offer it without judgment, even to those around us who may not yet have the capacity to return the favor.

Compassion... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

COMPASSION

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The Life and Influence of John James Audubon

Before photography, the natural world was captured in paintings and sketches by artists like John Audubon, whose remarkable illustrations of birds have endured for 200 years. One of his contemporaries remarked that Audubon’s work “represented the passions and feelings of the birds,” something photography could not do.

As a boy growing up in France, John James Audubon loved the woods and spent hours roaming in the wild, collecting avian curiosities—bird nests and eggs—and made crude drawings. After a failed stint in the Navy, his father sent him to America, where he immediately caught Yellow Fever and was placed in a boardinghouse run by Quakers, who nursed him back to health and taught him English.

While his father hoped his curious son would make something of himself in mining or some other enterprise, John Audubon was consumed with the natural world. “Hunting, fishing, drawing, and music occupied my every moment,” he writes. His other main interest was young Lucy Bakewell. The natural world held her interest as well, and the two were married.

Awakened by the need to provide for his family, John tried his hand as a storeowner yet failed. His next business also failed. He provided for his family by hunting and fishing but was soon thrown into jail for debt. Lucy began teaching school, and when John was released, he went off into the wilderness in buckskins, carrying little more than a musket, hatchet and drawing materials. There, at last, he found his calling.

The natural composition, details and color of a hand-colored Audubon engraving are remarkable. The artist is a keen observer of detail and captures the romanticism of an American wilderness worth preserving. Audubon sojourned for months at a time in the wilderness, rising long before dawn to observe and returning in full light to paint all afternoon. The careful and precise pen strokes belie Audubon’s determined character. At one point, he lost over 200 drawings, his entire collection, when rats found their way into his cabin and chewed them up. Undaunted, he started over.

After 14 years of tramping in the wilderness with pen and ink, he had his collection. But the popularity of avian drawings was slow to catch on in America. Still, he refused to give up. He earned enough to pay for passage to Europe to take his chances there.

To his good fortune, he was well received in England. His 435 original works were engraved, hand-painted and sewn into books that came to be known as the greatest picture book ever created: Birds of America. A contemporary French critic wrote, “A magic power transported us into the forests which for so many years this man of genius has trod. Learned and ignorant alike were astonished….”

Ultimately, John Audubon opened our minds not only to the beauty around us but also to the beauty of possibilities—if we just keep trying.

Perseverance... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

PERSEVERANCE

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Mary Anderson, the Woman who Invented the Windshield Wiper

Sometimes it just takes looking at things a little differently in order to solve a problem. Sometimes we don’t even realize there is a problem until we ask questions that begin with why?

We tend to think of inventors as those bespectacled, thick-apron-wearing individuals bending over workbenches all day, tinkering. But inside each of us is a natural curiosity that we can tap into if we just take the time to think. Sometimes we need a change of scenery to arouse our senses. And so it was with Mary Anderson.

Mary was born on an Alabama plantation during Reconstruction, just after the Civil War. Those years of rebuilding a country required strong individuals, and Mary was one of them. She moved to Birmingham, Alabama, and became a real estate developer, then on to Fresno, California, to operate a cattle ranch and vineyard.

In 1903, Mary visited New York City, the bustling metropolis that was fast becoming the center of enterprise. It was winter, and Mary jumped aboard a trolley car. She became slightly annoyed at how often the driver had to stop and clear the windshield on that frosty day. Of course, nobody else had thought to solve the problem. It was just one of those things drivers accepted.

When Mary returned home, she went right to work on a spring-loaded lever with a rubber blade that the driver could operate from inside the trolley car. She patented the device before Henry Ford rolled out his first automobile.

Unfortunately for Mary, she never made any money from her invention. It was deemed too dangerous to operate a hand lever to clean the windshield while driving. But by 1922, after Mary’s patent expired, Cadillac included wipers on all their cars. Driving was more popular, cars got faster and Mary’s invention was exactly what they needed.

It wasn’t until 2011 that Mary Anderson was inducted into the International Inventors Hall of Fame, finally getting the recognition she so rightfully deserved. Meanwhile, although Mary wasn’t financially successful with her invention, she was successful as a real estate developer, rancher and viticulturalist. And she did make the history books for an invention that was years ahead of its time — simply because she wanted to see a little more clearly.

Innovation... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

INNOVATION

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The Legacy of Dorothy Vaughan.

Dorothy Vaughan was born in Kansas City, Missouri, just 45 years after the Civil War ended. At times, her load must have felt heavy, earthbound, during a time when African American women questioned how they would move beyond the barriers they faced. She looked for answers in two places: the African Methodist Episcopal Church, where she sang in the choir, and mathematics. She graduated high school as valedictorian and later earned a mathematics degree, cum laude, from Wilberforce University.

During the Great Depression, she supported her family as a math teacher. Her career as a human computer at NASA didn’t begin until she’d been teaching for 14 years.

Imagine going from trying to hold the attention of schoolkids to specializing in calculations for flight paths. Dorothy’s flight trajectory was similar to the one she plotted for John Glenn to orbit the moon. She became the supervisor over 400 human computers and taught herself the computer language FORTRAN, which she then taught to her coworkers. All of these accomplishments led to her greatest honor: being part of the team that put a man on the moon.

Dorothy stayed at NASA for 28 years and retired in 1971 having lived through slide rules to computers and segregation to desegregation. She received the Presidential Medal of Honor from President Obama and was posthumously honored by having a moon crater named after her.

As children, we often look at the moon with awe and wonder. Dorothy Vaughan saw possibilities. She applied herself to her education knowing the opportunities would follow even though the road would be harder for her than for many others heading in the same direction. As a supervisor at NASA, she was active in championing rights and opportunities for all women. Her own daughter followed in those big footsteps to also work at NASA.

Dorothy Vaughan pushed through the gravity that held women and minorities earthbound to inspire generations of dreamers and achievers. When you shoot for the moon, you’re not just setting your own sights high — you’re inspiring all those around you to be the best they can be.

Shoot for the Moon... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

SHOOT FOR THE MOON

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Pass It On^®

How Kids Have Used Their Imagination to Create Some of the Most Beloved Products

We always talk about the beauty of a child’s unlimited imagination, as if we long to capture and access those curiosities into our adulthood. It is indeed a wonder what children come up with. And maybe if we practice seeing the world through their eyes, we might see the world differently ourselves---one of endless possibilities. So here are a few things born of childhood curiosity.

In 1905, 11-year-old Frank Epperson mixed a concoction of soda powder and water. It was the dead of winter, and he forgot about his little experiment until morning. Of course it was frozen when he found it the next day, with the stirring stick still in the glass. The Popsicle® was born and still delights children on summer afternoons today.

Christmas trees once were adorned with candles. The tradition of lighted trees dates back to the 16th century. In 1917, 15-year-old Albert Sadacca strung together novelty lights from his parents’ lighting company. Imagine his delight if he could see today’s neighborhood light festivals!

Kids invented the trampoline, the snowmobile, earmuffs, and even Braille. Today we see kids building wind generators to pump water, recycling plastic into road bricks, starting community gardens and even developing technology that detects cyberbullying.

Gitanjali Rao is the 15-year-old girl who developed the Kindly app. Using artificial intelligence, Kindly detects cyberbullying at an early stage so kids know when to tune out, call out or unfriend. Gitanjali was named Time Magazine’s first-ever Kid of the Year. “Our generation is facing so many problems that we’ve never seen before,” she says in the Time interview. “But then, at the same time, we’re facing old problems that still exist. More than anything right now, we need to find what we are passionate about and solve it.”

Imagination is an infinite resource. It prompted a young Benjamin Franklin to develop swim fins and, later on, hundreds of inventions like eyeglasses, projectors, even a lightning rod (don’t try that at home).

In that deep well of imagination, we can find the solutions to the problems that plague us, even if we are getting a little long in the tooth. So the next time you see a group of kids lost in their imaginations, smile and ask: “Hey, do you mind passing along a bit of that creative thinking?”

Imagination... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

IMAGINATION

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The Power of Just Being There

Bill is a Navy vet and retired oil field engineer. His hands are thick, and his fingers branch out in all directions. Pulling on ropes as a sailor off the coast of Maine gnarled a few of them. The others were jammed playing baseball in the South African semi-pro league. He has a story for every break, and for why he leans a bit starboard. He moved back to America late in his career and, after raising his three daughters, found himself with some free time on his hands. So he got to know the boys in the neighborhood who played on the high school baseball team and started going to their games.

Baseball is a game of nuance, mental acuity, and patience. And so is mentoring young men.

Bill simply sat in the stands and watched. It’s a pleasant pastime, whether on summer evenings under the lights or beneath the midafternoon sun and it suited Bill to watch the boys develop their skills. Before long, the boys started looking up at Bill, his elbows on his knees, almost crouching in his familiar catcher’s squat. After a good play, Bill would flash a thumbs-up. An error would earn a smile that meant, “You’ll get another chance.”

It’s rare to see a bond that bridges generations. Bill in his late seventies, the boys just north of earning their driver’s licenses. But soon they were chatting after the games, Bill mostly talking about dusty expeditions into the middle of nowhere in search of new oil fields and the boys asking about playing catcher with such a small glove. Sometimes there were sodas afterward, no heavy discussions about life, just a cool drink, a few laughs and the clack of baseball cleats on the sidewalk as the boys made their way to their cars.

In all his time running crews, playing baseball, and raising kids, Bill had figured out the one thing that’s most important in all of human relationships. Just being there is most often enough. He knew the mistakes he’d made in his life, and when you shook his hand, those fingers testified to a life lived trying. And that’s where every story he told the boys led: Just keep trying. The boys learned to expect a little more from themselves just because Bill was there.

Be There... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

BE THERE

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How a Community of One Grows to Include More

Richard is a quiet man with a gentleness that belies his height. He stands a good four inches over six feet but has a friendly-giant smile that embraces everyone around him. He makes a modest living that allows him time for a hobby he is passionate about---raising pigeons.

On Saturday mornings, you’ll see his small flock rise out of his backyard and circle the neighborhood. It isn’t long before a group of boys gather on Richard’s front lawn. You see, Richard raises rollers, a breed of pigeon that flutters mid-flight and tumbles downward as if pelted by some unseen projectile. After dropping 10 or so feet, the pigeon regains its bearings, rights its wings and pulls out of the dive. The acrobatics draw gasps and cheers. Over and over again the pigeons tumble out of control and then, at the last minute, save themselves. Sometimes a red-tailed hawk will drift in on the summer currents, adding to the drama. The hawk flies in among the pigeons, who daringly escape by keeling over and tumbling toward the ground before flying off to safety.

Richard helps some of the boys build their own pigeon coops and shows them how to raise rollers and homing pigeons. Along the way, two boys named Dee and Miles become fast friends. Some days Richard, a group of boys, and a few dads load up the old station wagon with cages and drive out across the desert to release their pigeons. Richard and the group stop for burgers and then drive home to see whose pigeons made it back first. There’s lots of time for conversation, mostly the boys asking Richard questions. But he doesn’t miss the moment to teach them. “There is always a way home,” he says. “You just have to look for it.”

Miles listens intently. He struggles in school, hiding his learning disability behind a smirk. But he is the most willing to help Richard clean out the coop and lend a hand to the others as they build their own coops. As the years go by, the other boys go off to college, and Miles takes up a shovel to make a living. He saves his money and buys a backhoe, then a dump truck, and another, and another.

He works hard, but also drinks hard. His marriage falls apart, even though his business grows. He resists any call to come back to his childhood friends. More years pass. He is lost on a cloudless horizon. The image of pigeons tumbling out of the sky becomes his life. He is in freefall. Hawks circle, waiting for him to hit the ground.

But he doesn’t. One friend never gives up. His old friend Dee reaches out over and over until Miles has the strength to right himself. They talk about their love for Richard, who brought them together—the quiet, simple man who made time to teach boys a little something about life. And they talk about how each of them has taken their turn freefalling for a time, tumbling until they could get their bearings. There is always a way home again.

Community... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

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COMMUNITY

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Believe in Others

Wrestling is the ultimate sport: One-on-one, you win or lose; it’s up to you. Which sounds a bit harsh to gangly high school boys trying to fit in socially as well as win a little respect on the mat. They look more like flying monkeys than athletes, and only a few have grown into their singlets. Michael stands in a circle with the other boys. At the center of it all is Coach Dave, a former college wrestler, now history teacher, who doesn’t miss a moment to inspire this gawky clan with tales of Spartan warfare. Sometimes he talks about his heritage: the strength of his Hispanic mother and the determination of his Dutch father. It all melds into a philosophy of believing in yourself.

“I honestly believe each kid can win every match,” Coach Dave says. “And I tell them that.”

The mental strength gained from a coach is as important as physical strength. And Michael soaked it up, the same way blood was sopped up in old socks pinched on bloody noses. As a freshman, Michael lost half his matches, but the next year the practice began to pay off.

“It finally just clicks,” Michael says. “You walk onto the mat, and you know you’re going to win. All the hours practicing and visualizing suddenly align, and when Coach Dave tells you how you are going to beat an opponent, you just go out and do it.”

At a tournament in Reno, Michael was ranked nationally and faced a wrestler from the Midwest ranked a few spots above him. In the final seconds of the match, ahead by one point, Michael clung to the lead while his opponent clung to his ankle, trying to get a takedown. Michael was hopping his way out of the circle to gain a restart. It’s the easy way out, like a boxer ducking out of the ring to get a breather and preserve a lead. With his back to his opponent, he took one more step. The opponent grabbed the other ankle, and Michael went down. Two points. Match over.

It’s hard to know who was more disappointed, Michael or Coach Dave. They sat in a corner, and Dave asked one question: “Are you going to run away from challenges in life or turn and face them?” Michael knew exactly what he’d done wrong---and that it could become a lifelong flaw if he didn’t correct it. All he had to do was turn into his opponent and counterattack. “You’ll beat him next time,” Coach Dave said.

That tournament was a double-elimination tournament, and Michael would go through the losers bracket all the way to the finals and win the tournament. That’s the comeback part, but not the most important part of the story. He would win a lot of matches that year. But the encouragement from that folding chair sanctuary is where he learned the most.

“When someone believes in you like that, you know you can do it,” Michael says. “I often hear Coach Dave when I’m in tough situations. ‘No excuses, just do it.’ That encouragement has been my guide.”

This is not the story of an extraordinary young man making his way to the Olympics or the top echelons of NASA. It is the story of a young man who worked his way through law school---twelve-hour days and a shift each night as a cook at a BBQ joint. “I changed my habits because of his belief in me,” recalls Michael, now a volunteer coach at the high school. “I try and be that person to these young men. You need people in your life who believe in you. They become part of who you are.”

When someone believes in us, we gain the strength to do the work we have to do.

Believe in Others... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

BELIEVE IN OTHERS

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Get Up Early and Give Back

On a Sunday morning so cold the only people on the streets are the unhoused, the Rev stands, wearing an apron, near the entrance to a warehouse. A line of people gathers outside the Reverend’s ministry. There’s free coffee while they wait. Volunteers inside arrived early to get cooking: Egg casseroles, pasta, hamburgers and hotdogs, French toast, fresh fruit and fresh salad. While the warming stands are being stocked, the Rev offers a brief sermon and prayer. This is his congregation, and he knows what they need: inspiring words about pushing through hard times, asking God to help find a job, a blessing on the nation, a humble ask that all present will find peace.

At some time or another, all of us will experience the anxiety that comes with uncertainty and the heartbreak that comes with tragedy. In these times, a good friend is good medicine. One of the regular volunteers expressed why he has kept showing up every Sunday morning for the past 20 years: “The Rev was there when I needed a friend. I’m just repaying the favor.”

Being there when somebody needs a friend can provide the reassurance they need to keep going. And you don’t have to be an expert at it. There are just a couple of things you need to be good at. Being nonjudgmental is the beginning. You don’t need to solve the person’s problems; simply listening is enough. Sometimes, saying “It’s OK, I’m here with you” is all a person needs.

As the patrons of the Rev’s breakfast ministry file in, they are greeted with smiles, warm food and compliments from folks who will be with them for the next couple of hours. Every volunteer has a story about redemption, about rising above all odds, about a desire now to pay it back. “We don’t turn anybody away,” the Rev says. “Some people need us more than they need the food. And we need them.”

Some of the people serving have lost loved ones to drug addiction or were addicts themselves. There are those who lost jobs and came back when they were on solid ground. What they all have in common is being in a place where they know their morning is going to be a little bit better.

“We got hot food and warm hearts in here!” the Rev shouts out. “Amen,” comes the response. Amen.

Give Back... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

GIVE BACK

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Finding Slow Purpose in a Fast World

In quiet neighborhoods, you find quiet people going about their lives, doing good things. Harold is one of those people. An introvert by nature, he finds himself happiest while changing the brake pads on an old truck or replacing a water heater.

A mechanic by trade, Harold lost his job in his early sixties. His wife Jeannette teaches English at the local high school. With their own kids grown, they don’t need a lot or want a lot. There is something liberating about being frugal and staying out of debt, even if it comes because you simply don’t see the need for a lot of stuff. So Harold and Jeannette live simple lives. And while his wife is in the classroom, Harold makes the rounds in the neighborhood. There’s always a widow who needs a faucet fixed or a teenager with a first car that needs the shock absorbers changed or the tires rotated.

Harold approaches each day the same way he has for years. He pulls on his coveralls and goes to work. He doesn’t run a small business, but he has a big heart. And while his wife teaches students to be clear in thought and articulation, Harold economizes language as if he is saving it up for some future outpouring.

“Yep, you got a leak. I’ll get my toolbox.” That’s about as much as you’ll get out of Harold. Even when you thank him, he’ll just wave.

In a world of oversharing, channels of information that flood our screens, and myriad ways to communicate, if you want to talk to Harold, you have to wander over to his workshop and knock on the door. There’s something reassuring, almost spiritually grounding, knowing that amid a chaos of change, there’s Harold, in his gray coveralls, with a wrench in his thick hands, willing to put his back into fixing the mechanical things that stress us out. Watching him work, slowly and methodically, is a Zen experience, gratifyingly meditative. Remove the old pipe, haul it to his truck, cut and thread a new pipe---the oil and shavings dripping into an old coffee can. He’s done this hundreds of times and knows how not to make a mess, not to rush. The pipe joint is dry-fitted, then pulled apart, pipe dope applied, then wrenched together. There’s no frustration, no hurry, only an ease and satisfaction in things being done right.

At the end of Harold’s life, his good deeds will come pouring out in the words of friends and family, a rush of appreciation that would have embarrassed their good-hearted neighbor with the skilled hands.

“He was there when I needed a hand,” many will say. And indeed, what a valuable thing that is these days. After all, our purpose is not to get the most likes, but to like most what we do for others.

Purpose... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

PURPOSE

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A tradition of kindness on the Appalachian Trail

The Appalachian Trail is a rugged footpath that runs from Northern Georgia to Central Maine along the crest of the Appalachian Mountains. It passes through 14 states and all kinds of unpredictable weather. At age 21, Nick, an avid outdoorsman raised in Maine, decided the journey would be a good adventure. The trek takes an average of 6 months. Hiking 20 miles a day through the wilderness for 5 or 6 months will get you to a place you’ve never been before.

“I guess I wasn’t prepared for two things,” says Nick. “How hard sections of the trail were going to be, and all the small acts of kindness along the way that kept me going.” Those thru-hikers who complete the entire 2,200 miles talk about trail magic, little acts of kindness that happen at exactly the time they are needed. “I had been living on filtered water and granola bars for a month, my legs were aching, my body hurt, and I was having that once-a-week feeling of quitting. I came around a corner, and there was a bag of clementines hanging from a tree. A small thing at home, but on the trail, the taste of that fresh fruit was so amazing it kept me going for days.”

As Nick learned, the people who live in the towns that border the trail see it as a privilege to give. “People blindside you with kindness,” Nick says. They provide rides into town when hikers need to replenish. They open their homes to a fresh shower after months on the trail. And they offer encouragement to keep going.

Sweet oranges are one thing. But after Nick’s first two weeks on the trail, an unseasonable cold front hit Northern Georgia. Normal temperatures of 20 or 30 degrees Fahrenheit dipped down to 0, and the wind gusted through the branches above. Nick remembers doing situps in his thin sleeping bag all night to keep warm. “I got started early the next morning because I was so cold and had to get moving. I couldn’t feel my toes until noon. The next stop was a lean-to 20 miles away, and I decided that if the night was as miserable as the last, I would pack it in. It got dark, and really cold again. But when I entered the lean-to, somebody had brought up two down comforters---hiked the seven miles in from town hauling two comforters. I was so tired and relieved, I cried. I never slept better in my life.”

Nick would go on, experiencing small acts of kindness that motivated him and discovering that his own small acts of kindness kept others going, too. “When you have extra food, you share it. You share a campfire. When it’s raining sideways, you build a wall with rain ponchos. You work together. You encourage other thru-hikers to keep going,” Nick says. “Once you get through Virginia, you get this energy high because you know you are part of something greater that will support you. You learn to trust it. Not rely on it, just trust it. Your hope develops. And when it’s all over, you realize how great the people in this country are.”

Trail magic is kindness in action, kindness without being seen. Kindness that becomes the change we all need.

Kindness... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

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www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

KINDNESS

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Being There, Being Present

Fifty years ago, autumn in a small town meant the annual coming of age ritual that brings boys and their fathers together: the Pinewood Derby. Long before technology and yearlong organized sports, there was room in the calendar for a month of evenings together, carving, sanding, gluing, polishing axles, and finally christening. Naming a car is a prophetic proclamation; one that would be heard echoing off the musty walls of the Elks Club, the local community center or the basement of the Episcopalian church. There was the chalk leader board, the wooden racetrack clamped on sawhorses and tuned perfectly by old men who’d spent their lives with levels and squares and pencils riding behind their ears. The Red Flash. The Blue Demon. Little Lightning. Speedy Bill. Before the race, the ceremonial walk-around---each car is displayed and confident boys soak in the accolades. The room was full of anticipation. Fathers reliving their youth and watching their sons become men.

In a corner was Scott, alone. No father. His car was a rough block painted red. The front axle was crooked. He stood with his head down. For boys like Scott, the real world seems so out of reach, like it’s spinning away and you’ll never have the chance to get on board no matter how badly you want to. Perhaps the worst experience for a boy of twelve is to be unnoticed. Making the rounds and admiring the craftsmanship was Mark. He noticed. He watched as boys and fathers moved silently past the clumsy red car. He took a few extra steps and stood in front of Scott. “I like the color,” he said. But Scott didn’t look up. He didn’t respond; he nervously tried to fix the axle.

The next time Mark would notice Scott would be at school. The final bell had rung and Scott’s teacher was blocking his way. “You’re too dumb to pass the fifth grade but I don’t want to deal with you anymore,” she said. Scott was looking down. Mark waited. He walked home with Scott that day, no words between them; they just weren’t in Mark’s vocabulary yet. So they walked. Mark would learn years later that Scott’s father was abusive, that is on the rare days when he was home. Scott’s mother left when he was small and Scott spent long hours alone and unnoticed. Soon after that walk, Scott and his father moved away and it would be a long time before Mark saw him again.

There is good counsel on teens recognizing depression and suicidal tendencies in their peers. Most of it begins by noticing and continues with the advice to be there, without judgment. A friend can make all the difference. Mark got married, and in those money-tight years dropped his car off at a neighborhood garage for repairs. That’s when he saw Scott again. “Your shop?” Mark asked. Scott smiled. “Look what I’m working on with my son.” Mark followed Scott through the garage to a corner where a half-finished hot rod rested on blocks, painted a familiar red.

Sometimes the whole world stops on a moment, and lets a boy climb aboard, unnoticed. “It’s beautiful,” Mark said. “Thank you,” Scott replied. “Thank you.”

Be There... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

BE THERE

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Courage To Do

In 1841, a physically imposing, twenty-three year-old Frederick Douglass leaned against the rail of a ferry headed for Nantucket. He contemplated the wake widening out behind him and second-guessed his decision to travel after 3 years of trying to remain inconspicuous as a runaway. But he had been invited by a group of abolitionists to attend a rally on Nantucket Island. The Fugitive Slave Act was still in force and Frederick risked being captured and a sure return to slavery by making the trip. The courage it took to take such a journey must have been summoned from deep within his soul.

Little did Frederick Douglass know; this was the beginning of his courageous and history-altering journey. He would go on to help shape the opinions and the words of Abraham Lincoln.

Born with Spina Bifida, 12-year-old Mitchell couldn’t walk. He longed to be with his scout troop in the outdoors but was afraid to impose on the others who would have to somehow get him to camp. When the time arrived to trek to a spot in the high desert, the scoutmaster asked the other boys how they felt about Mitchell. To a boy, they all agreed that he should go. They built a special litter of Aspen poles and carried Mitchell the 3 miles up a rugged trail. It took a lot of courage for the first boy to raise a hand in support, and courage by the others to join in. It became the journey of a lifetime for each boy as they paired off and took turns carrying Mitchell up the mountain.

There are times in each of our lives that will require us to carry more than our fair share of weight, to take courage. And times when we will certainly shrink from the call. Kate, a gregarious teenage girl was reluctant to speak up to passing comments about her race. Though made casually, and by friends, they were still hurtful. Kate could not find the courage to confront her friends until her senior year. At a community gathering to promote unity, she was asked to speak. “When we are quick to judge, or when we make false assumptions about any being, we are depriving them the chance to prove themselves as good people and from believing that there is a place where they belong,” she said pushing through her fears. “This country is built on ‘Trust in God’ and I believe that in the eyes of God, all are equal and equally loved.” There was silence as this brave girl stood and looked out at the hundreds of eyes watching her. And then, applause. Sometimes courage is as simple as saying the right thing, at the right time.

For Frederick Douglass, Kate, and a group of young boys, they each acted on something bigger than themselves, something defined as courage---a word that moves us ahead into unknown waters while leaving a wake behind much bigger than ourselves.

Courage... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

COURAGE

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Earning Trust

Nancy was suddenly a single mother. Her husband of 17 years passed away leaving her with kids to finish raising and no savings. Nancy was from a hardworking family but she lacked skills. Desperate for work she answered an ad for a housecleaner. The house turned out to be a luxury apartment, one of many properties the eccentric owner moved between as he went about his International business. The interview was short. A little paperwork and an assignment: clean the apartment. Anxious to impress, Nancy got right to work thoroughly turning over cushions, vacuuming the hidden places, scrubbing down the tiled places and not cutting corners on cleaning the windows. The first handful of change she found in the couch. The second she found under the bed. A few crumpled dollar bills and some coins could not mean much to such a rich man who seemed to be nonchalant with his spare change. But a few dollars to Nancy would mean she could come home with a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread. She smoothed the paper dollars and placed them in an ashtray and stacked the coins on top. When she was done cleaning, she left the apartment and locked the door behind her.

Dr. Brené Brown, a leading authority on human behavior, outlined the Seven Elements of Trust. Integrity is at the center. “You choose courage over comfort. You choose what is right over what is fun, fast, or easy. And you choose to practice your values rather than simply professing them.”

Nancy returned home to hungry and anxious kids. She remembered the lessons taught by her immigrant father: work hard, be honest. But the words didn’t put food on the table. The next day, Nancy got the job. Turns out the scattered money was the interview. Anybody can clean but few can be trusted. Nancy made enough money to take care of her family. And she became a confidant of her eccentric employer. He soon promoted her to his bookkeeper. And as time went by, she was trusted with finding the right legal and financial counsel. In every task there are the same elements: don’t cut corners, check the details everybody else passes over. Stick to your values. Nancy became a trusted personal assistant. To her,
managing millions of dollars was like a handful of coins, something to be trusted with to the penny. It’s been over 30 years since that first job interview for Nancy. In that time she has had the financial stability she needed to raise her family. And she’s had the peace of mind that comes from being somebody who can be trusted.

Trust... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

TRUST

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Forgiveness Heals Us

Forgiveness isn’t always as easy as it sounds. Sometimes we think it needs to be earned rather than freely given. As a young father, Davis was working to remodel and maintain his home. There’s nothing like the pride you take in that first home, no matter how much work it needs, it’s yours by sweat and sacrifice. So when he came home one night and caught two local teenagers breaking into his garage he was angry. They ran off, but he recognized them. And the following day confronted them and their parents. You’d expect a moment of truth, a reconciliation. But none came, only denial and character witnesses by the parents. A few weeks later Davis confronted one of the boys and threatened him. The boy confessed to some of the theft but Davis wasn’t satisfied. He stewed over the lies and the reluctant admission. Fathers of teenage boys know this feeling of incomplete restitution. It takes time for emotional maturity to develop to its completeness, so sometimes half an apology is just going to have to do. Years later Davis again ran into the now young men. They had grown up. They thanked Davis for not doing more when he caught them, like calling the police. They talked about college life, the future. For a moment, Davis was oddly unsatisfied; that is until he too apologized. He was sorry for losing his temper, and for not developing a better relationship with the boys in the first place. That’s when the tight strings around his heart loosened.

Remorse can motivate us to strengthen our character and see people differently, even seek forgiveness. But ruminating on the past will only hold us back. On the last day of Junior High School, the bell had rung and the exuberance of school ending turned into rowdiness. A shy girl had just cleaned out her locker and one of the rowdy boys kicked the books and papers out of her hands. They spilled everywhere, down the stairs and into the herd where her art projects and journals were trampled. In tears, she tried to collect a year’s worth of work. Ross watched briefly until his friends pulled him away and off to end-of-year parties he knew this girl would never get invited to. His eyes were fixed on the futility of a girl who didn’t fit in and was now cast out. He would regret not helping her the rest of his life.

Forgiveness sometimes comes slowly, a piece at a time. Sometimes it comes at unexpected moments so completely it overwhelms us. And sometimes, the hardest person to forgive is our self. Ross may never forgive his 14-year-old self. But he should. He should let the confusion of emotions he was feeling belong to his youthful lack of social courage. He should learn from it and forever be aware of other’s feelings so that he can become the person who will stand up for the unnoticed and unpopular members of his community. Because it is in those moments we all find redemption.

Forgiveness... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

FORGIVENESS

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Let Gratitude Move You to Action

Our modern culture tends to focus on past regrets and future uncertainty. It is the present where we need to focus, on who we are and what we can be. Something we could learn from the Ojibwe tribe in the mid-Northern states and Ontario, Canada. For the Ojibwe, names are less about what people call you and more for who you are. The name is a spiritual guide to lead through troubled times. The baby is brought before the name giver and a name is bestowed, usually based on a dream after a long fast. The ritual creates a time to be grateful for ancestors and a future of promise. A teenage boy who had grown close to an Ojibwe tribe was given a name in gratitude for his kindness to them: “Blue Between The Clouds.” When he asked what it meant he was told that even as the storm clouds gathered there was always a little bit of blue sky visible. “That is you, gratitude.”

What a difference it would make if each of us carried a name reminding us that we are Gratitude. Some cultures just better understand what a force gratitude can be---when it is given and when it is received.

In the midst of troubled times, we can still find gratitude. We can still express it in some way no matter our name. In June of 2020, a few months into the pandemic when the hospitalizations in New York City were overwhelming healthcare workers, a group of nurses flew in from the West Coast to lend a hand. One of the young nurses was assigned a mother of six children. She was on a ventilator, quarantined from her husband, and terrified. Carly, the young nurse decided to cheer her up by bringing a group of nurses together to sing “My Girl.” With a tube in her throat and needles in her arm, all the young mother could do was cry...and raise a few fingers to say thank you. There were tears all around, nurses who were grateful they could help and comfort, and a mother who was grateful they were there. At that moment, a little blue sky was visible between the clouds. With a simple hand gesture, the mother expressed her gratitude. “That little thank you changed me forever,” Carly says. “I went because I wanted to make a difference I came home grateful for what I learned.”
Gratitude moves us to be kinder. A widow who lost her husband in the midst of the pandemic felt alone. Her neighbors, grateful for over 50 years of friendship expressed their gratitude by delivering a box of fresh produce to her house every Monday during lockdown. It’s our gratitude for what we have and who has loved us that becomes the force to create the chain of good acts that bind us all together.

In the early morning quiet, when so many of us are awakened by the uncertainty of the coming day, we can find peace by mentally listing the things we are grateful for. The angst dissipates and we reach a new place in our life that we accept and appreciate. What’s next is to share. Send a random thank you note, make a call. Look around. There is always someone to thank. By doing so, we become something new; we are that blue between the clouds that makes all the difference in someone’s life.

Gratitude... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

GRATITUDE

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Love and Healing

Nelda was 23 years old and pregnant with her third daughter during the Great Depression, living in a hardscrabble western town with hard-packed dirt roads lined with desert flowers that somehow managed to push up through the cracked clay. Her husband found work on the Hoover Dam dangling from ropes with a hundred-pound drill. He died on the job. Nelda got the news two days later and sunk into a deep melancholy that would resurface throughout her life. With three small girls to take care of she worked as a postmaster at the small-town office that doubled as a general store. Neighbors dropped off bits of their harvest, widow’s mite offerings in those lean times. There wasn’t a lot of time to offer support and condolences; everybody was working sunup to sundown. But one friend suggested Nelda ease her pain by writing to servicemen injured in the war. It was a pen pal program begun by the Red Cross. So, Nelda introduced herself, not sure what to say.

Ross had been in the Merchant Marines in Canada. While working on a boiler, the thing exploded and injured his leg. He’d walk with a limp the rest of his life. He received Nelda’s letter while convalescing in Vancouver. And that’s how it began.

A year’s worth of letters made their way from the Western desert to the temperate coastal clime and back. She sent photographs of little girls in pinafores with sun-dried faces beside a young mother who smiled shyly at the camera. He wrote poetically of the rainsqualls that roll in from the Northern Pacific. Conversations took months to complete. Here were two people, each with a piece missing trying to fill each other’s spaces. There was time to respect each other’s scars, to embrace without the physical contact that can sometimes hurt if you’re not careful. They began to understand each other, to find love between lines. And so Ross wrote the letter that would change everything: Will you marry me? Love longs for answers. Love endures the wide spaces between hearts. Finally, a scented letter came. Ross hurriedly packed a few bags, including his tools and his best shirt, and drove down the coast; somewhere at the top of California he turned inland and ended up between Nevada and New Mexico.

There was a small wedding inside a clay brick church. Hand cut doilies and music from a Victrola. He would lead as they danced, supporting her thin body and fragile emotions. She would be patient with his slow left leg.

Ross opened a service station and thrilled Nelda with daring speed on long dirt roads in his automobile. He raised the girls and they called him daddy. He patted their soft heads with his big hands and walked the floors with Nelda when her darkness returned and anguish turned her breaths into sobs. Like the desert flowers, they always seemed to push through, enough love between them to bring on the beauty of another new day.

Love... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

LOVE

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Getting Outside is the Best Way to Get Rid of the Blues

Brad’s idea of a good time is to swim across the lake at the base of the Grand Tetons, then hike to the top peak and back again on the same day. Sometimes his wife Sheila will join him for the hike portion. He’s also summited with his two daughters, ages 19 and 15. They climb frozen waterfalls in the winter and ski the backcountry. In the summer they do 100-mile bike races together and afterward hold family pull-up contests on an abandoned trellis 30 feet above a sandy river. “Being in the wilderness is the best therapy I’ve found,” Sheila says. “It’s a stress reliever. It reduces anxiety.” Brad agrees. “If I’m in the middle of a stressful week at work I’ll get up at 4 in the morning and hike the nearest peak and watch the sunrise before going to the office.”

An article published in the Berkley News details the power of Nature therapy not only in reducing stress and anxiety, but also in dramatically reducing the symptoms of PTSD. This is the premise the National Abilities center is built on. The NAC draws in participants from all over the Country; veterans with PTSD, kids with autism, stroke survivors. It’s a mixed bag of humanity who landed on the unfairness side of life. And it’s a group that Brad and his family would join in the mountains.

Brad’s family was soon part of a larger family, skiing with autistic kids, mountain biking with veterans. The girls quickly connected with the kids they skied with. Sage, the oldest daughter remembers: “It’s a lot easier to bond with these kids. You instantly become friends because they are not encumbered by the same social cues. Their boundaries are different. They love easily.” The therapy was working both ways. Sienna recalls riding with a man in his mid-forties. He’d suffered a stroke two years earlier and his right side was paralyzed. Sienna rode beside his recumbent bike and listened to the man’s daughter sing gospel songs to encourage him along. “Days like that just bring out the best in us,” Sienna says. Amen. The forest and the clear sky beyond create a sense of connection beyond our small humanness. Just walking the trails or ambling along on a bicycle we become a part of something bigger. It’s that awe we feel that heals our emotions.

Brad’s wife Sheila was asked to teach a yoga class for veterans in that peaceful mountain setting. She didn’t give it much thought but two days before the class, her mother passed away. “I showed up vulnerable and hoping the class would be a distraction,” Sheila says. “And then I see people coming in, many missing limbs and I was totally unprepared. How do you teach yoga to someone who doesn’t have legs?” The class settled in and Sheila grew emotional. “I’ve just lost my mother,” she said. “We are all hurting in some way. But if we help each other out we’ll get through it.” She won’t forget that first class. When it was over, the whole class embraced. “It was a spiritual experience,” Sheila says, still tagged with the emotions of that day.

“Being in the wilderness has sustained our family through hard times,” Brad says. “And now we get to see how it heals our new friends,” Sheila adds.

Get Outside... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

GET OUTSIDE

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Pass It On^®

The Tenacity to See the Stars

One of the most often used behavioral descriptors today is Attention Deficit Disorder, which basically means unable to sit still or focus for longer than a few minutes. All parents know that ADD worsens when chores or homework are involved. And if we’re honest with ourselves we all suffer from Attention Deficit if the task at hand is something we are not interested in, like say counting the stars in the universe. Most of us would drift off into somnambulism in less than a few minutes of staring upward. But fortunately for us, the heavens were an early fascination for Galileo. He was the Italian engineer, physicist, and father of observational astronomy. That means a lot of night shifts looking up and wondering how things work. He lived and worked in the early 1600s, charting the phases of Venus, the breadth of the Milky Way, Jupiter’s moons and even sunspots. Galileo was wont to explore new realities based on science. The universe held his attention and he worked tirelessly to understand it, even after he was convicted of heresy during the Inquisition and put under house arrest for the last 10 years of his life.

Rather than complain about his inability to move about, Galileo turned his attention to what he could do in the confines of his studio. He expanded his research on the motion of objects and the strength of materials. If that sounds boring think about this: you can draw a straight line from Galileo sequestered in his primitive lab to Elon Musk and SpaceX. Galileo stuck with it when his friends abandoned him, when he was confined to his home, when he was feeling the affects of age. He was curious and driven. Elon Musk is equally driven and fearless in his exploration. SpaceX is changing just about everything about space exploration, from reusable rockets, to greater payloads, to radical innovations in spacesuits and parachutes. Musk has a vision of what space holds for the future, and he is sticking to it no matter the obstacles.

Max is a different kind of explorer. He’s 6-years-old. His bedroom is littered with battery-powered contraptions that light up, move, rattle, and roll. His first-grade teacher says Max has a hard time paying attention in class, yet Max will work for hours to figure out the electrical circuit between a battery, a motor, and a propeller. He’s also building his own telescope. “I want to see what Jupiter’s rings are really made of,” he says. Perhaps if Galileo were in school today with his curious nature he would likewise be a little restless. Curious minds are always seeking problems to solve. As we learn to channel our curiosity into actions and finally results, we learn the power of stick-to-itiveness. Tenacity is the result of a challenge we give ourselves, a bigger vision to accomplish. Someday Max will make the connection to what he is learning in school to what he is building in his room, the same way Galileo saw the importance of his research while confined to his house.

So maybe the next time we feel bored with a task or chore we need to look up at the stars...and challenge ourselves to reach for them.

Tenacity... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

TENACITY

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Pass It On^®

The Road to Appreciation

Mick is a big man with long hair and beard that would place him naturally onstage with the Grateful Dead. Today he is looking at motorcycles, the kind that move easily from asphalt to dirt to unmarked desert. Broad stretches of desert are like moonscapes, uninhabited with long horizons and lit up at night by the galaxy. There’s nothing like it if you want to ponder your own insignificance in the universe and find meaning in the process.

Turns out alone time in the wilderness is of great value to our mental and emotional wellbeing. Einstein took long walks in nature and received some of his most profound inspiration there. Being alone with nature affords self-reflection and leads to a renewal and an appreciation for life itself. According to The Conversation, a nonprofit organization, “alone time creates a contrasting experience to normal living that enriches people mentally, physically and emotionally...people become more attuned to the important matters in their lives.”

Today the desert still attracts seekers of peace, solitude and adventure. Mick is one of them. “I put in at Yuma,” he says, as if he is launching into the ocean. “Then head to Mexicali on pavement. I get a good meal and the rest of the ride is off-road, all the way to Cabo.” It’s a trip he’s been doing a few times a year for more than a decade, a trip that gets him away from a complicated life he won’t talk about. Some feelings can’t be shared with others; betrayal is deep and sometimes the only way to find peace is to ride into the infinite in order to define our own boundaries while letting the past dissipate behind us in the exhaust of a fast machine.

“Solitary reflection enhances recognition and appreciation of key personal relationships, encourages reorganization of life priorities,” The experts at The Conversation found. For Mick, he didn’t need the formal guidance, only a place where he could be alone in a landscape that unfolded all around him with the rising of the sun. For most of us, a solitary walk in nature for a day does wonders.

Mick zigzags his way South, sometimes riding on the hard packed sand of the beach and sometimes bouncing up rocky alluvial steppes or hitting top speeds on the flats. For rest, there is the shade of the Elephant Cactus; it grows like a hand out of the desert floor, the fingers reaching above 50 feet. One hard rainstorm and the cactus soaks up enough water to sustain itself for years of aridity, kind of like a week in the desert fills up your senses for the rest of the year.

Bending to inspect the clearance on the new bike, he remembers something an older woman at a hacienda once told him: “Where the road is rough, only the good people come.” And they return renewed, appreciative of what secrets nature unfolded in their souls.

Appreciate Nature... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

APPRECIATE NATURE

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Pass It On^®

You Can Do This

Roland is trim and fit. Yet in his early forties, his knees are giving him trouble. He hobbles across the infield of the track, shouting encouragement to runners, pausing to give a little instruction, gathering the hundred or so small athletes together for organized drills and stretches. If one misses a practice he calls their home. They start at 8 years old and finish at 18. Welcome to the Cheetahs inner-city track club. It’s family. The only cost is $15 dollars for a t-shirt and shorts. Roland was the first in his family to go to college. He earned his degree and put his hand on the business plow, looking forward to working his way up the corporate ladder. But his heart had other ideas. Track had changed his life. He took a teaching job at a local high school and started the Cheetah’s track club. Standing among the rapt young runners he can slip easily from street lingo to coach talk. To follow him around at a track meet is to be awash in his boundless optimism. “None of these kids have to be what their circumstance tells them they have to be,” he says. And indeed, as the years have gone by, he’s watched former awkward striders become doctors and lawyers, coaches and clergy. Roland preaches from his stadium seat pulpit: “A third place earns points. A sixth place pushes teammates ahead of you. “Any effort is better than no effort.”

A good road trip can strain any family. But for the Cheetahs, it only strengthens the bond. At Nationals in Chicago, teams from legacy programs in Atlanta, New Jersey, Los Angeles and New York stepped off shiny, chartered busses wearing matching travel gear accompanied by not only coaches and trainers, but also team pastors. The Cheetahs arrive in cramped family mini-vans, carrying groceries from home and packed ten kids per room. The volunteer coaches share a room with Roland and the few parents who could make the journey satirically named the Cheetahs “The team with the mismatched water bottles.”
But on the first day of workouts before the meet begins, the optimism is at an all time high. Kids wander into the lobby for the free continental breakfast giddy and excited. Roland woke early and ate eggs and bacon, then sits with the team. “My gut doesn’t like sugar anymore,” he says. Maybe because he is so full of sweet optimism he can’t stomach the artificial glucose high.

This morning, like every morning starts with a team meeting: high doses of “you can do this!” and “this is going to be your best time all year!” Roland knows about the power of optimism. He nearly lost all of this to a pain killer addiction after his second knee surgery. He just couldn’t kick it. He went into rehab, that lonely, isolated place where the only person who can save you is yourself. Plenty don’t make it. But Roland did, by taking it one day at a time and telling himself over and over again “you can do this.”

The Cheetahs win their share of medals at Nationals. More importantly, the mismatched water bottle club is by far the loudest group in the stadium. “You can do this!” they chant from the bleachers. And of course, they do.

You Can Do This... PassItOn.com®

By The Foundation for a Better Life®

The Foundation for a Better Life® promotes positive values to live by and pass along to others.

Copyright © 2023 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

YOU CAN DO THIS

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