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The Hero to our Four-legged Friends.

In times of trouble, or even at the end of a long workday, many people turn to a familiar source of comfort: their animal companions. It’s no different after a disaster — for good reason.

From the time the first wolf cub was domesticated beside the cave fire to our day — when different breeds of dogs lounge at our feet, playfully wake us in the morning, and warn us of danger — dogs and humans have created a special bond. Canines are the perfect pet: loyal, fun-loving, always happy to see us. On the farm, dogs were utilitarian. They herded sheep, stood guard against predators and kept the lonely sheepherder company with conversations in yip and yowl, whine and growl.

Cats were equally useful in keeping mice out of the farmhouse and feed bins. Always on the prowl, they kept troublesome pests away while still making time to provide a little companionship on the porch in the afternoon sun. Our love for these domesticated animals is as ingrained in us as the characteristics of the animals of our affections are in them.

Pets began as a privilege of the aristocracy. Noblemen and women bred dogs for hunting and lapdogs for fashion. Egyptians viewed cats as sacred and magical, even worshipping them. Today, many of us have pets simply for the companionship. They soothe us on stressful afternoons, lowering our heart rates and brushing away loneliness as we brush their coats to grateful purrs. Some act as guide dogs or helpers for the deaf or disabled. Service dogs calm anxiety, and the family pet helps children express their emotions.

But these animals depend on us, and when hurricanes hit Hillsborough County in Florida and displaced thousands of people, many pets were stranded in the mayhem. Anxiety was high. The one thing that helps most in a crisis is knowing everyone is OK, including pets.

That’s why Captain Dusty Mascaro went wading into debris-filled water to bring a little comfort to the displaced. His mantra is to make sure “no one — human or animal — is left behind.” Captain Mascaro carried dogs large and small through the muddy water. Altogether, his team rescued 104 pets.

After the rescue effort, a makeshift shelter in a bus was packed with furry friends. At the end of a long couple of days, there was a wonderful reunion. Many people had lost homes and keepsakes and were facing months or even years of rebuilding their lives. But thanks to Captain Dusty, they would not be alone. Having a loyal companion to start over makes the journey a little easier.

For Captain Dusty Mascaro and his team of white knights, it was all in a day’s work. They are happy to serve their community. The payoff for them can be summed up in a photograph of Captain Mascaro and a grateful rescued dog: “This dog’s eyes say it all.”

Be Grateful… 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 © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
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BE GRATEFUL

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Judging by Appearances Misses the Most Beautiful Part of Life: Friendship.

In our TikTok, filtered-reality world, it’s easy to get caught up in comparisons. Do I look as good as her? Are my cheekbones high enough? But these questions only narrow the lens through which we see the world. There is no divine standard by which we should all be measured.

We all look different, speak differently, think differently. Yet we all make snap judgments. Social science studies conclude that most of our first-impression character judgments are incorrect. Turns out, to really know someone takes time. It takes conversation.

Oliver Bromley has had to learn this the hard way. Due to a genetic condition called neurofibromatosis, he has many small, benign tumors on his face. One day, when he left the hospital after a series of procedures to treat neurofibromatosis, he was disheartened when a restaurant turned him away because he was scaring customers.

Oliver understands how his appearance can be disconcerting at first. But his heart is forgiving and kind. Even as the story was picked up by the BBC, charities weighed in and comments poured in from readers, Oliver remained unruffled. He hopes “some good can come from this” and that the whole incident will “create awareness around people with facial deformities, facial differences.”

Oliver’s story reminds us to pause our frenetic scrolling and judging for just a moment and ask: “What is really important?” The labels we wear, both visible and internal, can imprison us in ways that limit our ability to really feel and experience life.

Friendships help us overcome loneliness and teach us to be more tolerant, more grateful. A diverse set of friends helps us be more reflective and kind. We become deeper, more thoughtful human beings when we engage with different cultures and ideas. And when we become that one friend that accepts and encourages rather than judging, the people we touch will multiply outward and return many kindnesses to us.

The famous story of Cyrano de Bergerac is one such example. Cyrano had a nose that was described as “obnoxiously large.” While he could do nothing about his protuberance, he could learn to express himself. He became a poet and wrote verses that made women swoon. His friend Christian employed him to write love letters to his lady-in-waiting. It worked. The woman loved the words, believing they came from Christian. But when, alas, Christian was killed in war, the woman heard Cyrano reciting the words he had written for Christian. After this twist of fate, she realized it was Cyrano she was in love with, not Christian. She also realized the large nose didn’t bother her in the least.

As we look past our own noses, beyond the imperfections of others, we will find people like Oliver. Kind. Forgiving. A privilege to have as a friend.

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 © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

FRIENDSHIP

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The Dream Builder.

From blanket forts to rickety treehouses, our childhood escape pods birthed some of our fondest memories. They are where our imaginations were untethered and trusted friends joined us on fantastic adventures.

Having a space of your own means everything to a child. But for some kids, physical limitations or health sensitivities require accommodations that aren’t readily available or covered by public assistance funds. Children with spina bifida, cystic fibrosis or who require daily nurse visits are sometimes isolated. Enter Mark Ostrom and his talented team at the Joy Collaborative.

Mark Ostrom studied design and architecture, but as his career moved ahead, he felt something pushing him to do more than make a living — to find a way to give back using design as the vehicle. He watched children with disabilities struggle to attract friends to their homes and express themselves in ways their peers could. It seemed unfair and exclusionary.

“Every child should experience the joy of a space that enhances independence, encourages creativity and accommodates a friend community,” Mark says. So he went to work. “It’s definitely a passion project. I have an amazing circle of friends and volunteers who are very talented. And to see these kids blossom into confident, sharing, outgoing little humans is so worth it.”

We are blessed to be able to witness transformations in real time that are intended to shift a negative outlook to one of thriving and excitement.

Being sequestered between homes and clinic visits can be lonely, as was the case for a young girl who was the recipient of a heart transplant before she was 1 year old. Mark and his team designed and built the “Imagine Theater” in her backyard, complete with stage, theatrical lighting, wardrobe and bunk beds. It is a place where imagination takes flight for a cadre of her peers. At the center is the blonde-haired maestro creating musicals for family and friends.

“It was amazing to see her confidence grow, see her become a thriving new person in a matter of days,” Mark says.

Ten-year-old Isaac lives with cystic fibrosis. While his physical limitations may keep him from going full bore on an athletic team, getting outdoors with friends is good for him. Mark’s team built the “Secret Haven” treehouse that encourages physical exercise and provides a creative place to gather, a treetop lookout that takes Isaac’s vision beyond his physical constraints.

“Isaac comes alive in the treehouse,” Mark says. “He has a place where friends can visit, read graphic novels (over 300 were donated to the project), run the zip line circuit and just be kids.”

Research shows creative play is more than having fun. Creative play and supportive spaces benefit emotional and mental health. Joy Rooms have been built adjacent to a hospital for young burn victims to heal, and in quiet neighborhoods for victims of domestic abuse to feel safe. There’s an indoor “park” for children to support rehab and the “Brave Bear” den for a young boy who is both deaf and blind and craves sensory stimulation.

“Our mission is to create life-enriching spaces for kids,” Mark says. “Because joy should be available to everyone.”

Joy… 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 © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

JOY

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Listening from the Heart.

While America was struggling to define its independence in the late 1700s, the upper echelons of European society were exploding with creativity. In a small Austrian town, a young musical prodigy was performing in the court chapel. The boy was studious and serious. He was taught by his father until the age of 11, when he was shipped away to Vienna to further his studies.

This young Ludwig Van Beethoven would soon impress his teachers and begin a creative streak that would last decades. His foster family provided the love and support Ludwig had not gotten from his alcoholic father. This love brought out the best in the young man. He composed pieces for piano and organ and, by age 20, had full symphonies at his command. He studied with the famous composer Franz Joseph Haydn, and when Mozart passed away at a young age, Beethoven was seen as the creative heir apparent.

Yet, because he was strapped for money, he spent a great deal of his time teaching and performing. This experience helped shape his work ethic as well as his musical breadth. He played the violin and the viola as well as the piano, organ and harpsichord. His experience on stage gave him a great sense of how music moves an audience, how certain notes carry in large spaces, how rhythms and tones evoke emotions. And his disciplined approach to the technique and mathematics of composition would carry him through his later life.

In his mid-twenties, Beethoven began to lose his hearing. The grand and lively compositions turned more melancholy. His work became more introspective. Unable to converse, he withdrew from a public that had no way of accommodating the deaf. Beethoven retreated to the countryside.

“How delighted I shall be to ramble for a while through bushes, woods, under trees, through grass, and around rocks,” he wrote of his migration.

Nature made no requirements of him. His senses were filled with the colors, the breezes and shadows, the changing seasons and temperatures. He composed what he was feeling straight from the heart, relying on his brilliance as a technician to pen whole symphonies without being able to hear a single note. In his soul, he could feel what he was writing. And he could see the reaction of those who heard it. Perhaps the deafness awakened in him a deeper sense of what music can do for our souls, how it connects us, uplifts and inspires, teaches and consoles.

The last piece Beethoven composed before he died was Symphony No. 9 in D Minor: Ode to Joy. It begins with a simple refrain, a summer sun crowning the horizon. Each instrument picks up the refrain, adds to it, lifts it higher, a chorus of strings bursting into full daylight, full fields of flowers, dew rising to the heavens, the mist parted by the sun, the full joy of life in concert, each worthy of a note, a story, our complete attention.

Orchestrate Joy… 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 © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

ORCHESTRATE JOY

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The Importance of a Good Dinner.

The iconic chuckwagon seen so often in movie Westerns came about shortly after the American Civil War. As the country expanded, cattle ranchers moved their herds along the Chisholm trail to Abilene, or across Texas to Dodge City, where cows fetched a good price and could be shipped to faraway markets.

Beef was the mainstay of the American diet. But it wasn’t fresh on the trail. For months at a stretch, cowpokes gathered nightly around the chuckwagon to eat greasy dried bacon, salted pork and the occasional trail find of rabbit or deer.

Through rain or wind or scorching heat, the chuckwagon rattled along, bedrolls stored along with food, the clamor of Dutch ovens and pans, tools to make repairs, spare wagon parts, a water barrel, and perhaps a book or two to read to the pokes at night. It was a heavy, horse-drawn load moving ahead of the herd in order to have dinner going by the time the cows were settled in for the night.

Spend 10 hours a day in the saddle in a cloud of dust, setting up camp, wrangling stubborn cattle and keeping an eye on stray cows, and your poker earnings can be strenuous. In the evening, appetites were high and tempers short. The “cookie” or chuckwagon chef was second in command of the dozen or so cowboys. His role was to keep the outfit fed, repair clothes and be the arbiter in any disagreements. It’s said that a good cookie “could mend a friendship with one hand while turning biscuits with the other.” He was always the first up in the morning to get breakfast on, the first to the next camp and the last one to hit the hay.

In today’s world, we romanticize the chuckwagon. In its time, it was just a necessity. After a hard day’s work, cowboys could relax for a bit, chew the fat (a saying that comes from chewing on dried bacon) and tell a few tall tales. What we now call team building and socializing to foster cooperation happened naturally around the chuckwagon. Grievances were aired, girlfriends were missed, love was enshrined in rough poetry and bawdy lyrics. Everyone learned how to get along because if they didn’t, they might find themselves broke and alone in the nearest small outpost.

The cattle drive ended abruptly when the railroad stitched its way across the West. But the cowboy dinner-time ritual remains a staple of families and friends for bonding and enjoying stories of the day’s adventures — a time to mediate sibling squabbles, assign chores and attend to hurt feelings. Turns out, the best way to learn how to get along is over a meal, even if it is week-old bacon, dry biscuits and bland beans. It’s the conversation that makes the food taste better.

Ring The Dinner Bell… 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 © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

RING THE DINNER BELL

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The Electric Influence of a Good Mother.

The last name that is most famous today for the car that bears his name began as a knowledge-obsessed schoolboy. One of five children, Nikola Tesla was intelligent and curious about the unknown forces in the world: electricity and magnetics.

His father, an Orthodox priest, hoped his son would become a man of the cloth, but Tesla was more interested in the hard evidence of what existed and was yet to be harnessed. His mother, Georgina, was an intelligent woman in her own right, an inventor of gadgets that made difficult house chores easier.

“I must trace to my mother’s influence whatever inventiveness I possess,” Tesla reflected. “My mother was especially gifted with a sense of intuition ... an inventor of the first order and would, I believe, have achieved great things, had she not been so remote from modern life.”

The small hovel Tesla grew up in was dimly lit by the frugal candles: a piece of braided thread dipped in wax and inserted into a turnip. By this pale light, Tesla watched his mother tinker, listened to his father read and let his imagination run off into the unyielding woodlands in which they lived.

Those woodlands played a role in who Tesla became. On the day of his birth, there was a great thunderstorm. The village midwife, terrorized by the thunderclaps and lightning, decreed, “He’ll be a child of the storm.” To which the mother in labor answered: “No, a child of light.”

Tesla’s mother led the effort to raise money for her son’s education. It was she who inspired his curiosity and defended his unorthodox personality. She taught him to pursue that inner voice of intellectual longing, perhaps one she herself had no means to pursue.

Tesla became what many physicists call the father of the 20th century. His work on the alternating current, induction motor and wireless technology influenced Edison and Westinghouse Electric. He theorized wireless communications and even demonstrated a wireless boat. His developments in a brushless electric motor are still in use today, as are his early developments for the incandescent light.

For all his scientific breakthroughs, the fortune he earned and spent, it was his mother he remembered most fondly at the end of his life. In her final weeks, he sat with her for days without sleeping, not wanting to miss her passing. He had abandoned a lecture circuit in Paris to be with her, his first inspiration, his guiding light. Her last words to him were: “You’ve arrived, Nikola, my dear.”

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.

Copyright © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
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BE A LIGHT

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Engineering a Better Community.

The roots of STEM education, or Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, go all the way back to 1862, when universities that received land grants began promoting agricultural science. In those days, having the foresight to see the need for disciplines in science to improve output was revolutionary.

Early scientific education focused on reaching young American schoolkids to raise a generation of problem-solvers. As the world changed, those disciplines focused on innovations in new materials like synthetic rubber and transportation. By the 1950s, educators were teaching the science of propulsion and everything related to the space race. Twenty years later, we saw developments in computers, cell phones and communications.

The teaching of science has always resulted in young minds becoming great innovators. In 2001, the National Science Foundation formalized the creation of STEM curricula. Yet the new century saw a lot of challenges. Students were falling behind. Amid calls by President Obama to “Educate to Innovate,” there was an emphasis on preparing 100,000 teachers to teach STEM.

Then the pandemic hit. With schools forced to turn on a dime, many kids were left with the second-best teaching method: online. Without in-person teachers and the support of their peers, the working concepts in the sciences were hard to grasp, and students struggled.

Adeline Smith experienced this firsthand. She was a COVID student, isolated. She had also been a tutor for five years, and she knew the power of student-to-student relationships. She saw the need to organize peer-to-peer tutors and, with her sister Lilian, began organizing. After-school tutoring made the most sense because students were already there, and teachers could oversee the effort.

She partnered with local community organizations and sponsors, including the United Way, and built a team of volunteer supporters. The team also organized an annual fundraiser to pay the teachers for their extra time in the classroom. It all adds up to hundreds of kids improving their skills, discovering new aptitudes and enjoying school more than ever.

“I’ve realized that even a small effort and passion can create an amazing snowball effect,” says Adeline. “And I’ve learned my life’s purpose is in the pursuit of improving things for others.”

School is for everybody. No child should ever feel like they don’t belong, that they aren’t measuring up, that they just don’t have the smarts to make it. Adeline makes kids feel included. She’s very optimistic about the possibilities. She’s created academic clubs at each school to give kids a place to belong, to excel, to feel the triumph of learning.

As the world changes, we need to find ways to engineer our communities to accommodate the problem-solvers who will lead us into the future and the friends who will make sure we get there.

Learn Together… 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 © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

LEARN TOGETHER

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Never Too Small to Make a Big Difference.

Watching paragliders and skydivers these days is thrilling. They float and control their gossamer sails like giant birds. Imagine the first parachutes and the thrills they evoked in crowds who had never seen a human drop from the sky.

The year was 1913. Airplanes were new and a great attraction around the country. Fifteen-year-old Georgia Broadwick sat perched on a trap seat fastened to the outside of the fuselage of a biplane. The crowd grew nervous just watching the takeoff with the five-foot-nothing, 89-pound teenager rocking behind the wing.

The biplane bounced and rattled as it sped down a rough dirt field, with the daredevil known as “The Doll Girl” adorned in frills and bows and ruffled bloomers waving to the anxious crowd. Once high above the crowd, a cord was pulled to release “Tiny” Broadwick into the air. She dropped rapidly at first, causing the audience to hold its collective breath. Then a streamer appeared, and a silk canopy blossomed in the afternoon sky. The Doll Girl swayed in the gentle breeze and touched down, safe and smiling. The crowd roared their approval.

Georgia Broadwick was born in 1893 weighing only 3 pounds, which earned her the nickname of Tiny. It stayed with her for life. At 13 years old, she went to work for 14-hour days in a cotton mill. At 14, she saw an air show at the North Carolina State Fair, “The Broadwicks and their Famous French Aeronauts” — a group of daredevils who parachuted from hot air balloons. Georgia asked Charles Broadwick if she could become part of the act. He agreed, and eventually, he adopted her. Tiny traveled all over the country, sending money home to her mother and the little girl she left behind. In time, the balloon act lost popularity, but famed pilot Glenn Martin had seen her parachute. Tiny approached him and asked if she could jump from his airplane. Suddenly, her life was elevated.

At first, the parachute was on a static line deployed automatically by the pilot. But on the fourth jump, the static line got tangled in the tail of the plane, leaving Tiny flapping in the wind. She kept her cool, cut the cord and yanked on the remaining bit when she was free of the tail. The result was the first rip-cord parachute. Tiny went on to parachute over 1,000 times. The military adapted her design for pilots in World War l, saving many lives with the manually deployed parachute known at the time as the “life preserver of the air.”

Georgia “Tiny” Broadwick made the most of her life during a time when there were no economic parachutes for the working class. It was “make a living or die.” She found a way to take advantage of her diminutive stature and innovated the lifesaving parachute.

“I tell you, honey, it was the most wonderful sensation in the world!” she related in her older years about jumping out of airplanes. She is now enshrined in the Army Museum — the smallest person to ever receive such an honor.

Think 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 © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

THINK BIG

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The Long Shot.

The Olympics always produces some of the most memorable images of the year, and the 2024 Paris event was no different. We love come-from-behind stories, we love our heroes, we love sportsmanship gestures between competitors and countries, and we love love stories.

Paris, the city of love, gave us the image of Tara Davis outleaping the world in the long jump, then leaping into her new husband’s arms. The golden couple met while competing, Davis in the Olympic long jump and Hunter Woodhall in the 400 meters in the Paralympics. How did this fairy tale come to be?

Scott Mansch of the Great Falls Tribune interviewed Woodhall and his family back in 2016, when Woodhall was 17 years old, after the youngster strode confidently into the local barbershop on prosthetic legs, the high-tech kind they call “blades.” Watching him run in those days was remarkable. His lithe body strode smoothly, perfectly balanced, the upper body in fluid cadence, hip flexors and thigh muscles pumping in rhythm. Achieving the kind of technique to get around the track so quickly would take much more practice than with natural legs. But Woodhall was confident he could do it. There was no pity in his family, only a bunch of rowdy, athletic siblings and cousins to try to keep up with.

“Nobody ever treated him different, from day one,” says Woodhall’s uncle Wyatt. “He’s the most determined kid I’ve ever seen.”

Woodhall was born with a condition that prevented the bones in his lower legs from forming. His parents had to make a difficult decision: Amputate the legs below the knee and give their son a chance to walk, or accept what was and keep Woodhall in a wheelchair his whole life. The emotional decision to have the surgery turned out to be the best thing for Woodhall.

“He’s exactly the way he’s supposed to be and has the talent he’s supposed to have,” says his father, Steve.

Woodhall went on to compete in youth football, basketball and wrestling. He rollerblades and skateboards. As he got older, it was on the track where he found himself, that lonely oval that pushes back the same way every day: relentless, unyielding, no matter how many times you attack it. Woodhall competed locally, in the Western states and internationally. He won the Utah state high school championship in the 400 with an astonishing 47.64 seconds. He went on to compete in college against able-bodied athletes, and then the Paralympics.

The motivation to continually get better has had to come from within. “Coaches treat you differently,” Steve says. “They don’t necessarily get mad at you, they kind of put you in a glass box. So the motivation and work ethic, that’s all his. Nobody pushed him. He’s pushed himself.”

As the miles on the track have added up, so have the medals. Woodhall has competed in the World Championships and the Paralympics since 2015, and dozens of competitions along the way. Track is where he belongs, and it is where he met the love of his life, Olympic Gold Medalist Davis. The embrace that melted a million hearts also delivered the most profound line from one champion to another: “I knew you could do it,” Woodhall said to Davis, to himself and to all of us.

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.

Copyright © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

CONFIDENCE

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Miracle or Magician?

The Loretto Chapel, in the heart of Santa Fe, New Mexico, is built from warm earthen adobe, with a small nave and, above it, a choir loft. But at the beginning, the two weren’t connected.

Legend has it that when the unfinished chapel needed a staircase to access the choir loft, the nuns offered a novena — nine days of prayer — to St. Joseph, the patron saint of carpenters. After the nine days, a carpenter arrived on a donkey, carrying a toolbox, and set to work.

When the stairs were completed, the stranger vanished without accepting thanks or payment. Some research indicates that a man named Rochas was paid for wood. But not much else is known about the man, except that he was a member of a French secret society of highly skilled craftsmen and artisans called the Compagnons du Devoir, which had existed since the Middle Ages. Many believe him to have been St. Joseph himself.

The staircase is shaped like a helix and is connected only with wooden pegs. The result is one of the most stunning architectural accomplishments in the New World. The staircase floats upward in a spiral as if to Heaven, with no center support, only a delicate curve of treads that seem to defy gravity, adding to the mystery of how one man could accomplish such a feat of artistry.

“One hundred and fifty years ago, it took a very well-trained, seasoned, experienced master craftsman,” says Seattle-based stair design consultant Shawn Christman. “The fact that somebody showed up out of the desert might be a miracle, but he knew exactly what he was doing.”

It is such a beautiful work of art and craftsmanship that stair-builders from around the world visit the site dubbed the Miraculous Staircase.

“We all like to think we create creative stair designs and nice curved staircases, but to think how they did it that long ago and still attain the same quality is breathtaking,” says Greg Chamberlain of stair-builders Star South Inc., of Eatonton, Georgia.

Art and craftsmanship are the human way of expressing gratitude for the world we live in, trying to capture that little bit of the divine in each of us. The decades it takes to perfect a craft are a testament to the human drive to express beauty.

While only a few achieve legendary levels of artistry, each of us can find daily ways to make our world more pleasant to look at: a kind act, a simple smile, an expression of gratitude. While many artists are well known, perhaps the ones who make the most impact on our lives are those who remain anonymous, like the mysterious artisan who arrived in a desert town unannounced and slipped away unheralded.

Create Beauty, Anonymously… 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 © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

CREATE BEAUTY, ANONYMOUSLY

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Go Fast, Go Long.

At age 7, Carroll Shelby moved to Dallas, Texas. He was the son of working-class parents, balanced precariously on the poverty line. He had a leaky heart valve that reminded him that life could end any day. Might as well live it pedal to the metal.

Shelby rode his bicycle to dirt tracks where his Sunday afternoon worship of speed began. By age 15, he was driving his father’s Ford, making repairs and keeping up the maintenance himself., At 18, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps and pursued his need for speed above the ground. He quickly became a test pilot, flying an 11-seat Beechcraft and the Boeing B-29 Superfortress heavy bomber. When he finished his military stint, he tried making a living raising poultry and driving a dump truck. He went bankrupt. So, at age 29, he started his racing career.

Shelby raced borrowed cars on the amateur circuit. And he won. With each victory, a new sponsor recruited him. He set 17 speed records at Bonneville Salt Flats; he won trophies in England, France, and Mexico. He set hill climb records in Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, roaring around twisting dirt roads precariously close to the edge. And he began to make his mark in the endurance races: the Italian, Portuguese and British grand prix that require drivers to race through the night.

Endurance racing challenges the mettle of the driver as well as the metal of the car. Shelby had a hand in designing the chariots he trusted his life with. He modified transmissions, displacement, frames and bodies to get the perfect balance of strength and stamina. The race he is most famous for, the one he values the most, is Le Mans — a 24-hour race that is the true test of man and machine. He was the first American to win. This historic feat kicked off the next chapter of his life.

Shelby retired from racing because of his ongoing health issues and opened a training track and driving school. Here, Ford came calling. They wanted to compete in Le Mans to show the world that Ford Motor Company was not only the world’s biggest car producer but also built the fastest cars. The challenge was on. Shelby recruited legendary and irascible driver Ken Miles. They built the car from the ground up, blowing engines and transmissions on the test track until they got it right. When it was over, Ford was the king of Le Mans. And Shelby had reached legendary status.

In his racing life, Shelby crashed twice, enduring months of surgery and rehab. He burned up parts, went bankrupt, but still accomplished what few have done since. His heart leaked like a bad transmission, but he kept on the gas and never looked back.

Drive… 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 © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

DRIVE

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Pass It On^®

The Most Recognizable Voice in the World.

The young James Earl Jones suffered from a debilitating stutter. Shy and self-conscious, young James was encouraged to try theater as a way to overcome it. Perhaps the teacher saw his future potential, but more likely, she saw a boy who needed a little confidence.

Jones worked hard as an actor, and the theater enhanced his social skills and ability to communicate. It even gave him a sense of direction. But he put it on hold to join the military. With a sense of duty to his country, he became a ranger and instructor in cold-weather and mountain training, achieving the rank of lieutenant.

He then returned to New York and began a prolific stage and film career. He was one of a handful of actors to win Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards, an accomplishment known as the EGOT. He received the National Medal of Arts and was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.

Of all his brilliant work on stage and screen, James Earl Jones is most remembered for his role as Darth Vader, the father-gone-bad villain who destroys worlds and is finally overcome by his own son. The battle for good over evil in “Star Wars” reflects a universal experience in all our lives. It reminds us of the power one individual can wield when motivated by the virtues of love, forgiveness, honor and fairness for all. James Earl Jones reveled in the role, seeing the villainy as a warning to audiences. Stories of good and bad help form our young selves, help us see the consequences of bad decisions and the triumph of good ones.

When the icon of multiple generations showed up on the tiny set of “Sandlot,” the young actors were understandably in awe and intimidated. Patrick Renna, who played Ham, remembers that day well.

“He’s larger than life, and he’s famous — James Earl Jones. We’re all, like, speechless, and he was so cool.”

A huge “Star Wars” fan, Renna remembers that when he got the opportunity to meet Jones, “None of us had the guts to talk to him. Marty York goes up to him and goes, ‘Sir, I hear you’re James Earl Jones. You were Darth Vader in “Star Wars”?’ And he looked at him and said, ‘No. I am your father!’”

The moment was magical for the boys. And when the time came for his scene with them, they got to see the character Jones most embodied: Mr. Mertle. He was kind; his face lit up when talking to them. He loved sharing baseball with them in that sacred father-son rite. Perhaps, on that sunny afternoon when nostalgic boyhoods were being replayed, Jones was remembering his own childhood, back when he was a shuffling, self-conscious pre-teenager looking for a safe place to gather a little courage and receive a few kind words from a mentor, a handful of encouragement that can fill your sails and take you to places far beyond the universe you live in.

Of all the recognizable voices out there, the ones we should listen to are those away from the microphone, off-screen, whispering that we can be more. These are the same voices we should raise ourselves.

Lift Your Voice… 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 © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
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LIFT YOUR VOICE

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Pass It On^®

Everyone Needs a Good Teacher. Even Einstein.

Many of us can point to a teacher who directed our talents toward a career, a fulfilling hobby, a better way to understand ourselves. A good teacher inspires students to discover their imaginations through reading, understand the universe through keen observation, and uncover the boundless potential of their minds — all while refereeing games of four-square at recess. The sentinels in our early life, teachers protect us from bad ideas and lead us to the most productive ones.

Ernst Mach was a fragile child, born in Moravia (now Czechia) in 1838. He didn’t even go to school until the age of 14. Instead, his parents educated him at home. Like many genius children, his teachers berated him, calling him “unteachable, absolutely talentless.”

Yet young Mach excelled at university in Vienna. He studied mathematics, physics and philosophy. He was also boundlessly curious. He conducted all kinds of experiments, believing that theories must be tried and tested, proven out in facts, but first formulated in the mind. He brought this rigorous approach to his studies, positing that true science is based on what actually happens and can be observed.

Mach was also a well-rounded student. Besides the sciences, he was interested in philosophy and was an excellent boxer and fencer. Imagine PE classes today full of kids sword fighting and boxing!

As a teacher, Mach was precise, demanding and stern. That was the model of pedagogy of the day, and Mach fit the mold: tight collar, buttoned-down tie, waistcoat and jacket, serious eyes behind wire-framed spectacles. He could be unforgiving and intimidating. And he was brilliant.

Albert Einstein credits this teacher with shepherding his ideas into the viable theory of relativity. Mach demanded exactness and pushed Einstein to experiment and prove out his ideas, to bring clarity to his theories. He challenged the young Einstein to excellence.

Mach is credited as the grandparent of Einstein’s theory of relativity because it was based on theories of his own. Yet he rejected E = mc2 because he didn’t feel it was complete or provable. This led Einstein to work even harder.

While Mach is credited with many theories of his own — including the aircraft velocity measurement that bears his name, “Mach 1. Mach 2, etc.” — his mentorship of Einstein is perhaps his greatest achievement.

The best teachers in our lives challenge us, see us as not yet complete but brimming with potential. They shine a light on the path that gets us to a successful reality. And through us, they live on.

Teach… 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 © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

TEACH

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Reforesting the Amazon, 100 Million Trees at a Time.

The Earth is one giant, living organism, and we have the privilege of calling it home. We enjoy the beauty of blue skies, the shade of magnificent trees, the lulling motion of waves.

Being able to breathe clean air is largely a result of the way plants retrieve carbon and purify the air on our planet home. The Amazon forest functions as Earth’s lungs. But deforestation has made it difficult for the jungle to do its job.

Though there are many efforts to plant trees, the remoteness of the jungles makes it difficult. Drop in Luigi Cani, the world-record-holding skydiver who completed a wingsuit jump on a motorcycle into the Grand Canyon and felt like there was something he could do. After 14,000 jumps, Cani was ready to put his skills to good use.

“I’ve been jumping for 25 years, and I’ve always pushed the limits with risky jumps,” he says. “Now, I’m 51 years old, and I don’t have that drive for danger anymore. I want to do something to help.”

Cani picked a 100-square-kilometer patch of land that needed to be reseeded in the northern part of the rainforest. The planning was meticulous. For two months, seeds were collected by hand from nearby native plants. A biodegradable box the size of a refrigerator was designed and built, a landing site was identified, and all the permits were secured from the local and federal governments. The box had its own drag parachute to slow it down so Cani could catch up to it as it fell, open it at the right altitude, then safely jettison away and deploy his chute.

“It was the only jump where I held my breath the entire time,” Cani recalls. “I struggled to hold the box. I nearly broke my wrist and fingers. I managed to stabilize myself at about 6,000 feet.”

The result was a cloud of 100 million seeds, bursting from the box like mad insects and settling into a gentle storm of potential trees floating from the sky in a beautiful eruption of life. The seeds drifted to exactly where they needed to be. Ultimately, 95% would germinate successfully. Like a proud father, Cani charts their growth via satellite images. Some of the trees will reach 50 meters in height, a tall cluster of sentries guarding the Amazon for generations to come.

Cani isn’t done with his efforts to care for our earthly home. His next jump will bring skydiving and ocean cleanup together. “Like the seed drop, this next project will have real meaning behind it.” Dare we say, deep meaning?

Jump For 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.

Copyright © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

JUMP FOR GOOD

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Pass It On^®

Climb Higher, Leave Behind what Ails you.

Elevation 19,341 feet. Hike the world’s highest freestanding mountain, and you will feel every step.

The journey takes an average of five to six days. Because the mountain is on the equator, the climate starts off warm and could drop to minus 20 at the top. The altitude change is so severe that hikers must acclimate as they go, pausing, traversing, being mindful of breathing and too much exertion.

“It is not the physical challenges that set you back,” Dr. Nielsen says. “It is the mental. You have to summon the will to keep going, step after step, day after day.”

The mountain is unyielding, most formidable when hikers are most fatigued. Yet more than 30,000 people make the pilgrimage each year to test their physical endurance and mental stamina and awaken their spiritual awareness.

“It is a classroom without walls,” Jodi Nielsen says. “The mountain is always talking to you, always teaching you.”

The journey begins with preparation — a lot of it. Every detail is attended to. Each piece of gear is checked. Packing is meticulous: cold weather clothes on the bottom, warm on top, water bottles stored upside down so that when they freeze you can turn them over and still get water. And there’s hiking, lots of it, to get in shape. Finally, there is the emotional preparation.

“Each person we take is encouraged to write a list of their weapons of rebellion,” Dr. Nielsen teaches. Self-defeating actions are labeled as weapons because bad habits and behaviors are what bring us down, creating a chasm between the ordinary and the extraordinary person. These may include selfishness, unkind words, mistrust, greed, power and control, among others. The weapons get very personal. Each hiker stows their symbolically heavy burdens on a 3x5 card in a pack pocket.

And the mountain calls. The first few days seem easy, although legs are wobbly by day three. The elevation is relentless. Vision tunnels to the immediate present, the next step, and the next.

“Every hiker chooses their summit,” Jodi Nielsen says. “The height is personal. To summit is to realize you are more than your goals.”

The top of the mountain is named Uhuru, the Swahili word for freedom. It is here that hikers bury their weapons and stand defenseless on the mountain, vulnerable to the forces of extreme weather. They accept a new self, a new way of living on a higher plane.

“My husband came home a changed man,” one wife tearfully told the Nielsens. And that’s the idea. To be free from the weapons we rely on to protect ourselves from the wounds of personal growth.

“Weapon-free packs feel much lighter coming down,” Dr. Nielsen says. “The mental burden is real. It’s physical. The release is just as real.”

We all have some weapon or armor to bury for good — for our greater good.

Be Free… 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 © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

BE FREE

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Pass It On^®

The Agony, the Ecstasy, and the Redemption that Olympic Competition Brings.

Track pits athletes against each other in the oldest of sports: running. Long-distance runners learn how to pace their gaits, while sprinters focus on getting every ounce of energy moving in a straight line for a short distance. The middle distance of 400 meters pushes the human body in an all-out sprint for what seems an impossibly human distance.

Middle-distance runners will tell you that they actually sprint 300 meters and fight for the last 100. It takes years of precise training to lower personal times by tenths of seconds. The body becomes a high-performance mix of speed and endurance. To reach the Olympics is to endlessly train from childhood.

After years of this stringent work ethic, Derek Redmond broke the 400-meter record in Great Britain. One goal remained in his life: To win gold at the Olympics.

“When I took my place on the starting blocks, I felt good. For once, I had no injuries, despite eight operations in four years, and I’d won the first two rounds without breaking a sweat — including posting the fastest time in the first-round heats. I was confident, and when the gun went off, I got off to a good start.”

Redmond was very familiar with the pain cycle: the hurt during a race, the aches after, the minor injuries and the major ones that required surgery. He was well-acquainted with the pain it took to get back to running form after a surgery. At the world-class level, an athlete’s body is so highly tuned that it can be constantly on the cusp of injury. And so it was with Redmond.

“I got into my stride running round the first turn, and I was feeling comfortable,” he recalled. “Then I heard a popping sound. I kept on running for another two or three strides; then I felt the pain. I thought I’d been shot, but then I recognized the agony. I’d pulled my hamstring before, and the pain is excruciating, like someone shoving a hot knife into the back of your knee and twisting it. I grabbed the back of my leg and hit the deck.”

As Redmond lay helpless on the track, one thought pounded in his head: “I did not want them to write ‘Did Not Finish’ next to my name.” Redmond got up and began hobbling toward the finish line. He had 200 meters to go.

What he didn’t see was his father pushing his way past the Olympic official and running onto the track. Since childhood, his father had always supported him. In that moment, he would do it in front of the world. Jim Redmond shouldered his son’s weight, and together, the two of them shared the struggle of completing the race.

Redmond did not win a medal that day, but victory does not always crown the fastest. Lasting victory is often bestowed upon the most courageous, the most compassionate and those steadfast companions who are on their team.

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 © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

BE THERE

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Wax On, Wax Off: The Pat Morita Story.

Pat Morita nearly missed the opportunity that defined his professional career. He was working on and off as a stand-up comedian, barely making ends meet after a successful role in “Happy Days.” When he showed up to audition for Mr. Miyagi in “The Karate Kid,” producer Jerry Weintraub couldn’t see the actor beyond his comedic roles and dismissed him. But Morita persisted, growing out his hair and beard. When he finally read for the part, Weintraub was sold, and the rest is history.

Morita’s life was anything but easy leading up to his seminal role. At 2 years old, he was separated from his parents and languished in a hospital until he was 11 due to tuberculosis and complications. He spent most of the time in a full-body cast. When he was released, he was detained with his family in an internment camp until World War ll was over. His family had to rebuild their lives, and Noriyuki Morita, nicknamed “Pat” by a priest who visited him often in the hospital, went to work to support them.

He worked his way up at Lockheed, working with engineers and programmers on missile projects before experiencing burnout. Perhaps he wanted to overthrow his heavy, dark childhood by making people laugh. Whatever the reason, Morita started working as a stand-up comedian in clubs around Sacramento and San Francisco. It was a grind. At one point, when he was out of money and prospects, comedian Redd Foxx stepped in and loaned him $3,500. It was a godsend, but so was Foxx’s friendship. Perhaps there would be no Mr. Miyagi if it weren’t for the kindness of the irascible Fred Sanford.

After a few bit parts in movies, Pat landed the role of Arnold on “Happy Days.” It was seemingly a role that would change his life, and it did. But Morita was typecast, and when the show ended, he couldn’t find work due to his ubiquitousness as Arnold. It was at this low point that he pursued the role of Mr. Miyagi.

“The Karate Kid” allowed him to reveal a bit of who Pat Morita is: a kind and patient mentor who cares deeply about teaching kids where they come from and how to overcome their circumstances as well as their prejudices. Morita’s later work focused on documentaries about the war, the sacrifices it entailed and the need to know our history so we can learn from it.

Noriyuki “Pat” Morita will always be remembered as a gentle and giving soul. His childhood and his family’s incarceration could have driven him into a bitter place. But he chose to find the good in people and in his life.

Be Happy… 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 © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

BE HAPPY

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Simone Biles Springs Her Way Into History.

When Simone Biles takes flight, it’s impossible to imagine anything weighing her down. Her ability to toss her body in the most difficult moves in gymnastics has made her one of the greatest gymnasts in the sport's history.

One of her moves is named after her because she is the only gymnast ever to accomplish it in competition, the Biles ll. It is a double-tucked somersault with a triple twist on the floor. Yes, on the floor. It’s something you have to watch in slow motion to appreciate. When Biles debuted the move, the commentator exclaimed: “Simone Biles has enough gold medals—give this girl a crown!” The confidence required to pull off the stunning move seems impossible to fit into such a compact package. Yet understanding Biles’ journey is even more impressive.

When Simone was a baby, her mother, unable to take care of her children, gave them up to the foster care system. Three years later, Simone was adopted by her paternal grandfather. She discovered gymnastics on a school field trip at age 6 and took to it immediately. Six years later, she switched to homeschooling so she could train for 30 hours a week. At 14, she competed in the National Gymnastics Championships and was named to the Junior National Team.

Simone’s her coaches and teammates most noted her drive and toughness—she competed the day after being hospitalized with a kidney stone. It was no surprise that she made the U.S. Olympic Team. At 16 years old, she won gold in the World Championships. She went on to win 37 Olympic and World Championship medals.

After all her success, Biles made the news for something she didn’t do: compete. In the 2020 Olympic Games, Simone seemed off-kilter. She stepped off the mat on a tumbling pass, stumbled on the balance beam, reduced her midair twist on the vault from 2.5 to 1.5 and had a near fall on the landing. Citing mental health challenges, Simone withdrew. She was roundly criticized by Russian newspapers but was supported by her teammates.

Life is not easy for a kid thrust into the limelight at the young age Biles had been. The hype surrounding her coming into the Games must have been overwhelming. What the rest of the world didn’t know was what Biles was feeling. An aunt she was very close to had passed away unexpectedly two days before the competition. Years before, she had been molested by the infamous doctor Larry Nassar, abuse she had gone public about in 2018. The “twisties” that sometimes interfered with gymnasts’ ability to orient themselves midair seemed mild compared to the weight she was carrying.

Biles took a break to sort things out. With the help of coaches, family and an understanding new husband, she tackled these mental issues the way she did physical challenges: head-on.

Biles made it back to the Olympics in 2024. Part of her preparation included competing at the U.S. Gymnastics Championships. While many may have been nervous, Biles was not. She became the first gymnast to win nine all-around titles at the event, with the highest total score ever recorded at the Olympic Quad.

For all her accomplishments in the air, Biles remains grounded—a legacy that will live on as long as her unmatchable skill and power in the arena.

Come 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 © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

COME BACK

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Pass It On^®

In the Aftermath of Disaster, Rebuild.

The Colorado mountains elicit the peace, tranquility and sense of wonder that inspires songs. It’s the perfect place to retire from a job, although perhaps not from work.

Ron and Julie Lynam worked as schoolteachers their entire careers. They shaped the lives of thousands of young people, went the extra mile to be good mentors and saved their money so that when the time came, they could enjoy more of the Colorado they had come to love. They searched extensively, looking for a place that offered them views of the pine-covered vistas, crisp morning air and a short commute to the barn to do their daily chores. They found it on a rise that overlooks two different valleys, a place where the clouds meet the peaks of the mountains.

Then, two weeks after moving in, a fire marched toward them. Julie remembers the morning: “I went out on our porch, and I saw the smoke coming over Mount Ethel, and it was billowing, that orange and purple color that you know has so much fuel in it. It almost stopped my breath.”

The fire roared over the mountain, smoke darkening the skies. There wasn’t much time to take anything with them. “We talked about what we would get out of the house, but I started to get panicked. At some point, I just had to say, whatever I’ve gotten, it’s going to have to be enough.”

Seeing your whole life burn up must’ve been devastating. The road out to safety, knowing you left everything behind. It leaves a feeling of being adrift.

“I couldn’t even prove who I was after the fire,” Ron recounts. “College degrees, birth certificate—all evaporated.”

Julie adds: “That was maybe one of the most bizarre things, to be looking at every gift I’d ever been given in a heap of ashes. You know, the things that you own aren’t just items; they’re part of your story.”

Many people in the community never returned. It was just too painful. Starting over in a new place seems a better choice, leaving the vision of ashes behind. But Julie and Ron decided to rebuild. There was nothing left of their home but a bare foundation filled with ashes. They needed a place to sleep and live again; they needed a barn. And they needed to do it themselves. So they went to work, salvaging wood and piecing much of it together on their own.

Julie tenderly recalls how the experience also built their relationship. “The thing I’ve learned about you, Ron, is once you say you are going to do something, you do it. Watching you build this house, work until you were literally too tired to raise that hammer one more time. You stuck with it.”

The view is back. It will take a while for the forest to grow back. But Julie and Ron are patient. And determined.

Never Give Up On Your Dreams… 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 © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

NEVER GIVE UP ON YOUR DREAMS

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A Good Father Goes a Long Way.

Living in Hollywood is a challenge. Growing up a child actor almost guarantees a life of dysfunction. Without a strong father, Howard could have taken the path of least resistance. But his father was there from the beginning, protecting, loving, guiding. And sacrificing. Rance Howard was a working actor in 1960 when his son Ron got the role of Opie on “The Andy Griffith Show.” Rance put his own career on hold to look after his son on set.

At the time, TV shows featured boys who were bratty, always getting into trouble and making smart remarks. Dennis the Menace was a hit as a troublemaking, mop-headed boy. “Leave It to Beaver” featured boys who rubbed adults the wrong way. The wisecracking, annoying trope was all the rage. It’s also how the character of Opie was originally written.

After the first reading, Rance Howard sat down with Andy Griffith and gently encouraged him to make Opie’s relationship with his TV dad a little more tender and innocent, a little more real, like his relationship with his own boys. Andy listened and took the suggestion to heart. When shooting started, Opie emerged as a new kind of television boy, a kid who had a special relationship with his father, who helped his son through life’s challenges.

Seeing a boy own up to his mistakes and a father own up to his—traits influenced by Rance and Ron—created an honest relationship that families still look to today. “He stood for something that people could recognize as integrity,” Ron says of his father. “And we benefited from that.”

Looking up to your father is a powerful force. We need role models in life. We need people who love us and help us learn from our mishaps. Ron Howard avoided many of the pitfalls of growing up in Hollywood. He went on to a career full of successes, creating inspiring films that encourage us to find the best in ourselves: “Apollo 13,” “A Beautiful Mind” and “Cinderella Man”; the kind of films you love to watch with your family.

The influence of a good father goes on for generations and touches lives that would be impossible to count. You can start with one of Griffith’s most endearing lines: “You’re my young’un, and I love you more than anything or anybody in the whole world, and nothin’ or nobody can ever change that!”

Parenting… 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 © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
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PARENTING

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Will Rogers: A Man of and for the People.

Will Rogers wrote: “I never met a man I didn’t like,” and that is how he lived his life. Born in Oklahoma as a member of the Cherokee nation, he once quipped, “My ancestors didn’t come over on the Mayflower, but they met the boat.” His affable personality and cowboy philosophy made him the voice of commonsense in politics and of hope during the Depression.

Rogers began his career in vaudeville after failing as a ranch hand in Argentina and having more success during a stint in South Africa, where he learned people would pay a little bit of money to see a cowboy do rope tricks. His fame skyrocketed in America when a steer escaped the ring at a New York circus, and Rogers skillfully roped it before the raging animal could climb the bleachers.

It was his matter-of-fact approach to life that made him so appealing, delivering dry aphorisms and witty observations about life and politics. “All I know is what I read in the papers,” he deadpanned at the beginning of each show, then went on to read headlines and offer up homespun logic: “Why sleep at home when you can sleep in Congress?”

Even with all his laid-back mannerisms, Rogers was one of the hardest-working people in America. He appeared in 70 movies and was on the lecture circuit from coast to coast. His weekly newspaper musings reached 40 million readers, and he wrote over 4,000 columns. He wrote a string of humor books and a longer column for the Saturday Evening Post. He traveled around the world three times, started his own production company and jumped into a weekly radio broadcast that also went nationwide. He was often a guest at the White House, no matter which political party was in power. He played to the fallibility of leaders and roped in fans as easily as cattle on his ranch. His broad smile, slack shoulders, hands-in-pockets posture and fatherly wink made him the person you wanted to talk to when you needed a take on the world that could get you through the day. “I hope we never see a day when a thing is as bad as some of our newspapers make it.”

In a world sensationalized by headlines, it’s good for all of us to recall those cowboy roots, no matter who we are. We should rise with the sun, put in a good day’s work, eat a healthy meal, brush the dust off a friend’s back, and go out and mend a few fences. Bringing a horse wherever you go is also a great way to break down barriers.

Rogers served as a goodwill ambassador to Mexico and traveled cross-country on a fundraising tour to feed Americans during the Depression. The affable cowboy and his sidekick horse put people at ease and helped them realize that moving into the future didn’t mean giving up on the lessons learned from the past.

“The good old days with most of us was when we didn’t earn enough to pay an income tax,” he reminds us. Yes, things are better today than they were yesterday, and tomorrow they will be even better.

Wit and Wisdom… 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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WIT AND WISDOM

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Cooking With Sharks.

Julia Child began her culinary career in the U.S. military. Too tall to enlist in the Women’s Army Corps, she was assigned a research position where she cooked up shark repellant to coat sailors’ life jackets.

Julia Child stands tall in the history of culinary personalities. At six feet, two inches, she was quite a presence in the kitchen. But she didn’t learn to cook until after she was married, preferring to spend her time playing tennis and earning her degree in history at Smith College in Massachusetts. As a young adult, she was more interested in writing than cooking, serving her country rather than serving fine food. She worked in advertising and kept her dreams of writing a novel in a nearby drawer.

Then, her typing skills got her assigned to the Secret Intelligence division of the Office of Strategic Services, specifically the Emergency Sea Rescue Equipment Section. Her first challenge was to find a way to keep curious sharks from exploding underwater ordinance designed to impact German U-boats. She went to work in the kitchen and concocted a shark-repellent recipe that the Navy used for decades. It was also adopted as a coating for life jackets to protect service members who landed in the water.

Child’s assignments took her all over the world, from Sri Lanka to China and finally to Paris. Food was an influence everywhere she went, but it wasn’t until she was in France that she had a transformative culinary experience. She married Paul Child, whom she met in Sri Lanka, and the two moved to Paris. The cuisine was “an opening up of the soul and spirit for me,” Julia Child later wrote.

Being with Paul and his sophisticated palate was an education. He was a poet and a connoisseur. The couple often entertained other diplomats, and Julia Child decided to take up the apron and master the art of cooking. She graduated from the famous Cordon Bleu cooking school, learning French from recipes, and later studied privately with master chefs. Her appetite for perfection was matched by her delightful and humorous personality. Always quick with a one-liner, she was a breath of fresh air in stuffy diplomatic circles.

It was at her cooking club that Julia Child met Simone Beck, who was writing a French cookbook for an American audience hungry for the domestic arts yet needing a practical and accessible approach. The book was a smashing success, and Julia Child began her career as a knowledgeable, well-trained and entertaining chef for the masses. Hardly a kitchen in America was without a Julia Child cookbook. Her cooking show won Emmy awards, and millions of American housewives tuned in, anxious to feed their families well and show off their skills at social clubs.

Julia Child became the epitome of womanhood – well-educated, skilled with a skillet, and quick with a pinch of humor. Television was live, and so were Julia’s blunders in the kitchen. Perfection wasn’t the goal; enjoying the process was. It was empowering.

Julia Child’s influence goes far beyond the kitchen. She was a commonsense personality who genuinely cared about all people. For decades, she was the voice of inclusion, making sure everyone was invited to dinner. “We should enjoy food and have fun,” she sagely said.

Bon Appetit... 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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BON APPETIT

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53 Olympic Gold Medals.

Karissa Trinchera was born prematurely, a start that increased her odds of developing more slowly than typical children. Soon after, doctors discovered she also had Stickler Syndrome, a condition that causes vision, hearing and joint problems. She also experienced a traumatic brain injury. The bleak diagnosis was discouraging.

“They were kind of giving up on her,” her mother says of the doctors.

But Karissa and her parents pushed forward. Swimming began as a sensible physical activity, but Karissa fell in love with the water. She trained harder. She made the varsity swimming team in high school, the first special education student to do so. The competition thrilled her, and she began competing in the Special Olympics. She earned 48 gold medals in her career.

And then tragedy struck again.

Karissa was in a car accident, hit by a distracted driver, severely injuring her shoulder. Surgery and rehab were difficult. With significant damage and six pins in her shoulder, doctors told Karissa that she would never compete again.

At the time, with 48 gold medals, her goal was to reach 50 medals. She pressed forward, training and preparing for more races. When she did compete again, her gold medal tally reached 53.

It was a special time for Karissa, and an emotional time for her hometown of Elk Grove, California. One of Karissa’s best friends growing up was Officer Kevin Tonn. He was killed in the line of duty, and Karissa pledged her talent and her time to supporting law enforcement. Her last medal was dedicated to another officer she knew who was critically wounded. Her last act as a Special Olympics swimmer was to give back to the community she loves. She wants everyone to know of the selfless sacrifice of law enforcement officers.

After a long and successful career, Karissa moved with her parents to Idaho. But she isn’t slowing down. Unable to swim competitively, Karissa has taken up a new athletic endeavor: equestrian sports. With the help of her parents, Karissa has adopted a racehorse that suffered a leg injury. It’s fitting that the two work together, beating the odds and preparing for the next competition.

Win or lose, it doesn’t really matter. Karissa is winning at life. Doing the most with what you have and caring for others is the real victory. Karissa’s philosophy of life is to do your best and to try new things. And while plenty of people will doubt you and tell you it can’t be done, a spunky girl with an infectious smile will tell you otherwise.

Be More than Expected… 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 MORE THAN EXPECTED

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All the Right Notes.

Liz Stookey Sunde carries on the cause of love and making us all better human beings through Music to Life. As the daughter of Noel Paul Stookey of the 1960s folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary, she knows firsthand the power of music to change our souls.

Noel Paul Stookey wrote perhaps the most oft-quoted song lyric at weddings: “Whenever two or more of you are gathered in His name, there is Love.” Our world regularly feels unsettled, in need of love — and gifted troubadours like Noel create songs that unite us. Stookey’s career with Peter, Paul and Mary promoted peace and kindness, and now he has taken this vision for a better world one step further.

In collaboration with a diverse coalition of artists, businesses and nonprofit allies, Noel and his daughter, Liz Stookey Sunde, have founded Music to Life, a national nonprofit that offers musicians the training, resources and mentorship they need to become social entrepreneurs in their communities.
Communities face numerous health, education and human rights crises. Music is a great healer, and musicians can be activated to build bridges to positive change. Sunde and her team are ushering in a new kind of troubadour, building community partnerships and programs that address issues of economic, environmental and racial justice.

“We’ve all benefited from music’s restorative power,” Sunde says, “whether at a festival, in a concert hall or even as part of a musical ensemble. We want to empower the music-makers and help them build music-driven programs that revitalize their communities.”

Musicians, from rap artists to classically trained violinists, use their art to address a need in close collaboration with a community-based organization. Their stories are inspirational: a country artist with kids who struggled with substance misuse now facilitates musical healing for parents and caregivers at a local opioid clinic; an Indigenous rap poet who lost friends to suicide now tours nationally and conducts self-esteem workshops at juvenile detention facilities; and a bilingual performer from Latin America engages new American domestic workers in productions that help them adjust to their new home and connect with each other.
“At no time during the cross-cultural evolution of this planet has music ever had a more important role,” notes Stookey. “In an era of mistrust and confusing social signals, these musicians touch the people of our communities, bringing clarity and hope to a wounded world. I’m honored to play a small role in their journey and the work of my daughter.”

Music not only heals our souls and connects us as human beings; it awakens the divine within us, the yearning to bring peace to the world one relationship at a time. When we are moved by the tones that transcend language, we make room in our lives to love more. We find time to gather and share. We move to a better place and find ourselves believing “in something that we’ve never seen before.”

The Power of Music… 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 © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

THE POWER OF MUSIC

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The Enduring Smile of the Mona Lisa Still Calms Us Today.

A smile is the most universally recognized language of friendship. It crosses cultures and bridges languages. It is the connection between friends and the bond between mothers and newborns. It is the first expression of love in an infant’s life.

That first smile is a baby’s recognition of her mother. It is the first shared awareness that the child knows how to connect. As we get older, it is the expression of contentment, happiness, love, forgiveness, empathy and reassurance. A smile can mean so many things that Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” is the most debated and recognized painting of all time.

For da Vinci, the smile represented the ideal of happiness — a concept that is hard to define. Perhaps that is why the Mona Lisa is so universally appreciated; everyone who looks on the warm colors, the relaxed hands, the confident posture and the contentment in the eyes sees their own life and the relationships they enjoy.

The Mona Lisa’s smile is a canvas for our own interpretations. The young mother may see the Mona Lisa as a maternal overseer, watching her children grow. The grandmother may see the growing family and reflections on a life well-lived. A young girl may see confidence in the future. And the husband may see an ideal to which he perhaps aspires, serenity amid the stresses of life.

How did the artist capture so much universal emotion in a single painting? This was da Vinci’s genius. He was a great observer of life. Born into what was described as the lower class, young da Vinci showed artistic promise. He began as an apprentice at age 14, which would have included grinding pigments, mixing paints and preparing canvases. He learned the chemistry of color and the mathematics of perspective. As he grew and learned from the masters of his period, he kept furious notes on everything, from how water currents moved to how light played on different surfaces.

He began his paintings by laying down the dark of the shadows and layering colors and glazes until the light felt like it was emerging from the surface. The subjects he chose to paint were often everyday townsfolk. He enjoyed the real lives of real people. He had a great love for his students and was revered for his gentle ways. A lifelong vegetarian, he also had a tender heart, often going to the market to buy caged birds only to release them.

Many art experts speculate that the Mona Lisa is a disguised self-portrait. Da Vinci was shy and handsome as a young man. It is said that he painted the simple portrait of a contented woman to capture the very idea of happiness in himself and as a universal emotion. It is that smile that has lasted all these years, a reminder that all of us can find our own happiness. And we can make others happy as well, with just a smile.

Smile... 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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SMILE

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Milton Wright, Father of Famous Fliers.

The Wright family history is the story of American history. The family tree’s roots reach back through abolitionists, clergymen and ancestors who landed at Plymouth only two decades after the Puritans. They served in the Revolutionary War, carved farms out of the wilderness and pursued the treasures of knowledge.

The Wright brothers’ mother, Susan Koerner Wright, was a studious woman who attended Hartsville College, a rarity in those times. She had grown up on a farm and was very handy with tools. It is said that she could fix practically anything, and she was the one to solve the boys’ early engineering problems. Their father, Milton Wright, worked long hours on the farm, studied incessantly and was a minister in the United Brethren Church. The family’s strong moral values included eschewing alcohol and being vocal opponents of slavery.

The Wright children were expected to work hard and be upstanding in their morals. When they were young boys, their father Milton brought home a flying toy: a propeller made of bamboo and powered by a rubber band. Fascinated with it, the boys began tinkering immediately. Their insatiable curiosity was inhibited only by their lack of mechanical know-how.

As the boys grew, all things mechanical fascinated them. They tinkered with bicycles and printing presses. Through all this, Milton was a bit nervous. He was weighed down with financial obligations, church politics and the sorrow of Susan’s death in 1889, when Wilbur was 22 and Orville just 17.

When the family struggled financially, the brothers dropped out of school and put their hands and minds to work. They published a weekly newspaper and opened the Wright Cycle Company, selling and repairing bicycles.

The business was successful enough to fund their flying experiments. It’s easy to imagine the brothers working long hours on bicycles during the day and assembling propellers, gears and motors in the back workshop in their off time. They spent hours on the beach watching birds glide. They made sketches and obsessed over the details of materials, dimensions, rotor spin and weight. Their work continued for more than a decade until they finally developed their dream: an airplane.

When it came time to test their first full-scale model in 1903, they were meticulous about the right environment and time of day. And, when that day finally came, they flipped a coin to see who would be pilot.

Milton, meanwhile, was anchored to the earth with practicalities and doubts. He couldn’t bear the thought of losing his sons, so he made them promise never to fly together — that is, if their experiment ever got off the ground.

The boys did get off the ground. They became a national sensation. And, at age 82, Milton finally agreed to fly with his son Orville. The craft slowly gained altitude, wobbling side to side and gliding like the birds they had so often watched on the beach. An excited Milton cried out to his son: “Higher, Orville, higher!”

Take Flight... 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 FLIGHT

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Shakespeare and Love.

“And when love speaks, the voice of all the gods make heaven drowsy with the harmony.” So writes William Shakespeare in “Love’s Labour’s Lost.” In this comedy about the search for human betterment, four diligent young men find themselves caught between their oaths of cloistered study and their attraction to irresistible women. It is being truly in love, they realize, that makes them achieve their full potential.

And so it is with each of us. To love and to be loved is to experience the deepest emotions: belonging, joy, sadness and reverence for life itself.

Shakespeare knew a bit about love and longing. After his marriage, he had to move away to London to find work while his wife stayed in Stratford to raise the children. Living conditions for a young playwright in London at the time were not very accommodating. Business was also difficult for a writer. His first produced plays didn’t bear his name, and without copyright laws, his work could be produced without paying him royalties.

In his starving-artist years, Shakespeare must have missed his wife and family terribly. How else could he write tender lines like “love comforteth like sunshine after rain” if he had not endured the separation and the London rains, only to be united with his wife in the summer?

Perhaps what makes Shakespeare’s plays so enduring is that he was not immune to the hardships of life. Three of his siblings died, and his son Hamnet died at age 11. Sixteenth-century England was a time of geopolitical unrest. The lower classes were oppressed and disease-ridden. Human emotions were raw from the loss of life due to wars and pestilence.

But Shakespeare had a keen eye for character, and he captured the courageous, the loyal, the greedy and the depraved with equally deft strokes. Out of conflicted times come some of his most profound observations, still inspiring wisdom today: “To thine own self be true” from “Hamlet.” “No legacy is so rich as honesty” from “All’s Well That Ends Well.” And “We know what we are, but know not what we may be,” also from “Hamlet,” as a young man grapples with disillusionment.

We often struggle to express our feelings in words. Luckily, Shakespeare has done much of the work for us. The perfect passage is there to comfort us — and inspire us to write our own verses. Our words may not live in the libraries for centuries, but they will last in the hearts of those who receive them.

After all, as Shakespeare wrote in “Romeo and Juliet,” the most famous love story of all, “My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep. The more I give to thee, the more I have.” So go ahead. Share your deepest thoughts, your greatest affections, your whole self. Because, in the words of John Lennon, our far more modern bard, “Love is all you need.”

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 © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
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LOVE

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Arthur Brooks, the Professor of Happiness.

His class on happiness has the longest waiting list in Harvard’s catalog. He recently published a book with Oprah Winfrey. He is in demand on college campuses nearly everywhere.

Arthur Brooks is not a rocket scientist, a pop star or a professional athlete. Yet he gives us all what we want a little more of: happiness. He speaks to us because life is complicated, communities are stressed, families are overworked and the future seems uncertain.

Understanding what drives Brooks to make the world a happier place requires a look at his humble beginnings. He grew up in Spokane, Washington, and played the French horn.

“Music is a kind of meditation on things that are beautiful,” he says. “But I wanted more.”

He left the California Institute of the Arts to join the City Orchestra of Barcelona, Spain. While working full time, Brooks earned his master’s degree in economics. Then, he moved back to California to work for RAND Corporation while earning his Ph.D.

Being curious is a good thing, and learning is a good thing. Curiosity gives us a better understanding of the world and our place in it. But Brooks wanted to implement what he was learning. Later, he began teaching at Georgia State University and then Syracuse University. He discovered that he was interested in the economics of behavior, or how the way people feel determines how they act, and how they act determines how they feel.

Diving into human emotions and how they motivate and shape us became Brooks’ passion. He became an advisor in public policy and studied productive societies. What he discovered was that, aside from some cultural differences, the most productive societies were also the happiest.

“Happiness isn’t found in some finite checklist of goals that we can diligently complete and then coast,” he says. “It’s how we live our lives in the process. That’s why the four pillars of happiness are faith, family, community and meaningful work.”

Faith keeps us humble and teachable. When you believe there is a power greater than you, you accept corrective criticism more readily. Family often supports us when we need them and provides a place where we also teach, love and serve. Community is our broader obligation to provide for, protect and encourage others. And when we have work with a purpose, we move forward through menial tasks, knowing we are building something greater than ourselves.

Learning to be happier takes practice. Daily practices such as taking note of what we are grateful for, meditating on a higher power, connecting with family and serving in our communities make our lives match our beliefs. When we live what we believe, we do become happier. And maybe more importantly, we make those around us happier, too.

Be Happy... 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 © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
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BE HAPPY

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Steph Curry Keeps Hitting the Shots that Matter.

Steph Curry knows what it’s like to be overlooked. “Coming up through basketball, I didn’t pass the eye test,” he says. “I was a late bloomer.”

For Curry, being a “late bloomer” only motivated him. He developed a strong work ethic and didn’t let failure stop him from learning and getting better.

In their critical development years, kids need encouragement. They need to know that failure is only temporary and that confidence is a skill to be learned alongside physical skills. Unfortunately, many children learn too late how to turn challenges into victories.

Curry’s second children’s book, “I Am Extraordinary,” shares his approach with youngsters everywhere. Its lead character is a girl named Zoe, who is self-conscious about wearing hearing aids. The story features an animated version of Curry who offers encouragement: “There will always be obstacles in life. But those obstacles aren’t there to stop you. They’re there to challenge you,” he explains. “It’s up to you to find the courage and the strength to overcome them.”

At a time when schoolchildren are struggling to make up for classroom time lost during the pandemic, the book couldn’t be more appropriate. Many kids are discouraged with their progress. Making up for lost time takes more work than a regular school year provides.

There are also the everyday challenges of fitting in, low self-esteem and just plain feeling different. The message to believe in yourself is the mantra Curry has lived by to become one of the greatest shooters ever to play basketball.

Off the court, his mission is to change the world, saying, “I have an interest in leveraging every part of my influence for good in a way that I can.” That effort includes investing millions of dollars in literacy programs in the Bay Area, where Steph and his wife Ayesha launched their Eat.Learn.Play. Foundation in their adopted hometown of Oakland. “We focus on three vital pillars of a healthy childhood: nutrition, literacy and physical activity,” says Steph Curry.

Being overlooked or underappreciated is something we can all relate to. But with a bit of encouragement and the right mentorship, we can change directions and move forward a step at a time. Confidence is what carries us beyond our challenges and keeps us coming back, even when we lose.

Curry makes scoring points look easy. He shoots three-point shots with a grace and ease that make us forget about all the hard work he has put in. His affable smile and delightful moments with his young daughter lead us to believe that everything comes easy to the superstar.
But don’t be fooled: Curry has taken his lumps and worked his way to the top. He knows what it takes to be your best. Sometimes, it’s just a matter of finding the right question. “So, what makes you extraordinary?” Curry asks us all.

Be Extraordinary... 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 © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
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BE EXTRAORDINARY

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Friendship Dispels the Darkest Nights in Alaska.

A StoryCorps story.

When the winter sun sets in Kasigluk, Alaska, it won’t rise fully for three months. But Alaskans are a hardened breed. They continue to work undaunted, many in trades that require them to be outdoors in extreme conditions. The isolation, the darkness and the unforgiving weather can take a toll on the residents.

The results can be sobering. Alaska’s suicide rate is twice the national average. Don Reardon reflects on this tragedy and how it affected him in high school: “The first person that I knew intimately who took his own life was a teammate of mine. I was just a freshman in high school. He had moved into Bethel to play basketball. We were good friends. And then, that summer, I found out he took his life. That fall, I lost another classmate. Pretty soon, it was like a whole gym full of people that I knew personally who are gone.”

Qaiyaan Harcharek lived in the northernmost town in the United States: Utqiagvik. Harcharek had similar experiences with suicide in his part of Alaska, a few hundred miles from where Reardon grew up. But his were more personal. “I can relate. 100 percent. All of my adult life, I’ve had struggles with mental health and depression, and I’m a suicide survivor … I attempted it.”

Reardon and Harcharek met when Reardon traveled north. They became fast friends, brothers who loved the Alaskan culture and the wilderness. The tundra reaches to an endless horizon, too high in elevation to support trees. There is more sky than land, a terrain you can traverse for weeks and not see another human figure. It is a place where ancient mammoth tusks wait to be discovered, a place so spiritual that the past and the present are the same.

It is summer, and the temperatures are somewhere in the mid-fifties. Harcharek is shirtless, with a crest of tribal tattoos across his chest, symbols of the sacredness of nature. The vast distance could symbolize that space between human beings that leaves them feeling alone in a universe of cold. But Reardon and Harcharek stand together, bridging the gap of emotions with friendship.

“It’s as if we’ve known each other our whole life,” Reardon says.

Harcharek reflects on his darkest day and what pulled him out of the abyss. “I had this vision,” he begins, his voice breaking with emotion. “It’s hard to describe, but it was my wife and children reaching up to me. And there were many, many silhouettes around them of people, with faces, and yours was one of them.” It is Reardon’s turn to grow emotional. He chuckles a bit, covering up the feelings but affirming his brotherly bond.

“What I do know,” Harcharek continues, “is that it was the love that I received from each and every one of those people that saved my life.”

Reardon looks forward. “I appreciate you, man. We need to get out on the land together and just go spend some time in the wilderness.”

Harcharek answers, “Absolutely. That is my medicine.”

The friendship, the wilderness, the feeling that life reaches out beyond our expectations, beyond our dreams, to endless affirmations of living.

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.

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FRIENDSHIP

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Harmony in Hardship.

The Great Depression rolled out across America like a pandemic, forcing families to work longer hours if they could find jobs and stand in soup lines if they couldn’t. The pall of angst wore down the average family, yet most adopted a “make-do” attitude and put their backs into life, working through the lean times as best they could.

When folks had a moment to rest, they gathered around the radio to lighten their spirits. A new band leader was on the airwaves at a venue everybody could afford: the local kitchen. The radio connected people to the world, providing harmony from a band that made you forget how hard your day had been.

Glenn Miller grew up in the Midwest and Colorado. He learned to play the trombone and decided in high school that he was going to be a professional musician. He moved to New York City, got gigs as a studio musician and soon sent for his high school sweetheart.

Times were tough, and Americans needed music to wake them from their Depression-weary doldrums. The Glenn Miller Orchestra was just the ticket. He set a fast tempo with a beat you could move your feet to. The signature clarinet took the lead like a dance partner, and before you knew it, your whole body was swinging to the music. From Atlantic boardwalks to sagging porches in the Midwest, people of all ages were tapping and swaying and swinging to the music. Miller so defined the American musical experience that the Greatest Generation was often dubbed the Glenn Miller Generation.

By 1942, Miller and his band had lit up concert halls and movie screens across the country. But the war was on, and everybody wanted to do their part. The bespectacled band leader’s eyesight was so bad that he was denied entrance into the armed forces. Undeterred, he applied to the Navy, which also rejected him. Then he talked his way into the Army at 38 years old and formed a military band like no other.

Entertaining the troops became a patriotic duty to lift their spirits. From the cooks in the mess hall to the mechanics in airplane hangars, Miller’s music kept everything and everybody moving. He even broadcast a version in German to show the Axis powers that America was committed to stamping out Nazism.

“Chattanooga Choo Choo” blared across Europe while soldiers on leave jitterbugged to “In the Mood.” The Western idea of freedom for all was contagious in nightclubs and town squares. Miller’s new take on military marches, “American Patrol,” encouraged a lively bounce and swing as columns of people moved together in harmony, yet distinct in their personalities – much like America at the time. And when military personnel were homesick, they were comforted by a tune they sang thinking about girlfriends and boyfriends back home: “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree.”

In 1944, Miller and his band were scheduled to fly from England to France. After bad weather grounded the flight, Miller became increasingly anxious to play for the boys liberating Europe. He pushed to take a smaller plane that would fly low and get him across the channel to Paris. The plane disappeared, and Miller was never seen again. But he has been heard ever since.

Dance Your Troubles Away... 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 © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
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DANCE YOUR TROUBLES AWAY

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Good Food. Good Friends. Good for the Future.

Growing children need healthy food to do well in school. Yet 14% of children in America don’t get more than one meal a day. Having an empty stomach makes it difficult to concentrate on schoolwork. And many families in urban areas live in food deserts, where fresh produce, meats and dairy are difficult to get.

That’s why 17-year-old Abby Yoon founded the Sustainable Hunger Initiative. One of her first projects was a community garden.

A garden is a good place to get an up-close relationship with the food we eat. Vegetables and fruit need daily nurturing. In turn, they give us the nutrients we need to thrive.

Yoon’s garden has provided over 3,000 pounds of food to local family centers and soup kitchens. Her group has arranged with farmers and ranchers to donate more than 45,000 pounds of locally raised beef. She also offers nutrition and cooking demonstrations, because part of eating a good meal is knowing how to prepare it.

Yoon’s goal is to “be the one person who empowers more people to act in their own communities.” She believes in getting her hands dirty in the garden, so people have fresh produce, but also in teaching others to grow their own gardens. “The community garden can serve as a medium for nutrition education,” Yoon says.

Growing and living a healthy lifestyle also means getting enough physical exercise. Yoon and her volunteers get plenty of cardio work in the garden, but many children don’t have the opportunity to get out and play. Yoon meets their needs by overseeing a fitness program that partners with the nutrition side. Her organization has donated more than 600 bicycles and oversees fitness programs for over 7,500 youth.

Yoon is all about making a difference. What she loves most is when others are inspired to do the same. So far, 10,000 volunteers have given their time to the community garden. After all, it is their community, and having fresh food on their tables is a dream come true. It all started with a 17-year-old girl who had a dream, a shovel and her feet planted firmly in her community.

Plant 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 © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

PLANT YOURSELF

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Pass It On^®

Going the Distance from the Farm to the Record Books.

Even among ultramarathons — defined as any race longer than a standard 26.2-mile marathon — 875 kilometers (544 miles) is a long one, requiring training and stamina that seem almost beyond belief.

Back in 1983, the Westfield Sydney to Melbourne Ultramarathon, which began and ended unceremoniously in mall parking lots, had never been completed in less than seven days. But the world’s most elite runners showed up to prove their mettle. They were surrounded by support crew, followed sophisticated nutrition and break schedules, and had years of training experience. Cliff Young showed up alone, wearing gumboots and overalls. He left his dentures at home because they rattled when he ran. When asked about his training regimen, he simply said he had grown up on a 2,000-acre ranch where he herded sheep on foot because they couldn’t afford horses.

As the race began, the elite runners left Cliff in the dust. He strode along in his signature shuffle, arms dangling and gait efficient but not film-worthy. Many spectators must’ve thought Cliff was a promotion for the race who would soon drop out. But when other racers paused to get some sleep before the next grueling day, Cliff kept on, making up distance on the leaders. He reflected on herding sheep to new pastures, a task that took three straight days and nights, walking back and forth, prodding the sheep forward, steady progress to keep control of the herd. Cliff was at home with the solitude of running and the challenge to stay on task, to keep moving, even after days of simply putting one foot in front of the other. He kept himself sharp by imagining he was moving sheep ahead of a storm.

Cliff finished the race in five days, 11 hours, a full two days faster than the previous record. He was an instant celebrity. Not only did he will himself to run so far with so little experience and sleep, but he also split the prize money with the race's top runners. He said he didn’t know there was prize money and felt bad accepting it. “Those other runners worked as hard as I did,” he explained.

Today, a memorial in the shape of a gumboot stands in the Beech Forest where Cliff grew up. In later long-distance races, professional runners adopted the “Young Shuffle,” mimicking Cliff’s energy-saving gait. But what Cliff Young will be remembered for most was his big heart. The locals remember him as bonzer, the Aussie slang word for excellent.

Cliff Young never ran for notoriety or money. He simply wanted to see how well he could do. For all of us, doing our best is what our life story is all about. Win or lose, gumboots or running shoes, we win the race when we just don’t quit.

Be Bonzer... 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 BONZER

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Benny’s Bees.

Benny is up early. His fit frame and efficient movements are a testament to his military training. He hoists heavy boxes of packaged honey into the back of his truck before the sun is up. But he always has time for a chat. And that begins with him handing you a bottle of honey and talking about its health benefits.

Honey is one of the healthiest foods on the planet, stocked with nutrients and antioxidants, and unlike other sweeteners, it may even help maintain blood sugar levels. Honey also reduces inflammation and improves heart health. It helps suppress coughing in children and even helps heal open wounds, especially from burns, as a topical ointment. Benny will tell you all this while leaning against the truck and slicing off a chunk of honeycomb for breakfast. Honey is good for energy, too. And if you stay around long enough, Benny will teach you about bees.

Our food supply depends on pollinators. Bees are a major part of the ecosystem. Fruit trees rely on them. Flowers, bushes, trees, spices, nuts and even chocolate depend on bees. Plants need to regenerate to provide shade, soil health, clean air and water, and habitats for all kinds of wildlife, large and small.

Taking care of bees is no small matter. The average bee pollinates 5,000 flowers a day. But in its lifetime, a bee will only collect enough nectar to produce 2 ounces of honey. Imagine how many bee hours it takes to make one jar! “The health of the hive is most important,” Benny says. They need to be protected from parasites and pesticides, and they need a diversity of flowers.

To produce a comb of honey, each bee collects nectar, processes it inside its body, and stores it in a small cell. Thousands of bees working together are the perfect example of a community or colony caring for each other as they store honey for the winter. Every bee does its part: Some fan the entrance to regulate the temperature, some are producers, and the queen makes sure enough new bees are hatched to grow the colony. None of this is lost on Benny.

“My grandfather introduced me to bees,” Benny says. “It’s where I find my peace.”

Benny’s routine is to stock the truck early, and on his way to his stand, he makes several stops — checking on neighborhood widows, picking up trash along the road and slinging full bags into a dumpster. In the winter, he’ll shovel the snow off the sidewalk around the whole block. By 10 a.m., he is sitting at his stand. He’ll sell a few jars and spread the word that honey gives life and bees are the perfect example of community, each giving something of themselves to make every day a little sweeter.

Sweetness... 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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SWEETNESS

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Caitlin Clark and the Importance of the Supporting Cast.

Caitlin Clark is the best college basketball shooter ever. She is also an inspiration to young girls everywhere who have hoop dreams. While Caitlin represents stardom, she also reveals the hard work and selfless play.

One of Caitlin’s young fans is Linnie, a player on a ninth-grade basketball team in a small town far from Iowa. One evening, late in spring, Linnie walks into a gym that is more crowded than it has been all season. Her team has won all its games. But Linnie has seen her playing time go down as the team has moved up the charts to this final contest. Tighter games mean keeping the best players on the court. Still, Linnie knows she also has a role to play, to be the best player off the bench. For most of the game, Linnie cheers her teammates on, shouting encouragement. She gets her four minutes of play at the end of the third quarter, when she earns a steal and a basket. Ultimately, her team wins the championship and a lifetime of memories. Her basket was a three-pointer, and her teammates call her shot the Caitlin Clark. Linnie is ecstatic. Even though her team won by 20 points and didn’t really need her basket, it feels good to be a part of it all.

Teams are built from bottom to top, not the other way around. There will always be those rare superstars, but games are won when there is a bond between all teammates and they work together as one. That’s something Caitlin Clark knows, and she has high praise for her teammates. “I’m just so thankful. I wouldn’t be where I am if it wasn’t for them,” she says.

Watching Clark’s highlight reel is like replaying childhood hoop fantasies. She makes shots so deep they seem only possible in your dreams. Getting less attention in Caitlin’s game is her ability to pass and make those around her better: Caitlin is also the leader in assists this year. The supporting cast is better because of her, and she is breaking records because of them.

“At the end of the day, we have a really great team. And that’s what makes it so fun,” she says.

The players on the bench cheering on the starters are the same ones who push themselves hard in practice to give the starters a competitive look. They dish out compliments, work hard in the weight room, study film, make the whole machine better — and get little credit for it. Sure, they’d love to be Caitlin. But more important, they love her.

When we celebrate others’ successes, we share in the elevation of all. After the championship game, Linnie is on the couch getting texts from her teammates. “Great steal!” “Nice shot!” “You killed it!” Each of us may have that moment when all our dreams align, and we are the superstar. Until then, we can be happy in our own progress, our relationships, our knowledge that whatever our note in the grand symphony of life, we can play it well.

Act Well Thy Part... 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 © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

ACT WELL THY PART

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The Secret Ingredient to a Good Meal: Family and Friends.

The early 1900s in America were rough years for much of the population. The economy was strained, the great flu pandemic shortened lifespans, World War l took its toll, and many common diseases were not yet treatable the way they are today. But the working class found ways to thrive. They were resourceful, lived in close-knit communities and looked out for each other.

We often look for ways to be happy in our day. Looking back at how our great-grandparents lived gives us a new perspective. Their values, hard work and optimism for the future cleared the path for each of us. When Bernetta McKindra started looking into her family tree, she found her grandfather, Henry Perry, the Barbecue King of Kansas City.

“He came to Kansas City when he was 15, by steamship. He came alone, and he brought with him this method; you could take these cheaper cuts of meat that was thrown out from the packing plants and make it be tender, make it be delicious, make it be where people stand in line and wait for it [with] that beautiful art of smoking that he perfected,” Bernetta says.

Henry Perry honed his skills in restaurants and on steamships. He perfected the art of slow cooking over coals, a process that encouraged people to take their time eating. And eat they did. When he opened his restaurant, word quickly spread. People traveled from great distances just to eat his food.

But with all the time spent preparing meals and running a restaurant, Henry had little time to write his life down. Bernetta only learned of her famous grandfather when she overheard a conversation. And that set her looking into the smoky, savory past. “It was a glorious time. It was a time of reckoning that not only was this man being recognized, but he also was my blood relative,” Bernetta says.

It was also a time of segregation. But that didn’t stop people of all colors eating together. In fact, Henry’s Barbecue was one of the few places in America that was integrated. “It was a place where segregation ended when you walked through the door,” historian Sonny Gibson says. “People were just hospitable. They loved to sit there and eat barbecue.”

Bernetta carries on the tradition of having people over for dinner. Her friend Ray Mabion delivers memories with a deep, mellifluous voice, the kind that has been smoked to perfection next to a barbecue pit: “BBQ was always there. How wonderful it is to be invited to your house and those wonderful Sunday meals. You are an excellent cook; it is in your gene pool.”

Bernetta adds: “When you know what you come from, and it’s good stock, it makes you stand a little straighter, makes you walk a little more upright.”

Honor the Past... 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 © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

HONOR THE PAST

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Pass It On^®

Find the Good in Everybody.

“When I was growing up in the hills of East Tennessee, I knew my dreams would come true. I know there are children in your community with their own dreams. They dream of becoming a doctor or an inventor or a minister. Who knows, maybe there is a little girl whose dream is to be a writer and singer. The seeds of these dreams are often found in books, and the seeds you help plant in your community can grow across the world.”

With these words, Dolly Parton encourages us not only to pursue our dreams but also to make a way for the dreams of children to come true. Her ability to inspire us through music and stories that connect us is the gift she has delivered throughout our lives and always when we needed them most.

“I Will Always Love You” reminds us that no matter how hard life can get, there is always someone who loves us. “Working 9 to 5” makes it easier for us to get through the grind of a workday. “Love is Like a Butterfly,” with its lilting melodies, encourages us to cherish each moment we experience with the person we love because you never know when it will end. And “Unlikely Angel,” about redemption and healing, is something we all need these days.

Dolly Parton is loved around the world not only for her remarkable songs but also for her acting, enthusiasm for life, successful business ventures and all she does philanthropically. Raised in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, she was the fourth of 12 children. She has long credited her father for her business savvy and her mother’s family for her musical abilities.

Worldwide, she has sold over 100 million records. Known primarily as a singer/songwriter for country songs, she also has crossed into the pop and rock genres as well as film soundtracks. She has written over 3,000 songs. She has 25 #1 hits, 44 top 10 country hits, and 10 Country Music Association Awards. She is in four music halls of fame: Nashville Songwriters, Country Music, Songwriters, and Rock & Roll. She’s been nominated for Grammy, Academy, Emmy and Tony awards, been honored by the Kennedy Center and received Jeff Bezos’ Courage and Civility award. Not bad for a young girl from Tennessee with a guitar on her shoulder and a dream in her heart.

Inspired by her father’s inability to read and write, Dolly started her Imagination Library in 1995 for the children within her home county. Today, her program spans five countries and gifts over 1 million free books each month to children around the world.

The next time you feel unloved or underappreciated, listen to a little Dolly Parton and know that your dreams, along with those of young children getting a book for the first time, are taking flight, made possible by a girl from Tennessee.

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.

Copyright © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

KINDNESS

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Wheels of Good Fortune.

In 1884, the world was much larger than it is today. There were hostile territories, many regions were poorly mapped, and highways were yet to traverse continents. Sounds like the perfect time to ride a bicycle around the world.

Thomas Stevens was up for the adventure after moving to Denver and taking up the cycling sport on large-wheeled bicycles, fittingly known at the time as boneshakers. These bikes had no brakes, no suspension, iron wheels and little room for error. Getting on was challenging, and falling off meant a few bruises and scuffs.

No worries: The penny-farthings, as they were properly named, were not very fast. For Stevens, that was probably a good thing since he would travel primarily on horse roads and walking paths on a vehicle that was a far cry from today’s mountain bikes.

Stevens left San Francisco supplied with whatever he could fit on his handlebars. The first leg of the journey ahead was over 3,700 miles. He made it to Boston in 103 days, having to walk a lot of those miles on roads that didn’t accommodate wheels. He stayed the winter in Boston, probably loading up on carbohydrates, then took a steamer to Liverpool, where he resumed his ride. A crowd of fans and fellow riders showed up to cheer him on and escort him through the countryside. He had become an ambassador for the sport, and people were anxious to meet the man with chutzpah enough to pedal into the unknown.

Once through Europe, Stevens made his way through Kurdistan, Iraq and Iran. He relied on the hospitality of people he met and was careful not to raise any ire since the region was still simmering from a recent Kurdish rebellion. The trails in the Middle East were mainly for pack animals and carts, so he navigated the mountainous landscapes by pushing the heavy bicycle along. Food and water were scarce.

At a time when governments were shifting and conquering, geographies and borders expanding, Stevens didn’t set out to prove national superiority, gain subjects or win converts. He simply wanted to see the world and meet its people. Lucky for us, he was also a clever writer and documented his travels. He had a dry wit when describing setbacks and harrowing episodes, but also a poetic sense when describing the scenery new to his eye: “A profusion of peach, pear and almond orchards enlivens the landscape with a wealth of pink and white blossoms, and fills the balmy spring air with a subtle, sensuous perfume that savors the tropical clime.”

The journey would take Stevens nearly three years. He covered 13,500 miles. He eased across Europe, got arrested in Afghanistan, sweat profusely in the summer across India, and nearly got killed in China. He traveled with only a change of clothes, a poncho and a pistol. When his odyssey was over, he told a reporter, “I think human nature is pretty much the same the world over.”

Feats large and small bring our appreciation to the little things — like just how much every member of the human race has in common.

Roll Forward... 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 © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

ROLL FORWARD

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‘The Velveteen Rabbit’ – How we Discover what Makes us Real … is Love.

Margery Williams was an accomplished writer and author long before she wrote “The Velveteen Rabbit.” Born in London in the summer of 1881 to a wealthy and successful lawyer, she was the youngest child. She reflected on feeling separated from her siblings on account of the age gap, “To be the youngest of a family by as much as six years is almost like being an only child.”

Williams’ father died when she was 7, and the family moved to Philadelphia. Perhaps the trauma caused her to withdraw. She found solace in writing adventure stories and companionship with her pet mice, which she kept in her dollhouse.

Her early books attempted to capture the spirit of the day, but they were never popular. She found work writing sentimental Christmas stories for a publisher in London but always felt unfulfilled to the point of despising stories that either lacked imagination or too forcefully ignored reality.

“I wanted to do something different,” she recalled, “but did not know what it should be.” She hearkened back to her childhood in Europe and the frankness of the stories she grew up on.

All this time, Williams had been raising her child, Pamela, who turned out to be an art prodigy. The creativity the mother sought was manifest in her daughter. At 12 years old, Pamela had a smashing opening at a New York gallery, where she was heralded as a brilliant young talent and sold her work to the most prestigious buyers.

Williams watched as her innocent daughter was thrust into the world of adulthood too early, an accelerated grief that all parents feel when their children grow up. The fame brought a chance opportunity. The magazine Harper’s Bazaar commissioned a story from Williams, with Pamela as illustrator. The story featured Pamela’s forgotten stuffed bunny from her abbreviated childhood. The article was a success, and Williams went to work expanding it into a book. It was published in 1922 and has been in print ever since.

What is most endearing about the book is its ability to accompany young readers and their parents through the voyage of growing-up emotions. Imagination is inherent in children. So is kindness and wonder and a sense of adventure. But as children grow, too often they become victims of logic, trying to become reasonable adults who feel the responsibility to rein in unrealistic expectations and dreams. In the view of Margery Williams, stifling imagination too early leads to an unhappy life.

“But who can say where dream ends and reality begins?” the Velveteen Rabbit asks.

It is a question we should let children discover for themselves. Like the rabbit’s, their reality is that “love is the magic that makes a thing real.”

Be Real... 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 REAL

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He Ain’t Heavy, He’s my Brother.

Rob Rigano lives in the town he grew up in on the East Coast, in New York state. His older brother, Phil, lives in San Diego. The two are in their mid-fifties now, and they got together before COVID to record a few memories.

The ease and affection in their conversation tells you everything about their relationship.

“Robbie is what they call developmentally disabled,” begins Phil. “He knew he had limits. But he had a way of just melting your heart.”

Robbie was a handful growing up, but his family took it in stride. They laughed at his shenanigans and his sense of humor.

“My happiest memory is when Dad took me to learn how to swim,” Robbie remembers. “But my dad is a little excitable.”

Phil laughs at the inside joke the two share. “Why do you think that is, Rob?”

Robbie pauses and lights up a little. “I think that’s his nature.”

Phil laughs again. “Yeah? Not your nature? Maybe, you know, you doing things?”

They try to restrain their laughs, remembering Robbie flailing in the pool and his father trying to settle him down. It is the kind of story close families tell when they rib each other around dinner tables on holidays, the ones they retrieve to make them smile on hard days.

Being an older brother to a boy like Robbie could have its challenges, like having him tag along when you are trying to be cool with your friends. But Phil doesn’t reveal any resentment, only delight and a lot of love for his little brother.

After all, there was a lot to learn from Robbie. After high school, Robbie got a job with the Department of Public Works, where he worked for 30 years, picking up litter, sweeping and keeping his town clean. He came to be known as “the Real Mayor” by townsfolk. He never missed an opportunity to stop and talk with someone, sharing his quick wit and contagious smile. And he would make the rounds checking on older neighbors to make sure they were OK. As he said, “Well, who else is going to do it?”

Human nature is to be kind. To look after each other. To smile and trust and share. Somewhere on the long path to adulthood, we teach ourselves to be guarded. We lose the wonder of childhood friends and busy ourselves with tasks that distract us from the friends we could have if we just looked up.

Somehow, Robbie grew to adulthood, forgetting just about anything that troubled him or hurt his feelings. He forgave easily and forgot readily. His nature, the one that was excitable as a child, became inquisitive, clever and caring as he got older.

When COVID arrived, Robbie got it twice. It left him weakened, a tender soul drained by an unforeseen virus, and it took a toll on his sense of humor. Phil misses the Robbie he knew before the virus.

“He was always a glue that bound the family together. He is a gem of a guy, and we all helped to polish him.”

Be A Brother... 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 BROTHER

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Everybody’s Grandma.

Connie would tell you she was not very good at choosing husbands. As a schoolteacher in South Carolina, she worked hard to ensure her students were up to grade level. She’d lived through the Great Depression as a child and understood the value of a dollar and an education.

Unfortunately, her first husband didn’t. He was interested in activities that didn’t yield an income and died young, leaving Connie with two young daughters. Her second husband brought stepchildren into the family, but he left after a few years, and Connie raised the kids on her own, including her stepson.

When her sister died, Connie took in her kids as part of the family, too.

“She was always steady,” Connie’s daughter remembers. “She had to be.”

That steadiness was what the grandchildren appreciated. A lot changed between when Connie raised her children and when it came time for them to raise their own. The world was more confusing, but to Connie, it was the same as it had always been. Kids needed someone to talk to, play games with and laugh with. They needed to learn how to work and take responsibility for their choices. After that, it was all about love.

With her short gray hair and curious, warm eyes, Connie became such a fixture in the family that the neighborhood kids began to befriend her as well. She helped with their homework, laughed with them as they played neighborhood games and was often surrounded by young ones at the community pool.

“She always brought enough food to share and had a good stash of treats in her purse,” a friend remembers with a laugh. “And if you sat long enough, she would give you a good talking to about health food.”

As the grandkids got older and entered that blender of emotions called high school, Connie became known as the Oracle, or Con-Jon or Club Connie. Her modest home became the place for teenagers to drop by, grab a sandwich, talk out their concerns, get a little help with homework or just hang out. They’d sleep on her floor, two or three at a time, and Connie would make them breakfast. She doled out encouragement and never judged. She’d seen hapless and unmotivated people in her life and knew that the best way to get someone to live up to their potential was to offer a kind word and a gentle nudge toward a better decision.

When Connie became bedridden, the teenagers-turned-young-parents still dropped by to visit. They helped in the yard and marveled at the boxes of memories stacked in the house. To an outsider, there was nothing of worth in the home, but Connie had collected valuable memories and tokens of affection and stored them to revisit when her health began to fail.

“She never stopped smiling,” her daughter said.

At her funeral, there were more young people than old, a generation that had grown up on folksy wisdom, maternal encouragement and a squeaky laugh that meant you were going to be all right, no matter what.

Be Special... 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 © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

BE SPECIAL

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What we Learn About Ourselves from the Boys in the Boat.

In 1929, as the American economy crashed and one-quarter of the workforce was unemployed, Joe Rantz stood on the planks of a dilapidated porch and watched his father, stepmother and younger brothers drive away.

It was raining. Rantz was 15 years old. He had been taking care of himself for five years, tending his vegetable garden, sleeping at the schoolhouse where he chopped wood in exchange for a bed, and hauling heavy trays of dishes and food back and forth from the cookhouse to the work camp where the loggers took their meals. He had learned to forage food in the woods, skillfully swing hammers and axes, and sharpen buck saws.

He was self-sufficient. But it was a different matter to be entirely alone, his parents no longer able to take care of him. His father’s last words hung in his mind like the damp air around the unfinished clapboard house he was left with: “Look, son, if there’s one thing I’ve figured out about life, it’s that if you want to be happy, you have to learn how to be happy on your own.”

It was little consolation for a boy left with a can of bacon grease, a chunk of meat and a few eggs. The small town in the Pacific Northwest where Rantz was abandoned provided hard opportunities for work digging out stumps, de-barking logs and hacking irrigation ditches into the rocky soil. Rantz finished the house, learned to play the banjo and worked weekends driving draft horses that dragged massive logs he had felled in the woods. His formative years were spent in manual labor, living alone in the woods, and school years where he worked equally hard to make grades. But he yearned to be part of a family.

Rantz was in high school when rowing coach Alvin Ulbrickson stopped by looking for recruits for his team. He was impressed with Rantz’s strength in a gym class and left a card. The University of Washington had a strong rowing tradition. Coach Ulbrickson was always on the hunt for diamonds in the rough, and Rantz was exactly that.

Rantz had grown up by the strength of his back, but he had done no rowing. Still, he wanted to better himself by going to college. He worked extra hours with his shovel and axe, saved everything he could and showed up at the boathouse hoping to earn a scholarship. He was one of 175 freshmen competing for 80 spots. To make the varsity spot, Rantz would have to excel from the lower training boats to the junior varsity boat, where he could get noticed and hope to be selected for the top nine-man crew.

The training was brutal: early-morning rowing on icy cold water during snowstorms. Burning lungs aching for air and muscles so depleted they had to be willed to continue. Off days were spent cutting or dragging lumber. Summer work included hauling rock at a quarry.

Through it all, Rantz became the one person everyone could count on. The physical work didn’t seem to bother him. He was at home in the boat — the synchronization of oars and breathing, the pull of a common goal, the bond of brothers he finally had. There would be victories against all odds for the boys in the boat, including the gold medal in the 1936 Olympics. But when Rantz agreed to have his story told, he grasped the author’s hand and, with emotion in his voice, said: “Not just about me. It has to be about the boat.”

Determination carries us through the first part of the race. It is family that gets us over the finish line.

Pull Together... 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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PULL TOGETHER

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The Woman Who Talks to Trees.

Suzanne Simard grew up in the woods. Her family worked as loggers, and when she was old enough, she, too, could be found in the trees. She loved the work, which she describes as “extremely exciting because it was so dangerous” and because she was one of the first women in the industry.

The wilderness was exhilarating and full of life in an array of colors. “In the forest floor, there’s all kinds of bugs, but there’s also lots of fungi. And the fungi are so colorful. There are yellow ones and purple ones and white ones, and they grow right through the forest floor to the point where it kind of looks like gauze.”

Soon enough, Simard realized trees would be her life’s work. As modern logging techniques took over her area in Canada, she began to wonder about the health of the forest. There was a common misconception that some kinds of trees were hogging sunlight and nutrients and that, by getting rid of them, the more desirable trees would thrive. After earning a bachelor’s degree in forest resource management and becoming a Registered Professional Forester in British Columbia, Simard earned a PhD in forest ecology and delved into serious research.

She discovered that healthy forests are biodiverse, nutrients are shared among families of similar trees like cedars, and Douglas firs distribute higher amounts of carbon to baby Douglas firs in their network than those outside it. This means that trees work in cooperation, supporting each other with a variety of nutrient and sunlight needs like a community that shares milk, eggs, meat and bread. This diversity makes for healthy individuals.

Perhaps the most significant breakthrough in Simard’s research is that tree communities do more than share nutrients. There is always a hub or “mother” tree. This tree sends and receives signals from the other trees and helps balance the distribution of nutrients. And when this tree dies, like all trees do, it passes slowly, sharing nutrients and distributing carbon to promote the future health of the tree community.

“That was when I started working with kin recognition, seeing whether or not these old trees, especially when they were dying, could recognize and help their kin,” Simard notes. She found that trees do recognize their kin. They take care of the seedlings and the sick trees. Turns out families are important to trees, too.

All this research on trees and their relationships to each other took on new meaning when Simard learned she had cancer. During her treatment, she learned that one of the medicines she needed during chemotherapy was a derivative of a substance trees make for their defense. As she got better, her connection to the forest continued to deepen.

Old trees support seedlings until they are old enough to stand on their own. A variety of trees collaborate for the health of the whole community. And trees produce a healing chemical that helps humans fight cancer. So, the next time you enjoy a nice walk in the forest, thank Simard Simard for taking the time to listen to the trees and understand just how important they are to our well-being.

Listen... 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 © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

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The Friendship Heard Round the World.

Jesse Owens was the grandson of enslaved people and the son of Alabama sharecroppers. Luz Long studied law at the University of Leipzig and was the physical embodiment of Hitler’s nationalistic ideal. One would become a national hero. One would die in the upcoming war. Both would call out racism at a time when it could cost them everything.

Owens arrived in Berlin in 1936, torn between boycotting the Olympics on moral principles or competing in hopes the attention would further the cause of Black acceptance. Long arrived at the Olympics disenfranchised by the Nazi regime and desperate to expose the fallacy of the idea of a superior Aryan race.

The two men met at the broad jump, where Owens had inadvertently scratched his first jump, unaware it would be recorded as his first attempt, and not a trial. Unsettled, he scratched the second jump. As the story goes, Long suggested that Owens leap before the mark, ensuring that Owens would qualify to move on. In the spirit of competition, Long wanted the best from his opponent.

Owens did qualify, and the two went on to the finals. Long would beat the European record. But Owens would set a new world record that outdistanced Long. The two would best each other and the record five times before Owens finally won. What happened next is not the stuff of movie scripts but of real life.

Long took hold of Owens, and the two strode arm-in-arm for a victory lap. The crowd roared approval and shouted, “Owens! Owens!” Hitler promptly left the arena.

The friendship between the two broad jumpers would continue for years until Long stopped writing his friend in 1943. He had been conscripted into the German military and mortally wounded in the Battle of St. Pietro. He passed away in a British military hospital, but not before penning a letter to his dear friend.

“Someday, find my son,” he wrote Owens. “Tell him what times were like when we were not separated by war. Tell him how things can be between men on this earth.”

Owens honored the request and corresponded with the younger Luz for years. After the war, Owens returned to Berlin to walk arm-in-arm with Kai Long, the son of the great peacemaker and forever friend, remembering the moment in the stadium.

“It took a lot of courage for him to befriend me in front of Hitler,” Owens recalled. “I would melt down all the medals and cups I have, and they wouldn’t be a plating on the twenty-four-carat friendship that I felt for Luz Long.”

Friendship is the bond that gets us through the trials of childhood and the loneliness of our adult lives and can remind us of our shared humanity. Friendships forged in the furnace of war and inhumanity lift us all.

The Power of 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 © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP

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Unlikely Friends with Common Roots.

Tucson, Arizona, has long been a place with the romance of the Wild West, even in the years right after World War ll, and that’s what drew all kinds of people there during the late 1940s and 1950s.

On the south side of town, hardworking folks were raising families. Most people had come seeking work in the fields or the mines. Pilots had trained at nearby airfields during the war, and the population had expanded with the wartime work. Before World War II, the blue-collar community was mostly made up of Mexican Americans — that is, until the after-war migration of families hoping to put down their roots in a place that could survive another depression, if need be.

Veterans arrived, seeking work and starting families, and with the sudden change in population, tensions were bound to arise. Jim Murphy was one of these new immigrants to Tucson. Part of an Irish American migration to Tucson from the East Coast, Murphy couldn’t be more different than his Mexican American schoolmates.

Murphy remembers meeting his boyhood friend Carlos G. Vélez-Ibáñez for the first time on an old school bus. They were both from the working-class part of town and went to the same church. But that’s where the similarities ended, or so they thought.

They laugh as they remember the town, the people, the school and the church of their early years. Murphy recalls: “We lived in a government housing project. They were army barracks made into living units around a big dirt field. [Until then,] I had never heard of Mexico or Mexican.”

The introduction of new kids into Tucson was just as jarring to Vélez-Ibáñez. “Some of the Irish kids thought we were Italian. We used to beat the heck out of each other,” he remembers.

But because they all went to the same church, their differences were tempered. The daily interaction moved from suspicion and schoolyard fights to peace and friendship as the boys got older and became attracted to the opposite sex.

“We started meeting each other’s sisters,” Vélez-Ibáñez says. “My sister was being courted by Brendan Flannery, and I fell madly in love with Carol Anne McClain.”

Hard edges were rounded off, and friendships began to deepen. The common goal of making a life in the desert and depending on God brought families together. It wasn’t so much a big event as it was a lot of little things that created lifelong friends.

It’s been 70 years since Vélez-Ibáñez and Murphy attended high school together, but Murphy says, “I feel that I could pick up the phone and call you and ask you for something if I needed it, and you’d be there.”

“You got it,” Vélez-Ibáñez answers without hesitation. “Because of our experience on the south side, there’s a foundation that you and I have. Of understanding.” There’s a pause after this sentiment, and it’s easy to grasp that the years don’t matter when you care about somebody.

Growing up is best done with friends. Vélez-Ibáñez and Murphy found a way to bond during a time of great change in the country. Once you realize that the kid sitting next to you on a tattered bus seat is breathing the same hot dust, dreaming the same dreams, you find a way to help each other reach that place called friendship. And it lasts forever.

Friendship... PassItOn.com®

Listen to this story at Story Corps: https://storycorps.org/stories/as-two-communities-clashed-a-lifelong-friendship-grew/.

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 © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
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FRIENDSHIP

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If a Man Asks for Bread, Will You Give Him a Stone?

Bill Mouskondis is always smiling. He is the son of a Greek immigrant who started a food service company with an old truck and cases of dented cans scavenged from railroad cars. Bill remembers long days riding his bicycle as a kid, delivering restaurant supplies to local cafes. Before semi-retiring, he worked six days a week, making sure his customers got the food they needed to keep their diners and cafes open during the Depression, World War II, another recession and a pandemic.

Now, at 89 years old, Bill checks in with the office daily to ensure things are running right. Every morning at 2 a.m., over 100 semi-trucks are loaded and shipped out. Six hundred deliveries a day to fast-food chains, high-end hotels and restaurants, and the state penitentiary. This last account is one Bill has been taking care of for 70 years.

“My parents had a lot of faith,” he recounts. “They believed God takes care of us if we take care of others.”

The Greek Orthodox Church is a tight community. Its members are living proof that hard work and faith deliver you to a better place, and they believe in lifting those around them. So, when the penitentiary needed a new supplier, Bill was willing to go through all the red tape it took to provide it. He started by visiting with the logistics people, the guards and the prisoners.

“I wanted to know what kind of food they liked,” Bill says with a laugh. “And they told me everything they didn’t like.” Bill’s smile tells you he enjoyed bucking the system a little bit. “There was this attitude that prisoners didn’t deserve to eat well,” he says. “But my father taught me that everybody deserves to be treated with respect.”

Bill developed a healthy menu. He brought in chefs to train the prison cooks, and he cut into his profits to provide fresh ingredients. Little did Bill know at the time that major studies in prison systems would prove that his approach would improve the community. When inmates are treated with respect, when they eat better food and are given time to exercise, recidivism rates go down.

For Bill, he just knew that it was the right thing to do. He carried that same attitude with employees. His expectations are only exceeded by his expressions of appreciation for his people.

“He treats people the way he expects to be treated,” says Dan, a warehouse foreman. Dan would know. When his own father came home from the Vietnam War, work was hard to find. Bill Mouskondis made sure he had a job and was treated fairly. “He gave my dad a chance when nobody else would,” remembers Dan. “When it came time for me to work, I only had one place in mind.”

Dan, the prisoners, the restaurateurs, the mom-and-pop diners and the managers of hotel chains are all treated with the same respect.

“People gave my father a chance to feed his family,” Bill says. “I thank the Lord for those people every day. Our business is built on that heritage of giving back.”

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.

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RESPECT

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Real-Life Blue Bloods.

The Vigiano family has served New York City for four generations: Grandfather, father, two sons, daughter-in-law and grandson. Two of them were lost on 9/11. This is their story, from the StoryCorps collection commemorating heroes from that day.

New York’s finest maintain a tradition of service and sacrifice, often bridging generations of police officers and firefighters in a brotherhood you must be part of to truly understand. It’s no wonder so many first-responder families are like the Vigianos, four generations deep and reaching into siblings and spouses.

Joseph Vigiano — among the latest generation of Vigianos to serve the city — is a member of the same unit his father was, wears the same uniform his mother did, and his grandfather, and his great-grandfather. What drew him to the force was more than a sense of duty; it was a sense of unfinished business. Both his father and uncle died on 9/11.

Joseph Vigiano first dreamed of becoming a paleontologist, but “after my father’s passing when I was 8 years old, that set me on the course where I am now.” He traded childhood dreams for adult responsibilities and the mission to serve and protect. In the long shadow of death from that day — nearly 3,000 died in the towers, and almost as many first responders have died because of illnesses related to their rescue efforts in the toxic environment — Joseph would stand and pledge his life the way his father had and become one of New York City’s 36,000 police officers.

At the swearing-in ceremony, new recruits are encouraged to let the experience of veteran police officers guide the way forward. It is emotional advice for Joseph Vigiano as he contemplates the service of family members who rushed into the choking clouds of dust and debris when so many were rushing out. Today, he wears his father’s police shield, and his brother, who works in the same precinct, wears their mother’s.

To be a police officer in the most visible city on earth is more than to protect its many citizens from harm. The responsibility is to protect them from the debilitation of fear. Everyone deserves to live with the promise of fairness in a system that is no respecter of individuals. It is a commission Joseph bears with honor. His paternal grandfather, John Senior, a retired firefighter, remembers the fateful day he lost his two sons. Joseph’s father Joe was a police officer, and John — also a young father — was a firefighter like their dad.

John Senior talked to each of his sons every day at the beginning of their shifts. That day, “Joe told me to turn on the television, that a plane just hit the Trade Center. ‘I’m heading south on West Street. This is a big one.’ I said, ‘Be careful. I love you.’ ‘I love you, too,’ he said. That was it.”

Thoughts of his father’s and uncle’s service accompany Joseph every day. Similarly, the fortitude of family can carry us all through the most difficult times in our lives. When they are no longer with us, the legacy of the decisions they’ve made becomes the compass of our actions.

We all carry the weight of expectations. Some are heavier than others. As we walk the beat of our lives, we can ease the burdens of others by sharing in the responsibility of making them feel safe. We can serve in our own ways. We can use the example of those who have gone before us as a cautionary tale — and the stuff of heroes.

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 © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

RESPECT

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Anatomy of a Bestseller.

Seeing the inner workings of a hand, or the nervous system surrounding the spleen, doesn’t seem appealing to most people. However, “Gray’s Anatomy,” the corpus of medical students and artists for over 100 years, has the staying power of the world’s greatest novels.

It was created at a time when dissecting cadavers, or dead bodies, became legal in London. In 1832, the Anatomy Act allowed the dissection of bodies for educational use. Rather than relying on grave robbing, as artists and doctors often did before then, the bodies of unclaimed prisoners, vagrants and those who died without kin in workhouses became cadavers in the halls of medical schools.

Ten years after the Act was passed, Henry Gray entered St. George’s University as a medical student. He was 15 years old and probably lied about his age. He’s described as handsome, intelligent, a bit egotistical and a dandy, meaning someone who pays a lot of attention to his appearance. The school’s social life would certainly have been a draw for young Henry — but his ambition was to make contributions to the field of medicine.

He studied rigorously and received prizes in surgery. In 1852, he was made governor of the hospital while still in his twenties. Then, unsatisfied with the emerging textbooks of his day, Gray set out to create work that was clear in description and illustrative detail. A text that could be understood by early students, yet so artfully constructed as to become the human body bible.

Henry Vandyke Carter was a medical student when Gray met him. The two collaborated on a book about the “use of the human spleen.” (Must have been fascinating reading!) After this semi-successful first publication, they turned their attention to the medical opus: “Anatomy. Descriptive and Surgical,” later to be shortened to “Gray’s Anatomy.” The detailed volume was received with mixed reviews among the stuffy London medical aristocrats, but it survived to another printing three years later in 1861.

The manual was received well among fledgling medical students and soon became a staple among textbooks. The illustrations were beautifully crafted woodcuts, skin unfolding like pages of a book and cleanly drawn muscles stretching taut. It became the mechanic’s manual for the body, enabling thousands of students to gain knowledge through visualization and preparing them for the greatest century of medical advancement in history.

Henry Gray was passionate about improving the way anatomy was taught and about the details that would deliver that progress. His life was dedicated solely to medicine until the age of 31, when he was ready to share it with someone else. He got engaged, but in treating his fiance’s nephew, who had smallpox, he too contracted the disease. Henry’s case was confluent, meaning the sores migrated until they formed a sheet covering his whole body. When he died, all his belongings were burned, as was custom with a smallpox patient. But what he left behind is a masterful teaching tool that is still in print today.

The Art of Living... 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 © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

THE ART OF LIVING

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The Key to Life.

Phil Mortillaro is the son of immigrants. He has worked as a locksmith since he left school in the eighth grade. All five of his children grew up watching their father work hard in his Greenwich Village shop, but only his youngest son followed in his footsteps and became a locksmith as well.

As wave after wave of immigrants have found new lives in this country, their stories have inspired the generations that started here, in a new place, with new opportunities and a strong sense of the traditions that shape their families. The Mortillaro children all went on to successful careers, grateful that their father worked so hard to provide them opportunities. But Philip, the youngest, saw a different path.

He reminisces about being raised in the business: “I was literally in the shop from day one. I saw you (his father) in the shop, and I thought, I can do this. I realized that everyone loves my dad. One half of that is because he’s a great guy, and the other half is because he is the guy who helps you even when other locksmiths can’t.”

Phil Senior brightens when he talks about his kids. It’s clear that he is proud of them. He has been a good father and made sure they had what they needed to get a good start. He is also part of a very encouraging statistic. According to the Pew Research Center, second-generation citizens improve their lives beyond the level at which their parents lived.

Phil would shy away from taking credit for his children’s success. He’s just happy they are all doing well. But ask his son what the secret to making it is, and he’ll tell you it’s all about taking care of other people, being there to help, being fair and treating people the way you want to be treated.

“Coming from immigrant parents, you can never work hard enough,” the son says. And it’s not the smarts that make a difference; it’s recognizing your own abilities and putting them to good use.

“I’m no genius,” Phil Senior says, paraphrasing IBM founder Tom Watson Sr. “But I am bright in spots, and I stay around those spots.”

The youngest son pays tribute to his father this way: “You raised five kids, and not a single one of them did not want for anything. That’s hard to do for someone who just went up to the eighth grade.”

Phil Senior counters with, “You do your best, kid. That’s what you do. Your honest best.”

The work ethic, integrity and sense of responsibility to the future: That’s what Phil Mortillaro leaves as a legacy to his children. His son tries to measure up to the expectations every day.

“You are always my barometer. You never let anyone down. That’s what sets you apart,” Philip says.

From a son to a father, and a father to his family, the key to happiness is to be your best in all situations. That is what opens doors.

Be The Key... 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 © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
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BE THE KEY

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The Frozen Race to Save Lives.

Nome, Alaska, January 1925. Home to roughly 1,400 hearty people who live off what they can pull from the rugged landscape. The population in the U.S. territory of Alaska is a mix of Athabascan and Inuit people and intrepid adventurers from the United States and the colder parts of Europe. Looking back, we may see it as a romantic time, and in that moment, so do some of the interlopers and gold-seekers. But to Alaska Natives, it is home and a way of life.

There is one doctor in Nome, an outpost on the Seward Peninsula that abuts the Bering Sea. It is the dead of winter, and the small port is iced in and won’t open until spring. Airplanes in the area have open cockpits and won’t operate in subzero temperatures, let alone the icy winds common in the area. Residents hunker down for these severe months, having stored enough food.

Then the doctor examines a boy with labored breathing. Concerned, the doctor rechecks his order for a diphtheria serum. It has arrived in Anchorage, 1,000 miles away, but there is no way to move the serum to Nome. The boy dies. Fearing an outbreak, the doctor orders a quarantine. Another child dies. The expected mortality rate is near 80%. The territory governor urgently calls in the locals and devises a plan: Move the serum by train as far as the tracks go, then by relay via the hearty men of Alaska and their dogsleds.

Dogsledding is a lonely, isolated endeavor. You travel alone, through dense forests and deep snow, across frozen lakes pelted by icy winds that tear the bare skin off ungloved hands. In January, there are just four hours of daylight, and the darkness must be navigated by those familiar with the terrain. Such men and their dogs are a rare lot, thriving in temperatures that plunge below -50 degrees Fahrenheit. They are loners by nature and a community by necessity.

And so trappers, guides, mail carriers — those whose daily living depends on their dogsledding skills — prepare their sleds, their supplies and their dogs. They spread out along the challenging route: 20 mushers and 150 dogs must cover the 674 miles in six days before the serum expires. The previous record time to cover that distance was nine days, in much better weather.

Leonhard Seppala, an ex-pat from Norway, will lead the most treacherous leg. Seppala is a legend in the territories for his “hypnotic” control over his dogs. He has led expeditions for mining companies, won the most prestigious dogsledding races and bred some of the dogs other mushers employ. At only 5’ 4” and 47 years old, he is in exceptional shape. With Seppala locked in, the team is confident.

Ultimately, the relay did reach Nome on time, but at a great cost to the mushers. Wild Bill Shannon lost three of his Malamutes, and his face was blackened by frostbite in the -40-degree temperature. Charlie Evans got caught in an icy fog, lost several of his dogs and pulled the sled himself. Seppala chanced a treacherous shortcut as the temperature dipped to -85. The relay's progress was covered on the radio, captivating listeners across the continent. During the last leg, Gunnar Kaasen couldn’t see the dogs in front of him. Winds estimated at 80 mph blew him over. The canister of serum was lost in the snow, and Gunnar had to dig with his bare hands to find it. He suffered severe frostbite but pressed forward. “I couldn’t hear, couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe,” Gunnar recounted. “I felt as if the dogs and I were fighting all the devilish elements of the universe.”

With rapt listeners cheering them on, the relay finished in five and a half days in the coldest winter in decades. To the brave mushers goes the recognition, even though most of them shunned the glory. They would rather credit their dogs: Balto, Togo and the many others that led the way in the race to save thousands of lives.

Press Forward... 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 © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
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Out of the Village and On to Break Records.

Rugby is a fluid, creative game that begins with strict training and structure but moves according to players’ wits. There are collisions and tackles, deft maneuvers and hard falls. But at the core of the game is cooperation. No player acts alone. Every breakaway is accompanied by supporting players, exchanging the ball and the lead position. It is this lack of hierarchy in the system and focus on teamwork that makes the game so much fun to watch and bonds the players so deeply to each other.

The South African rugby team has overcome more than its share of turmoil. Political, social and socioeconomic strife have sometimes threatened to tear the country apart, and the end of apartheid shocked the nation awake. While the citizens writhed amid growing pains, entities like the Springboks national rugby team brought an example of unity to their fans and families. It wasn’t an easy time, but the Springboks were determined. By 2019, having been left out of the World Cup twice because of boycotts, they were unwavering in their mission to show well.

For 24 years, the country had waited for at least a try in the finals. Now, the Springboks were here. They led by two kicks but had not scored a try. Then, with only a six-point lead, they had the ball again. A short run yielded a few meters. The English team piled on the ruck, hoping to stop the momentum. The ball was finessed out, and the scrumhalf fired a quick pass to Mapimpi, who kicked it forward to be picked up by Lukhanyo Am, with only one defender to beat. Mapimpi rushed forward to support his teammate, who drew the defender to him. Then, at the last moment, Am off-loaded a pass to Mapimpi, who had a clear run for the score. When he succeeded, the record was his.

That try was a long time coming. Mapimpi’s path was strikingly lonely. He didn’t grow up in the elite youth rugby leagues but instead made his own way, unsponsored and unnoticed until his late teens. His run to greatness began in the small rural village of Twecu, where barefoot boys play rugby on hard-packed dirt with a soda bottle for a ball. They kick dust and scrawl the numbers of their favorite players on the back of faded T-shirts. Mapimpi’s father left when he was just a boy. His mother died when he was young, as did his brother.

After making the Springboks team, Mapimpi was made aware of a team tradition: putting photos of family members on uniform numbers to remind players who they play for. Mapimpi had no photos. An emotional Rassie Erasmus, South Africa’s director of rugby, couldn’t hide his emotions as he related the story. “He didn’t have anyone else. You know his brother died, his mother died, he doesn’t have a photo. He doesn’t play for one thing; he just has a massive heart.”

Makazole Mapimpi now has something much bigger to play for — a whole nation of brothers and sisters, and a rugby family big enough to match his talent and heart.

Heart... 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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HEART

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From the Beach to the Desert.

Cruise down Highway 1 through the little beach town of Laguna Beach in California and you’ll be charmed by the quaint shops, the sea breezes, the soothing sound of waves. This is where people come to relax, watch sunsets, read lazy books and let the stress of the modern world be carried away on riptides.

But don’t be fooled. Not every patron of the town is a mop-headed beach bum waking up after the morning haze has burned off to take an afternoon stroll. Just up the hill from the beach is the high school, where students will meet before traveling to neighboring San Clemente High on a Saturday for a 2-mile walk to raise money to build a well in a Kenyan village.

Most Kenyans live where clean water is hard to access. The climate switches from extreme rain to extreme heat, making water resources challenging to manage. Dams provide some help for agriculture, but the flat and porous terrain quickly soaks up water before it can be stored and distributed.

The good news is all that water that falls in the rainy season is stored far underground, sometimes as deep as 900 feet. But bringing it to the surface can be a challenge. Sometimes, it requires heavy-duty equipment. Shallower wells are less costly but still require manpower and technology to work. A single well can supply water to an entire village, and this can be life-changing. Waterborne illnesses are the No. 1 killer of children in Kenya due to dysentery. And having to walk 6 to 8 miles to get water takes time away from school. A well can make a difference in so many ways.

Weeks before the first annual Healing Hands for Water Walk Fundraiser event in 2012, students walked the beach town and solicited donations from businesses. They covered a lot more distance than the 2 miles they would cover during the event as student organizers Branner Grimsley, Klara Gundelach and Solveig Erngren pounded the boardwalk. But “making a difference by helping these people’s lives in Africa” was worth it, Grimsley said. The communities on both sides of the world would agree, as Walking for Water celebrated its 20th anniversary this year.

Standing on the boardwalk, with the hum of tourist traffic behind at this idyllic spot, looking out over the sand to the horizon and beyond, you can see a lifeline reaching from a few dedicated kids to a similar swarm of kids in an African village. The connection was hard to imagine at first but now seems so real. Students on both sides of the world walk under the same sun. On other days, they would have different places to go, but today, they walk for the same reason: to share the bond of being one human family.

In another Kenyan village, a well has just been completed. As the villagers excitedly seesaw the hand pump, the anticipation builds. Within minutes, a trickle of clean water flows, then a gush. It is a miracle in such a dry village. Barrels are filled, children splash, and tears of joy flow as easily as the well water.

Dig Deep... 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 © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

DIG DEEP

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Curing Cancer, One Bar of Soap at a Time.

Heman Bekele was born in Ethiopia. He’s always had a scientist’s curiosity, that insatiable desire to know how the physical world works and how to improve the lives of its inhabitants. Before he moved to the United States at age 4, he remembers watching people working in the hot sun all day. In middle school, he began to wonder if they knew the risk of skin cancer associated with sun exposure.

Skin cancer is one of the most common forms of cancer. Untreated, it can spread beneath the skin’s surface to the lymph nodes and blood. The key to preventing complications and even death due to skin cancer is early treatment.

Sometimes, the simplest answers solve the most complex problems. That’s where Heman’s curious mind comes in. Heman developed Melanoma Treating Soap (MTS), a daily soap that uses a compound to treat skin cancer by reviving dendritic cells — an important part of the immune system — attacked by cancer. Once revived, the healthy cells fight against the cancer cells. Deborah Isabelle, a product engineering specialist from 3M and Heman’s mentor, describes the product this way: “The soap reminds the body how to defend itself.”

The simple solutions are often the most effective because they are the ones people will use. Soap is a daily ritual for most people, and for those at risk in sun-drenched areas, using soap is an easy and affordable solution. “I wanted to make my idea something that not only was great in terms of science but also could be accessible to as many people as possible,” Heman says. “No matter where you live, I think you know and trust soap in comparison to other medicinal products.”

Making soap with the right compounds to hold it together and still be effective took months of work creating prototypes. To speed up the process, Heman used computer modeling to test and refine combinations of compounds.

In the journey of pursuing a passion, multiple disciplines are needed: a little knowledge of chemistry, marketing, software and computer skills, and even social science to see how people will respond to a new product. But when we educate ourselves with a purpose, we learn much faster. And Heman started with a goal in mind and learned the skills along the way.

“There’s still a lot to do,” Heman says. He has plans to start a nonprofit to distribute the soap to places in the world that need it most. That means learning about distribution and supply chains as well as international relations. That’s a tall order for a 14-year-old. But to Heman, that’s the advantage of starting young. He has dreams of building something life-changing. His vision is to turn the cancer-fighting soap into a “symbol of hope, accessibility, and a world where skin cancer treatment is within reach for all.”

Be The Change... 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 © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

BE THE CHANGE

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The Weight We Carry and the Burdens We Share.

Isabelle Allende is one of the most widely read novelists of our time. Her stories drive us to places we must see to understand, exploring cultural and physical diasporas and that beating heart of humanity, the family.

Writers show us the world in a way that opens our minds to new perspectives and helps us better understand ourselves through introspection and without personal risk. Books can shake us out of our complacency and challenge our emotions to mature. This was the calling Allende felt as she captured stories and served them up to her readers. And then, tragedy struck the writer. Her daughter, Paula Frias, contracted a rare disease, and Allende was left to grieve through the long process of losing her one breath at a time.

Grief is exhausting. Grief drains the creative reservoirs. After Paula’s passing, Allende was left empty. No story could fill her soul the way her daughter had. Then, at the suggestion of a friend, she and her husband took a trip to India. The land of contrasts splashes colors on the palette; the people and their lives fill up the story bank. But it wasn’t a new plotline Allende found. As they maneuvered their way in a rickety cab through the melee of traffic — buses, barrows, bicycles and one cow, they finally made their way to the countryside. Long stretches of natural landscape rolled out, sometimes curtained by the migrating haze of the city.

They came upon a group of women gathered to rest under a large tree. Allende and her husband approached them. At first, the Indian women were shy and backed away. But curiosity overcame them, and they came forward. Allende remembers the meeting vividly: “Lacking common language, we greeted each other with smiles and then they examined us with bold fingers, touching our clothing, our faces and the silver jewelry we had bought the day before. We took off the bracelets and offered them to the women, who put them on with delight. There were enough for everyone, two or three each. One of the women, who could have been Paula’s age, took my face in her hands and kissed me lightly on the forehead. I felt her parched lips, her warm breath, her smell. It was such an unexpected gesture, so intimate, that I couldn’t hold back the tears.”

What Allende didn’t understand at first was that the mother was desperate and starving. She had a newborn and offered the baby to Allende to raise. It was an offering that rocked Allende. The transaction could not have taken place for a myriad of legal and ethical reasons. But the notion that a mother could hope so much for her daughter that she would give her away stuck with Allende. Returning home, Allende started a foundation to help impoverished women, inspired by the muse of her ever-present daughter who often said in difficult situations: “What is the most generous thing to do right now?”

In the process, Allende found her voice again — and soon returned to writing, as well.

Find Your Voice... 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 © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
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FIND YOUR VOICE

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Walking and Learning and Appreciating what we Have.

In a world that moves at the speed of the internet, the details of life’s best relationships can speed by in blips, missed by the distracted eye. It’s difficult to remember that walking, as a mode of transportation, was the most common way to move about only 150 years ago. While the adventurous few coursed the sea, drove wagons or rode horses, most people in human history have depended on their own two feet, moving one step at a time.

Perhaps that’s why, when retired Wall Street reporter and cancer survivor Neil King wanted to rediscover the depth of the human spirit, he took a walk, a 330-mile ramble to see a small part of America’s beginnings.

“I was off to do something that was very pure and basic,” Neil said, “which was just to notice things and immerse myself in a walk through one spring that had kind of cleansed my eyes in some ways, or my spirit.”

It seemed fitting to start a stroll into America’s past at Washington, D.C.

“This is the front yard, the nation’s front yard,” he said. “It just seemed like the perfect place to start this walk.”

Stepping off the front porch of America and strolling through her history on foot brings an intimacy you can’t experience any other way. Neil crossed the Mason-Dixon Line that delineated slavery on one side and freedom on the other, which runs through the middle of a 19th-century farm. It’s as if the land has taken back demarcation but remembers its history as a cautionary tale. In York, he strolled through Lebanon Cemetery, where several Underground Railroad conductors are buried, along with 32 African American troops from the Civil War, and volunteers were working to recover the memories and rescue stories. On the Susquehanna River, Neil observed a Native American petroglyph over a thousand years old. In Pennsylvania, he stopped for an afternoon to socialize with a group of Mennonites while they played softball before gathering for choir practice.

“I met so many great people that I almost felt were put there by some higher power to interact with me,” Neil said. And indeed, are we not all offspring of a power greater than us, the power of community?

Neil King navigated the New Jersey Turnpike and made his way to the tangle of pathways of New York’s Central Park, the ingenious interweaving of peaceful nature and city buzz. The health benefits of walking are obvious: increased cardio capacity, deeper breaths that enliven the lungs, propelled by almost every muscle in the body. On another level, moving through the small details of lives intertwined with history and emotion gives us a sense of what we can accomplish.

“In the end,” Neil said. “I think the walk, despite all the gloomy thoughts that you can have about various episodes from our history and our past, left me a lot more optimistic, in a way, about our future than had been the case when I walked out the door!”

Travel light. Enjoy the slow pace. Take time to appreciate.

Take a walk... 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 A WALK

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Teach Your Children.

As a teenager, Graham Nash co-founded The Hollies with his school friend, Allan Clarke. They became one of the most popular groups to emerge from the UK as part of the “British Invasion”. Named after their idol Buddy Holly, the Hollies began touring in the United States in 1969 which in time led to Graham meeting David Crosby and Stephen Stills with whom he created one of the most distinctive blends of voices in rock and roll history: Crosby Stills & Nash. Among Graham’s songwriting contributions to CSN and soon thereafter to CSNY was a song never recorded by the Hollies but a perfect fit for CSNY: “Teach Your Children”. The tender call-out to be attentive to your children and to encourage them to dream is a timeless reminder of our responsibilities and an awareness that as they grow into those dreams, they will always love you. The song then takes a turn and admonishes children to teach their parents, to share dreams with them, thus creating a mutual bond of trust and strong shoulders to lean on.

Graham Nash has never lost sight of his sensitivity to children and the world they will inherit. On Nash’s new release, Now, recorded at 81 years old, his song “A Better Life” explores the contagious optimism of an introspective observer who sings, “The world has changed, but the soul remains.”

As children, the road ahead seems long and obscured by many turns. With the guidance of the older generation, sharing the lessons learned and the ones that should be forgotten, we can (hope to) hear them say, that we left them a better life; a life more manageable, more likely to give them space to grow and in turn, reach back and give us that steady shoulder we need when our legs are feeble and our backs a little weakened by the load we carried.

No matter your age, and what you have accomplished, you can always take the time to make a better life for somebody. As Graham Nash says, “Although children are 25% of the population, they are 100% of our future.” Reach out by reaching back. Teach children well.

A Better Life... 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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A BETTER LIFE

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From Russia, With Love.

Andrey’s Ukrainian mother encouraged him to follow his passion for art. His Russian father taught him to work hard. And his young wife encouraged him to find personal meaning in his sculptures.

Andrey and Katya met in art school in Moscow. Andrey is tall and broad-shouldered. When you talk to him, he bends in close to understand the meaning you are trying to convey. His brown eyes light up as if from within. He’ll put a large hand on your shoulder as he apologizes for his broken English, sometimes explaining the definition of a Russian or Ukrainian word or using a word in French to punctuate a thought.

Strewn out on a table are the photographs of all his projects, many featured in prominent Russian publications. His sculptures are primarily civic pieces created to represent Russia's strength or her citizens' scientific accomplishments. One sculpture of Nikola Tesla shows the towering figure tenderly opening his hand to a small bird. Andrey explains that he wanted to show the intellectual strength of the man, but also his heart. It is this ability to capture the depth of humanity in one pose that makes Andrey’s work so captivating.

Andrey and Katya were living a charmed artist’s life. They were doing rewarding work, making a good living and raising two small children. Then, the war broke out, dividing families and casting a pall over the whole region that weighed heavily on the people. Travel became restricted, communication was spotty. Finances were hard to access. Andrey and Katya were traveling when the war began. There was little hope that their lives would ever be normal again because Andrey would be conscripted into the military. So, with what little money they had in their pockets, they took a train leaving Russia.

“It was a miracle that we got that train,” Andrey remembers. “There were no seats. But while I was talking to the man behind the counter, two seats came up as available. We took them and held our children on our laps for 14 hours.”

That was only the beginning of their journey as refugees. Eventually, they ended up in the Western United States. Andrey found work as a sculptor’s apprentice and went to work welding the giant steel infrastructure to support clay sculptures that would become bronze. Massive horses, dignitaries and long friezes that would adorn university campuses and town squares were built and shipped from the studio.

At night, Andrey worked on his own sculpture, a gift to the world expressing the sadness and despair he felt for his family living in both Ukraine and Russia. The sculpture features two majestic mothers, clothed in the robes of peace, yet mourning. At their feet is a fallen soldier representing their son: a Russian mother and a Ukrainian mother both lamenting the same boy. Andrey has no words to describe the scene, not in his native tongue or the one he now uses every day in a new home. He only tears up.

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 © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
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PEACE

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Doubling Back for a Friend.

Running cross-country track is not a casual sport. Training takes a lot of dedication, and come race day, you push yourself to your body’s limits. Most races are roughly 5 kilometers or 3.2 miles. The course is over rough ground, grass, gravel, dirt and mud. Maintaining cadence and pace can be challenging. The first race of the season is the most difficult. Runners who are not quite race-ready often push themselves too hard. It is, after all, a competition.

On a bright fall day, when sunlit afternoons can be deceivingly brisk, Cooper Erickson and Ethan Olds were striding toward the finish line. A runner from a different team had passed them earlier in the race, bolting toward the finish. But about 10 meters from the line, the runner collapsed. His muscles were overcome with lactic acid, a chemical that builds up in muscles during a run.

At first, Cooper went by him, focused on finishing the race in fourth place. And then something clicked. Runners talk about gliding along in the zone, unaware of anything but their own breath and the rhythm of their stride. It takes a lot to break that kind of concentration. Seeing a fellow runner on the ground caused Cooper to step out of the zone and go back to help. He was aided quickly by his teammate Ethan Olds. Together, they helped their fellow competitor across the finish line.

“I know our team has great respect for people that give their best efforts, and that’s what we did,” Cooper said.

A 5K race is a run, not a sprint like the 100 meters. It requires pacing and patience. It’s easy to let your mind dwell on pains in your feet or legs, or the burning in your lungs. Like life, there are obstacles along the way. It rains. Your shoes get wet. There’s the jostling at the beginning and around corners and the distraction of the crowd.

Trusting in your training is what pulls the best athletes to the front of the pack. Every phase of the race has been visualized and trained for, each second accounted for. And then the unexpected happens: Somebody needs help. At this point, there is a decision to be made. Is the race more important than the human being beside me?

Neither Cooper nor Ethan hesitated to stop. “When you start to take running very seriously, you build a community, and that community is so wide, and you just have a respect because they are giving it their all,” Cooper said. “That was more important than finishing in second or third place.”

Running through life is a joy. But sometimes, taking the time to help someone out is the real victory.

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.

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RESPECT

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A Voice for Our Time.

In a time when it seems like conventionally beautiful people rule the world and so much of who we are depends on fitting in, Kodi Lee breaks all the barriers. With seemingly “perfect” performers gracing our screens and large stages, it often feels like there is no room for the rest of us. Kodi Lee is a reminder that all are important and everybody has a voice worth listening to. But it wasn’t always so.

Kodi Lee was born in 1996 with optic nerve hypoplasia, a condition that left him legally blind. He survived a lifesaving surgery at five days old and, in his early years, was diagnosed with autism.

To see him enter the stage brings two emotions to the surface: You may feel like you want to protect him from failure, and you want to cheer him on. Even Simon Cowell rose from his seat the first time he met Lee on “America’s Got Talent.” The famous judge and producer was worried for the young man who wobbled a bit when he walked and couldn’t make eye contact. But with the aid of his mother, Kodi Lee made his way to the piano bench.

The audience grew silent, their faces filled with hope and fear. Fingers resting on keys, lips testing the distance to the microphone, Lee transforms into a performer who delivers raw, emotional lyrics drawn out of some inner power. His voice settles into the tones of a seasoned traveler who has seen and understands the world. His pitch is perfect, and his range is remarkable. When he sings the lyrics to Calum Scott’s “Biblical,” it feels like the whole world is laid bare and the love he sings about is the only thing we really need.

Lee is the child of Tina and Eric Lee. Because his ability to communicate is limited in some ways, he looked deeply for avenues of expression and connected with music. It is like a door that, once opened, floods his senses and focuses his talent. He is only one of approximately 25 people in the world considered a musical savant. He has an audio-photographic memory and holds a library of songs in his mind, everything from jazz to R&B, pop and classical.

When he first performed on “America’s Got Talent,” the audience was mesmerized and thrilled. The standing ovation carried on to his next performance. Lee was overjoyed. The happiest place in his life is at the piano in front of an audience, not because it shines the light on him but because it makes people so happy.

As we look at our own images on our screens, save a few spaces for messages that reach out and make others happy. No matter who we are, something profound inside us connects to people and brings them a little joy, a little encouragement and a big smile.

Sing 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.

Copyright © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
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SING OUT

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Hope. Dream. Become.

In classrooms across the country, students returning to fall assignments find themselves befuddled by the most daunting homework assignment: write a poem.

It is not easy to bare your emotions in poetry. Many grade-school kids avoid exposing their vulnerabilities at a time when they are trying so hard to fit in. But under the gentle guidance of good teachers, they put pencil to paper. Some of them even dare to submit their work.

In central Pennsylvania, Public Radio station WPSU sponsors a poetry contest. Eager young poets with minds sensitive to their surroundings timidly bring forth their musings in hopes of a little attention, perhaps encouraging others to be reflective, too.

Kindergartener Allison Caron writes: “The sunshine lights up the flowers … / The moon shines on the cars. / The moon shine becomes a sun. / The sunshine lights up our new day.” In a simple verse, Allison captures the hope we all share for a bright future.

Second-grader Alice Rimland writes: “Why is the world so big? ... / Why is summer hot? ... / Why did I ever write this poem? ... / Life holds so much more than what’s in the near future. / Wonder awaits!” Childhood optimism is one of the great wonders of the world. It would do us all good to see our lives through the eyes of a child, seeking friendships and peace, warm days and wonder in every gaze. Imagine waking full of curiosity, impatient to throw ourselves into the magic of a fresh start.

Fourth-grader Poppy Goble writes: “High on the mountain, a meadowlark / enthralled by the beauty, bursts forth and sings. / All around the mountain his glorious voice rings.” Such observation elevates the heart. Poppy goes on to describe a change in the scene; a storm rolls in, and the meadowlark takes refuge under a tree. Each of us has our place of refuge. And each of us can be a place of refuge for others.

Sixth-grader Eveline Overdurf reminds us of how much we can do with a blank page: “First there was nothing / A blank page / Waiting to be a story / A story of dragons, of princesses, and lost princes / Or maybe it’s a story of change, of patience /… It could give hope, or give comfort / It could change you, or strengthen you /… All on a single page of blank paper a better world could be formed.”

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Carl Sandburg is described as America’s poet. He brought forth emotions that helped readers of all ages see the purpose of life more clearly. “I believe more than I can ever prove of the future of the human race,” he wrote. And so we can, with ink and paper, make the future bright beyond imagination.

Do Write... 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 © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

DO WRITE

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Winning at the Game of Life.

No team wins every game. And, like the game itself, sometimes life feels unfair. For most student athletes in all sports, the support they get from their teammates is what helps them get through the challenge of balancing work, school and athletics. The lessons learned are valuable for life. It’s never going to be easy. Career, family, and the unpredictable nature of both can bring trials that test your character.

Football is one of those sports that develops a strong bond between teammates. It requires every member to trust the player next to him. Trying to juggle the financing of an education can be the most difficult play of the season. At Eastern Michigan University, offensive lineman Zack Conti was doing everything he could to keep up with team practices, studies and paying his way. He was even donating plasma regularly to help cover expenses. By his teammates’ assessments, he was one of the hardest-working players on the team. But he was not on scholarship.

That’s when his teammate Brian Dooley stepped in. Dooley’s scholarship was one of only 85 allotted to Eastern Michigan by the NCAA. As Chris Creighton, head football coach, explains, schools can petition for more, they can beg and plead. But the rule is hard and fast: 85 scholarships. Period.

So Dooley did the unimaginable. He talked to his family, and then he went to his coach. Creighton remembers: “Brian Dooley comes into my office and he says, ‘Coach, that guy has earned it. And I’ve talked this over with my family. If there is a way to make this happen, I am willing to give up my scholarship as a gift to Zack Conti.’ I’ve never seen anything like that ever before.”

At a team meeting, Coach Creighton made the announcement, and Dooley walked over and handed Conti the scholarship. The team erupted in cheers, and Conti was soon buried beneath a huddle of cheering teammates pounding him on the back, jumping up and down in celebration.

When asked about the incredible gift, Dooley shared, “I did it because I’ve seen Zack grow over the years. Seeing him walk away from something that he loves did not sit well with me. He works hard and gets in extra work with me all the time. In my eyes, he earned it 100%. Giving up my scholarship so he can stay and play means everything.”

In the throes of competition, true character is revealed. We hear too often about the occasional bad apples. But competition can shape us to be better people. Through competition, we can learn that a team isn’t really about competing at all, but cooperating to reach a united goal.

Stand and Deliver... 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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STAND AND DELIVER

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Family of 7 Adopts a Grandpa.

When Sharaine and Wilson moved their family to Rhode Island, they already had a houseful. Five kids, a hectic schedule, a long list of house projects and a whole new neighborhood meant little time for anything else. And then Paul showed up.

At 82 years old, Paul had just lost his wife, but he was still handy and helpful. He trudged across the street carrying a ladder to meet the new neighbors and offer a little help with fix-up projects.

Sharaine remembers, “Our biggest fear moving into a new neighborhood was what if the new neighbors don’t like us? We have a lot of kids; they make a lot of noise …” But those fears were quickly put to rest. Paul knows a lot about tools and maintaining a house built long before Sharaine and Wilson were even born, and he soon became a fixture in the family.

At a time when divisiveness is prevalent on the news and suspicions are at an all-time high, Paul seemed oblivious to any tension. He simply offered help. Sharaine and Wilson had no problem making a new friend. And neither did the kids. Paul makes sure they cross the street safely after school, is the judge of tricycle races, sits on the porch helping with homework and pulls out his dentures as a reminder to the little ones to brush their teeth.

As extended families extend their range across the country, limiting how often they can gather, it helps to have a grandpa across the street. Children adjust to life’s challenges better when they have multigenerational support. Grandparents bring stability, love, encouragement and a sense of responsibility to a child. And grandparents who regularly interact with their grandkids are less likely to succumb to the epidemic of loneliness in this country. Still, the science of well-being is not something Paul thinks much about. He is too busy being a grandpa.

“The kids run up to him like that’s their grandpa,” Sharaine says. And that keeps Paul busy. There are birthdays, home projects, neighborhood cookouts and all those home projects. The wisdom and pace of the older generation is good for the frenetic times we find ourselves in. Doing the simple things like reading, pulling a few weeds, walking slowly while the clouds move across the sky, hiding the sun … these are the moments life is most made up of. It takes a grandpa to slow things down to an appreciable pace. And once there, holding hands makes the moment feel more secure. A good laugh lifts a little weight off the shoulders, and a good story becomes a life lesson.

Grandparents are a treasure because they bring us back to what is most important. Expanding our circles to include those who have so much history and patience expands our ability to feel.

“It doesn’t hurt to be nice,” Sharaine says. “It costs you nothing, but a lot of the time, you get a better return.”

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.

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FAMILY

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Getting 100 on her Final Exam.

Nola Ochs was born in Kansas in 1911, one year before the state amended the constitution to recognize women’s right to vote. Back then, Kansas was a patchwork quilt of counties traversed by roads and railroad tracks all converging in Kansas City. A sea of wheat rolling across the plains would later inspire the lyric “amber waves of grain.” There were farms and more farms, and everybody had a job to do.

Nola Ochs was raised under the endless sky, and the long arc of the sun marked her chore-filled days. Her life was not extraordinary by most measures. She grew and married, had children and grandchildren, taught in rural schools, and lived the quiet Midwest life. But she was different in one notable way: After her husband died in 1972, Nola began taking classes and eventually earned her associate degree at age 77.

“I still wanted to go to school. It was fun to go to classes. And if I had an assignment to do in the evening, that occupied my time in a pleasant way,” she recalled. After some years went by, Nola again got the bug to learn. She emailed an academic advisor at Fort Hays State University in Hays, Kansas, mentioning that she had taken a course from the university years earlier. After some digging, the advisor located a 3x5 card stored in the basement of the administration building stating that Nola had indeed been a student, in 1930. When the advisor emailed back, she asked, "Nola, how old are you?"

Learning takes time, and moving through courses must be done on your own time, at your own pace. When Nola had 30 hours of school left to complete, she moved 100 miles away from her farm, got an apartment and attended classes in person. She graduated with her granddaughter in 2007.

Nola could have been finished then with her long life of learning. She was, after all, 95 years young. “I don’t dwell on my age,” Nola said back then. “It might limit what I can do. As long as I have my mind and health, it’s just a number.”

Nola decided to keep going. She lived in the student dorms and got her master’s degree in liberal studies with an emphasis on history three years later, at age 98.

What keeps us young is not comparing ourselves to others. It is not the latest health craze. What keeps us young is a passion for learning everything we can about the world we live in. It’s about seeing everyone we meet as a teacher, knowing they have something worthwhile to offer. Nola lived a long and productive life, but her work was still not done. As the sun bent its great arc across the sky, Nola was at work, plowing the fields of her mind, harvesting the best bits into a memoir.

A hundred years yields a lot of wisdom. But it’s the process that can teach us all. Learn everything you can. Share your crops with the neighbors. And never, never give up on yourself. At 105, Nola finished her memoir.

Learn and Learn Some More... 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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LEARN AND LEARN SOME MORE

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Bear with Me!

Young soldiers, far away from home and missing their families, discover a bear cub. That’s how the story of Wojtek begins, back in 1942. He was alone in the mountains of Iran; nobody knows how he got there.

When beleaguered Polish troops came upon Wojtek, they were immediately struck with emotions. They had been away from their loved ones for a long time. Their own families had been separated by war. They needed something to pick their spirits up. So, they nursed the baby bear with milk from a bottle and named him Wojtek, which means: a warrior to whom combat brings joy.

Wojtek wasn’t much of a warrior, but he was officially adopted into the army. He traveled with the troops to the Middle East, providing comradery and entertainment. He would wrestle with the men, chase after oranges they tossed for him and follow them about like a puppy. He became their connection to humanity in a time when the light of peace seemed so far away. And, like a child, he was also mischievous. In the sweltering desert heat, he learned how to break into the showers and turn on the water. He could also be seen lugging crates of empty ammunition with the men or standing at attention in formation. Wojtek was also the chief intimidator of new recruits: He would literally bear hug them and hold them upside down for a good laugh.

Getting through the grind of war takes something extraordinary, something unexpectedly insane to preserve your sanity. That’s what Wojtek did for the men who had been so long in the fog and uncertainty of World War ll. An orphaned bear became the symbol of strength and resilience. The regiment even changed their insignia to one of Wojtek the bear.

Thankfully, wars end, and in the transition, Wojtek was not forgotten. He shipped with a group of men from his regiment to a farm in Scotland — a former camp run by the Scots to train Polish fighters — to rehabilitate for a time. The farm was a fitting place to retire for a bear with so much military experience. Wojtek was a local celebrity. Stories of him kicking a soccer ball, attending local dances and parties, and enjoying jam and honey are still told today.

Retirement was good to Wojtek. He lived to bring a little joy and diversion to his fellow veterans and new visitors. And to everyone who knew him, Wojtek was the mascot that made a difficult time a little more — excuse the pun — bearable.

Create Joy... 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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CREATE JOY

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From Homeless to Johns Hopkins.

Chris Smith looked like any other young boy in his class: bushy hair, a wide smile and enough freckles to charm a grandmother out of a whole jar of cookies. He played sports, working his way onto the football and wrestling teams. By all appearances, life for Chris was the same as it was for a hundred other boys in the small town where he grew up. Except for the constant evictions, living like a squatter without electricity and eventually being homeless.

Chris’ father was reckless with finances and dishonest in business. His mother coped the best she could until Chris’ little brother drowned, and his father went to jail. Then it all fell apart.

“My mom shut down emotionally. Everything got worse,” Chris remembers. And then she was gone, moved on without telling Chris. He did the best he could, sleeping on his newly married sister’s couch. “They didn’t have much money, and I know it was a burden to take me in at 17 years old. I was just hoping to graduate from high school and make it on my own.”

But Chris’ history teacher had other ideas. When Chris began to falter on assignments, she cornered him. “You’re the smartest kid in the class,” she told him. “If you don’t graduate, you’re going to regret it.”

A good mentor makes all the difference, and sometimes you need more than one to help you along. Chris’ wrestling coach taught him how to work hard to value teamwork over individual achievement.

“School was my safe place,” Chris says. He spent a lot of time in the library and the gym, ingesting the lessons of underdogs who overcame incredible odds to make it. School also offered heat and food. It became the closest thing to home he could find, compared to his father’s old Chevy truck that became his bed and his study space. He remembers his hair freezing onto the window in the winter.

When graduation came, Chris earned a full scholarship to college, but the load was heavy, and his grades slipped just enough to lose his funding. Still, Chris refused to give up. He found grants and loans, transferred to a smaller college and graduated in the top 10 of his class. And then on to bigger dreams.

Chris was accepted to medical school, got married and threw himself into the grind. That’s when another challenge hit. A family member lost custody of her child, so Chris and his new wife adopted the baby girl and tried to balance life together.

When it came time to apply for medical residencies, Chris set his sights high. He applied to residencies around the country and included the No. 1 program in the nation: Johns Hopkins.

“I didn’t really think I had a chance. But I had learned to give everything your best shot.”

And then the letter came. Chris was in.

They say dreams are made of hard work. Chris had to work harder than most. And now, as a practicing radiologist, he takes time to speak to students about what it takes to make it. “You can do it,” he says, echoing the words of his history teacher. “You are the smartest kids in the world.”

Determination... 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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DETERMINATION

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To the Coaches of Pint-sized Athletes.

From New England’s cloudy skies to the parched fields in Arizona; from the early morning ice rinks in Minnesota to the sandy pitches along the Oregon coast, a myriad of sun-screened, whistle-blowing, down-parka-wearing, sore-footed coaches brave the weather and sacrifice their afternoons to tribes of budding athletes.

At a time when uncertainty is sure to swirl around our children’s heads, they find reassurance on the fields of play. Teamwork is the lesson we hope they learn. When a coach encourages a player, she finds courage to participate in the game of life. She learns how to overcome the voices of self-doubt, step back into the mud and find the meaning of camaraderie. Win or lose, there will be friends made and the victory of finishing a hard task.

Our growing ones need mentors and friends, teammates and coaches, opponents and opportunities. Youth sports is the place where small risks can be taken and lessons learned. If we expect our children to take over for us when we are finally sidelined, we must begin now to prepare them for the role. Give an honest effort. Play well with others. Come prepared. Adapt to the weather. Accept defeat graciously. Champion the team because a team is more than a championship.

The right coach makes all the difference to a child. As Hall of Fame Coach Pat Summit says, “Handle success like you handle failure. You can’t always control what happens, but you can control how you handle it.”

Such direction is the foundation our children need. So, as another season begins, and pint-sized kids trundle like bobblehead dolls in their new football helmets or zip past in bright-colored soccer uniforms with ponytails afloat like windsocks, may we all remember that letting kids be kids means letting them play.

Here’s to the enduring patience of coaches, parent volunteers and youth sports referees. Thanks for building a world where our kids can try out for real life before they are thrown into the game for real.

Coaching... 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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COACHING

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Taking the Fear Out of Surgery.

Surgery is scary enough for any of us, but when you are a child, and everyone is bigger than you, it can feel like a nightmare. That’s why it matters so very much what happens before, during and after treatment — especially when what happens includes a bit of humor.

Modern medicine alleviates more pain and suffering for children than ever in world history — everything from removing an appendix, to hernias, to fixing broken bones and orthopedic problems, to cancer. Without these fixes, children can suffer socially and emotionally as well as physically. But it’s hard for a child to grasp the long-term benefits of surgery when confronted with bright lights and unfamiliar faces.

To help children find the courage to face these fears, a doctor in Colombia has special scrubs made for his little patients that change them from vulnerable humans to brave superheroes. He carries the patients through the hallway on his shoulder as they thrust their hands forward, parting the clouds of anxiety and soaring toward a better life, one that gives them confidence that they can overcome challenges.

Not surprisingly, the little superheroes also give their parents the courage to endure the wait while they are in the operating room. Patiently explaining a complicated surgery in medical terms does not always allay the fears. The doctor’s empathy may be felt, but building trust in the process needs more than a quick medical education. Seeing that their children trust the doctor allows parents the chance to take a deep breath, and knowing a doctor cares enough to address those fears in such a wonderful way is also a confidence-builder.

Even as modern medicine improves in dramatic ways, we humans will always need each other. Laughter is the best medicine. As Patch Adams, the real-life doctor immortalized on film by Robin Williams, says: “Laughter boosts the immune system and helps the body fight off disease, cancer cells as well as viral, bacterial and other infections. Being happy is the best cure of all diseases!”

One person, the right person, can lead a child to victory. That person doesn’t have to be a doctor or even a superhero. All one has to do is make a child feel courageous. We ensure the happiness of the world when we do so. So, let’s make superheroes of children, and heed the words of Patch Adams: “The reason adults should look as though they are having fun is to give kids a reason to want to grow up.”

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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BE SUPER

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Understanding Our Universe.

Max and his friends worry about the future of the world. They are 9 years old and not immune to the constant barrage of television news about war, the lingering pandemic, the anger in the airwaves.

Bob is the old man on the street, a retired physicist who studies gamma rays in faraway deserts and does the occasional guest lecture at the local university. But most of the time, Bob is home, working in his garden. He has become the de facto first responder to Max and his friends when they crash on their bikes or skateboards, mostly because he lives at the bottom of the hill, which has become their landing site. Bob is the person dads go to when they need to borrow a tool or bend a piece of metal for a remodeling project, because Bob’s hobby is making things in his garage. Young boys gravitate to tinkerers who can modify their bikes, and Bob has become a fixture.

The boys and their parents really love spending time with Bob at nighttime. They stretch out on one of their lawns and stare up at the heavens. Bob points out the steadiness of the universe, explains the rotation of the earth, regular as clockwork, how stars move across the night sky and how they have guided adventurers for centuries.

It is Bob’s calm voice and shaman-like wisdom that becomes a comfort to the boys. After all, he is seven times their age, which seems to the boys like he has been around since the beginning of time. He explains space in a way that feels like it will always be there, and they come away knowing the galaxy has a balance, a way of righting itself. The world’s happenings seem less significant when he points out the guiding light of Venus and the W shape of Cassiopeia with its five bright stars. There’s the North Star and the Big Dipper, the flower moon when summer begins and the harvest moon when school is again underway. There is a rhythm to life and growing up and understanding. And there is an ever-increasing orbit for a young boy as he holds his own world close and expands his understanding of faraway places.

What will the future bring? Confidence that the world will still be there when we grow up. That there will always be people like Bob to calm our fears, and that as we, too, grow by decades, we can become the guiding light for young people looking for wisdom from the ages, from that time long ago when we were full of questions and doubts and anticipation and needed someone to temper our fears and guide our thoughts to a safe place. As we gaze up at the universe, we can appreciate the Bobs in our life who know how to fix things — even anxious minds.

Look 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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LOOK UP

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The Mistakes We Learn From and Build On.

About 44% of criminals released in the United States return to prison within the first year after their release. It’s all part of a pattern: Their lives often reveal a series of bad decisions influenced by their environment, including disrespect and disregard of laws.

While they wait out their time in prison, they are making no progress in changing destructive behavioral patterns. Many argue that simply locking individuals up only delays their next crime.

Most incarcerated people have yet to earn any higher education degree. But time and experience have shown that education programs have proven to be the best at reducing recidivism, the rate at which people are re-incarcerated. After all, acquiring knowledge builds confidence and emotional maturity, no matter the individual’s background. According to research done by Northwestern University, vocational training cut the recidivism rate to 30%. The higher the degree, the lower the rate of recidivism: 14% for those who obtain an associate degree, 5.6% for those who earn a bachelor’s degree, and 0% for those earning a master’s degree.

These are impressive numbers. But change is still up to the individual, and finding the motivation to finish school while incarcerated can be difficult.

“At first, the teachers wanted me to graduate more than I did,” remembers Cesia Ortiz. “Eventually, I started excelling and earning credits and became very satisfied.” Cesia stuck with it and looked to a better future. “I think about my children often and how this new stepping stone — getting my diploma — won’t just benefit me, it will benefit all of them. I want to be able to help them with their schoolwork, to be there every step of the way … and to show them they’re not alone. I want to provide for myself and for them.”

Stephanie Patton, the director of adult education for the Utah State Board of Education, says: “Heroes don’t become heroes overnight. Becoming a hero requires a process or a journey. The journey always includes an abyss that stretches you to your breaking point, and it’s an abyss that transforms you.”

Each of us will have our own journey, our own quest to accomplish. Like all great literary heroes, we will be tried in many ways and depend on our wits and skills to carry us forward. But we also can’t do it alone. Perhaps the greatest heroes are those who overcome incredible odds, transcending their backgrounds and their histories. Thanks to them, we can stand as witnesses that greatness can be achieved, one step at a time.

Be Your Own Hero... 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 YOUR OWN HERO

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Rescuing a Vessel — and a Family’s Memories.

Brian and Bobby Ogan were boating with their two toddlers and a niece on Lake Powell 30 years ago when a sudden storm exploded from the canyons. High winds drove the waves to oceanic heights.

In a storm that relentless, everyone heads for cover in safe harbors. Panicked boaters flew by as Brian struggled to get the stalled engine started again, waves pouring over the side of the boat.

“Nobody would stop and help us,” Brian remembers. Perhaps they thought the boat was close enough to the marina, or they were too concerned about their own safety to notice anyone else. A large tour boat was idling through the waves, and the Ogans’ small boat was washed into its path. While the tour boat crew was calling for the salvage boat, Brian knew this was his only chance to save the kids. He strapped all the life jackets onto the kids and his wife, and when the boats collided, Brian threw the toddlers aboard.

His own boat was sinking fast, and waves were tossing the boat about, but Brian managed to get the rest of his family onto the tour boat while one of the deckhands tried to help — until he got tangled in the rope. It was a dramatic moment: Brian’s boat was going down, his family had made it to the tour boat under extreme circumstances, and now a deckhand was about to be dragged under. Brian and other crewmembers freed the deckhand just as the back end of the Ogans’ boat plunged into the water. As the front deck catapulted upward, Brian rode the momentum onto the tour boat — and turned around just in time to see his own boat sink.

What started as a family reunion in the sun for the Ogans turned into a nightmare. Yet the entire family made it to shore safely, putting the loss of their boat in perspective.

Though Brian will tell you he did what any father would have done, his quick thinking and selfless actions saved lives that day. The memory stayed with him for years, a good story, a miraculous story. But he never imagined it having another chapter.

Thirty years later, Lake Powell was experiencing the effects of a megadrought. Water levels dropped so low that the yellow hull of Brian’s boat rested in a dry marsh. That’s where local resident Paul Cox found it. A self-taught mechanic, Paul is often called upon to rescue four-wheelers in remote areas and fix vehicles some deem fit only for the junkyard. When he saw the boat, he appreciated the challenge of not only retrieving it but making it run again.

A boat submerged for 30 years is an unlikely candidate for being seaworthy again. Paul hauled it out with his oversized tow truck and went to work. He replaced the engine, patched a crack in the hull and power-washed every inch inside and out. Then he called the Ogans, who flew out from Georgia for a teary reunion with a boat they thought was lost forever.

Closure can take many forms. Cruising across smooth water in a boat thought long lost brought back a sense of control over emotions that had haunted them for 30 years.

Rescue Someone... 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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RESCUE SOMEONE

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Bee Productive.

Anna Devolld likes creepy crawly things in the garden. And buzzing, fluttering little creatures in the air. That’s because Anna is passionate about pollinators.

As a teenager, Anna worried about the little things that keep our world beautiful and our orchards producing food. Her first project was creating activity and coloring books for kids to help them understand how important pollinators are to our planet. Next, she created Pollinator Packs: plants that attract bees and other pollinators to your garden. It wasn’t long before she was part of community councils encouraging the planting of pollinators in communities and roadside corridors. She now serves on her local government’s environmental advisory commission.

Anna has been featured by Earth Force during its Environmental Action Civics Week, on the Disney Channel, in the Garden Club of America Bulletin and in Scholastic Magazine. You might say she’s been busy as a bee.

“One out of every three bites of food we take is dependent on pollinators,” Anna tells us. “Butterflies, ladybugs, hummingbirds, even bats. Sadly, every one of these creatures is declining at an alarming rate.” Anna’s solution is to increase habitats that attract pollinators and to educate the next generation about the importance of creating pollinator-friendly spaces.

So, the next time you take a bite out of a crisp apple or a delicious peach, or even better, enjoy your favorite fruit in a home-baked pie, think about all the little creatures that made it happen. Then think about Anna and how one teenage girl is making sure millions of pollinators are happy and productive.

We all can make a difference. As Anna says: “Find something you are passionate about, no matter how small, and see how you can change the world.”

Be a Little More... 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 LITTLE MORE

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The Last American Explorer.

Some people are just made for adventure. The early explorers, who subjected themselves to privation, unknown elements and territories unheard of, left volumes of tales that inspired the next generation. But as the world became smaller, the wild ones who lived by their instincts began to thin out.

Norman Vaughan was fascinated with the lives of polar explorers and became one of the last to push himself into terra incognita. He was a member of Admiral Byrd’s expedition to Antarctica in 1928, a Search and Rescue dogsled driver in Greenland during WWll, and the founder of the annual Norman Vaughn Serum Run that commemorated the relay mushers of 1925 who delivered diphtheria serum from central Alaska to Nome.

Vaughan grew up in relative comfort on the East Coast. He attended Harvard and became fascinated with books about dog sledding. He dropped out and left for a humanitarian stint helping indigenous people in Newfoundland, where he became a dog sled leader. Three years later, he read an announcement about Admiral Byrd’s expedition and a call for seasoned sledders. Vaughan’s experience and bravado got him the job, and he was put in charge of training the animals and sledding hundreds of tons of supplies from the icebreaker to the camp along with the other team members. What he had learned from the indigenous people in Newfoundland set him up as a natural leader. Understanding terrain, weather patterns and dogs was key to the survival of the expedition. Admiral Byrd appreciated the man so much he named a mountain after him.

During Vaughan’s military career in Greenland, he was tasked with rescuing the 25 members of a squadron lost somewhere on the ice. With a team of dog sledders, Vaughan set off to find them before they froze or starved to death. It was 1942, and the squadron had gotten lost on its way to Reykjavik when a German submarine jammed their radio signals. All members were rescued, but the mission would not be complete until 46 years later when Vaughn organized a team to go back for the planes. The harebrained idea soon got funding, and Vaughan was again on the ice, mushing into the wilderness of uncertainty.

After his success in Greenland, Vaughan continued to compete in dog mushing competitions well into his 80s. He climbed Mount Vaughan in Antarctica at 88 and had plans to return for his 100th birthday but died just six months before the scheduled date.

Not all the mountains we climb will be named after us, and not all of our adventures will end in celebrations. But if we keep moving forward, our stories will live within those we rescue along the way.

Adventure... 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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ADVENTURE

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To All who are Lost: You will be Found Again.

We all have started on some task or set a goal for ourselves that we didn’t complete. Sometimes we lose interest or don’t have the willpower to keep going. And sometimes, we just forget about the task and move on, not seeing the purpose of it all — that is, until something stirs us inside, and we go back and feel the joy of finishing.

In the 1912 Summer Olympics held in Stockholm, Sweden, Shizo Kanakuri competed in the marathon. A talented young runner, he was pushing himself the way all athletes do on the international stage. But the weather was unseasonably hot, and many of the contestants were struggling on the course. A runner’s body heats up to keep muscles warm and blood flowing. Running on a hot day accelerates the overheating process. Runners often talk about pushing through physical barriers, but there does come a point when the body just won’t move. That was the case when Shizo started to feel the effects of heat exhaustion: dizziness, nausea, muscle weakness. At about the 30-kilometer mark, he could no longer keep going. He feared he would collapse and suffer severe damage to his health if he persisted.

Shizo dropped out of the race, perhaps to get his bearings or cool down, but he could not recover and had to withdraw. However, beleaguered and losing focus fast, he didn’t think to tell the race organizers about his decision. He was listed by the Swedish authorities as a “missing person.” No official record of his withdrawal existed, and nobody knew his whereabouts. It became a mystery in Sweden: the case of the missing marathoner.

It wasn’t until 1966 that Swedish authorities learned Shizo’s story. In those 50 years, a lot had happened in the world. World War II had engulfed most nations and shaken the earth. Japan had been deeply involved, as had the Europeans. While Sweden remained neutral, it played a role in rescuing victims of the Holocaust. For two decades after the war, Europe was rebuilding, and the story of the missing marathoner got lost in the news. And then Swedish authorities received information that Shizo Kanakuri was alive and had devoted himself to coaching. They invited him to come back and finish the marathon he had begun so many years before.

So, at the age of 76, Shizo Kanakuri returned to Sweden and finished his marathon. It was a world record … for the slowest time ever posted by a marathoner: 54 years, 8 months, 5 hours, 32 minutes and 20.379 seconds. Shizo had finally fulfilled his goal.

The next time somebody tells you it’s too late to finish something you started, remind them of Shizo Kanakuri, who achieved something truly remarkable — the slowest, and most memorable, marathon time in history.

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.

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IT'S NEVER TOO LATE

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From First Response to 11 Years of Friendship.

Ask any first responder, and they’ll tell you the hardest calls you will ever get are those that involve a child. Many EMTs put their hearts on the line when kids are hurting.

That was the case when a call came into an Indiana station about an injured person. At first, it seemed routine. But when paramedic Rick Allgood arrived, he found a 7-year-old boy unconscious. He had fallen over a railing and landed hard on his head, fracturing his skull. Luckily, the adult babysitter was a nurse. Still, the boy’s siblings were in the room, and the situation could have quickly turned to panic.

Rick and other crew members calmed the children by explaining what was happening. One member took the children aside and reassured them while the others attended to their little brother, Will. In less than 10 minutes, the boy was stabilized and headed not toward the nearest hospital but to the best trauma center in the area. That calm decision under pressure saved the boy’s life.

The crew’s teamwork, their focus in a life-threatening situation for a young boy and their quick decision-making ability would be the most every parent would hope for in that situation. But the team also was touched by the family and concerned for Will’s health while Will rested in an induced coma, his parents wondering how different their boy would be when he woke up. A brain injury often means difficulty regaining speech and motor functions. It can present lifelong challenges. Knowing this, one of the EMTs was always there with the family, and having a familiar face that was also a first responder helped comfort them.

“Every once in a while, you go on a call like this, and no amount of pay in the world can really replace the relationship you develop with the patient, the family,” said Rick.

Over the next 11 years, after Will came home, Rick Allgood and his crew became part of Will’s family. They followed Will’s achievements on Facebook, had regular visits will the family and celebrated the anniversary of Will’s accident with donuts or pizza together. Will’s mother, Marcy, loves her visits to the station. “I just admire you guys for what you do. It’s amazing,” she said.

It was a long road to recovery for Will. But as he gradually improved to full health, the first responders could breathe a rare sigh of relief. When your job is to comfort and save lives every day, it would be easy to forget names and people. But the paramedics who were first on the scene to attend to an unconscious 7-year-old boy would never forget. He became part of their family. And what a great family to be a part of.

Caring... 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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CARING

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The Art of Doing Good.

When you have big dreams, you need a big canvas. Austin Picinich’s dreams center on his home state of Washington and its dwindling salmon population.

While streams flow downhill into the ocean, salmon make their way upstream to spawn. But recent droughts, commercial development and pollution have made it difficult for salmon to make the journey. Juanita Creek was hit particularly hard, and while conservation groups were already at work, what the effort needed was more public attention. Restoring the creek would require the entire community to be aware of the issues and imagine what the creek would be like restored to its former abundant condition.

Austin went to work using his artistic talents to make a difference. He created Save Our Salmon through Art (SOS) and then found the perfect wall in the community to house a mural bringing focus to the issue. Then he enlisted neighbors, friends and volunteers to bring it all to life.

“The thing about paint is that you can make mistakes and just paint over it,” says Austin. “And then it will be perfect.”

This philosophy of just working at it until you get it right is embodied in another organization Austin is working with: SalmonWatchers, led by biology professor Jeff Jensen. Like Austin’s philosophy on painting, the SalmonWatchers program takes a fresh look at the mistakes of the past and gives the streams a makeover. Teams of SalmonWatchers volunteers are building egg incubators and natural resources for salmon to thrive. But the effort is more than a few people can accomplish. And that’s where Austin put his skills to work.

By creating murals — big murals — in communities where depleted streams run, Austin is raising awareness of the need for all to get involved. He begins a project by first outlining the mural and color-coding the sections. Then he organizes a community painting day, and volunteers show up, glad to be part of a project that supports bringing the salmon back.

So far, Austin’s efforts have involved over 20 communities and nearly 400 volunteers and raised more than $18,000 for stream restoration efforts. Austin smiles, clutching a handful of well-used paintbrushes: “I’ve learned that the power of WE can start with one person, even if that one person is just a high schooler who likes art.”

As nature reclaims her place in our lives, we become more aware of the diversity of beauty around us. We are happier when surrounded by the abundance of life — and the good friends we enjoy it with.

Put Your Talent to 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.

Copyright © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
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PUT YOUR TALENT TO GOOD

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The Taming of the West Featuring Diamond Kitty.

Imagine growing up in New York City, dreaming of open ranges and taming wild horses. That’s exactly what Kitty Canutt did.

At 17 years old, young Kitty competed in the Wild West Celebration Rodeo in Miles City, Montana. The year was 1916. The Western states were still populated with mavericks, roustabouts, gamblers and cowboys … and, of course, the brave women who also came West.

Kitty came to compete. She was a petite, fiery young woman who was determined to prove herself on the rodeo circuit. Not only did she ride broncs, but she also rode in relays where contestants rode at breakneck speeds, unsaddled one horse and saddled up another. Kitty often finished these races perched wildly, legs flailing as they searched for the stirrups. The crowds were thrilled.

Kitty rode the circuit from summer to fall, and when she wasn’t competing, she was breaking wild horses for local ranches. It’s said that she always wanted the orneriest horses because she took pride in being the one to tame them. An outlaw horse would be blindfolded and led into the middle of the ring. Kitty would throw herself aboard, and off they’d go until either the horse or Kitty gave up. The horse always quit first.

In everything she did, Kitty was determined to be the best. At times when she ran short of money, she’d pawn the diamond mounted in her front tooth, win another contest and buy back the diamond. It wasn’t long before Kitty became the women’s world champion bronc rider.

After winning All-Around Champion Cowgirl at the Pendleton Round-Up in Pendleton, Oregon, in 1916, she soon fell in love with Enos “Yakima” Canutt, the all-around winning cowboy at the same event. They married in 1917 while at a show in Kalispell, Montana. After a move to Los Angeles, Yakima became one of Hollywood’s leading stuntmen.

At a time when it seemed refinement and manners were the only path, Diamond Kitty went her own direction, proving that with enough determination and courage, you can ride your way into the middle of your childhood dreams — an open range of possibilities with short bursts of teeth-clenching adrenaline.

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.

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GRIT

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Matter In Motion.

Dr. Tatiana Erukhimova is a human dynamo. The physics professor at Texas A&M aims to show her students, especially the young women, that there are no limits.

Only 25% of physics undergraduate students are female. Perhaps it is because boys grow up tinkering with machines and making drawings of fast cars and rocket explosions. But girls are just as curious about the way the world works — they just haven’t jumped into the culture of chemical reactions, energy and magnetic force with as much enthusiasm. That is, until they see one of Tatiana’s YouTube videos showing the science behind real life's magic.

Her videos get millions of views. She is a ball of energy with a pixie haircut, a Russian accent and an effervescent personality that makes physics accessible to the younger audience. Young girls are attracted to Tatiana’s demonstrations the way they flock to pop concerts. This is real. This is science they can participate in. This is an open door to endless possibilities.

When young students see physics in action, they become excited about the mathematics that explains it, and math is the recipe for something awe-inspiring.

“These short clips are the spark that inspire,” Tatiana says with so much excitement it lights up the room.

Everything she does involves students. She believes the magic in learning is when your peers are part of the demonstration, when you are part of the teaching process.

“She wants everything to be a celebration of science,” says one of Tatiana’s former students. And indeed, the classroom is a party atmosphere, with students cheering when amazed by Newton’s law of motion, demonstrated by a spinning bicycle wheel held perpendicular to the diminutive professor. It’s hard to tell who is more delighted, Tatiana or her students. She is a magnet for female students who are graduating college and working in the sciences in higher numbers than ever before. Dr. Tatiana is indeed a catharsis for change.

Dr. Tatiana’s story began in Russia, outside of Moscow. She was raised by parents who were both physicists. To see the petite and ponytailed schoolgirl, you would never have guessed so much personality could explode from such a tiny object. But like an atomic reaction, her life has launched the careers of many.

After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Tatiana moved to Texas with her husband, also a physicist. They both teach at Texas A&M, and when Tatiana isn’t in the classroom, she is doing outreach with schoolchildren, amazing them with spinning lights that soon form words, liquid oxygen that shrinks objects and chemical reactions that expand matter to 10 times its size. But most importantly, she is expanding the audience of female physicists.

When asked the most important thing she learned in class, a former student said: “I can be my own advocate now.” Unleashing confidence is a science in itself, and when it happens, the possibilities are limitless.

Potential... 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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POTENTIAL

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How To Be Free.

Eliza Zenger teaches dance, music and arts to adults with disabilities. Their performance is the most beautiful you will ever see.

In an attention-seeking world where perfection is the constant pursuit, one group finds the truest form of pure emotion. At a performance of Utah’s LEADD (Learning and Engaging through Arts Discipline and Development) Adaptive Dance, Eliza leads a small ensemble of adults with disabilities in a performance that features musical instruments, dance, poetry and a choir.

The stage is matte black, with curtains pulled to the side and colored spotlights pooling on the floor. The accompanist is a Juilliard graduate who volunteers because she loves the authentic reaction to the music. The performers wear matching T-shirts and tights; they sit nervously together, hugging each other for support.

“I hope I remember everything,” Annie says, squeezing her mother.

“You will.”

Educators of those with disabilities have learned that self-expression through the arts connects their students in profound ways, opening pathways of trust and receptivity to learning.

“What is really beautiful is the relationships they build with each other and the connections they make with teachers and volunteers,” says Eliza. “I really love them. There is so much honesty and humanity.”

They dance to “You’ve Got a Friend in Me,” letting all that emotion out in both choreographed and spontaneous movements, personal interpretations of the words. They are not in sync with the music, but they are in sync with their emotions. There are hugs during the dance, and tears in the audience.

A reading of Shel Silverstein’s “The Giving Tree” leaves one young woman crying as she recites the last line. She bows her head and is consoled by two of her classmates. They sing a medley of songs, letting the words express what’s in their hearts. Not everything is on key, but the sentiment is in perfect pitch.

“They feel every emotion at a much deeper level than we do,” Eliza says. “Happy and sad.”

If you are looking for perfection, you find it in the lives of imperfect people. They dance to the tune of their own souls and sing straight from the heart.

“These are just beautiful human beings,” Eliza says. “And they have so much to give, so much to teach all of us.” It’s as if negative circuitry has been disabled, and if that’s a handicap, we should all be limited in such a way.

In a world of influencers, let’s take a step back and feel the true rhythms of life resonating from those who were born with far less pretense or prejudice than most of us may be susceptible to. Joy is the gift they share. Encouragement is what they offer. Love is the space they live in.

Joy... 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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JOY

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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.

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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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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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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 © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

START WITH YOURSELF

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Pass It On^®

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.

Copyright © 2024 | 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^®

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.

Copyright © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

LOVE

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Pass It On^®

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 © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

STAY CALM

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Pass It On^®

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 © 2024 | 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 © 2024 | 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 © 2024 | 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.

Copyright © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

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 © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

NEVER GIVE UP

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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 © 2024 | 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 © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

RESILIENCE

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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 © 2024 | The Foundation for a Better Life | All rights reserved.
www.passiton.com | media-relations@passiton.com

RESPECT

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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.

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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.

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MAKING A DIFFERENCE

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Richard Scibelli, New York Times

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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.

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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.

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FIND YOUR WAY

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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.

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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®

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REMEMBER YOUR FRIENDS

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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