As a kid I got hurt a lot. I started walking way before I was one. My mom would always say, "way before you were one you stood up and ran after your brother and you never stopped running." I remember getting stitches in the back of my head after cracking it on the fireplace mantel after getting thrown from my horse. The horse was my big sister Carol! I got stitched when I was hit by a car and my brake handle stabbed into my knee. I ember getting stitches in the top of my head from a rock my brother J had thrown at me from way up on a hill. I had my face stitched up after being bit by a dog, twice. I have to stop but there are more. I had at least a thousand bloody raspberries, scraps and abrasions. My dad was the go-to guy whenever I got hurt, but it was never easy because he was a merthiolate guy. It's the red stuff and my day wouldn't use the plastic little applicator he'd use q-tips to fully soak the wound with the pailful topical antiseptic. Man it burned, but he would blow on it until the extreme pain would ease. My dad would always say, "this is gonna hurt a little bit." That was his way of saying get ready this is going to hurt a lot. But he always knew how to make it better. He say something like, "it's OK to cry like a little girl, I won't tell any one or if you'd cry a little bit you'll forget how much it hurts." Or he'd say about pain, "if you ignore it it'll go away or don't answer the door and let it in."
My dad once broke his back stepping out of a golf cart. When he would explain how he got the huge scars from surgery on his lower back he'd say in the old days golf cart wheels stuck out in the back and I was stepping out of the cart while it was still moving and it ran up the back of my leg and yanked me so hard to the ground while running over me it broke my back. They had to go in a fuse a butch of discs so I could get feeling back in my leg. This was before I was born but I have a lifetime of memories of him laying flat on his back in almost every room in the house whenever the back pain would be too much. I remember many times coming into a room and wondering if he was still alive. I would do a belly flop on hip and he yell, "DO NOT HOP ON POP!" I do this with my girls and my back hurts too. Or I should say they do it to me and it makes me think of him and I smile.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Thursday, July 26, 2012
wood box wisdom
This clip reminds me of something my best friend’s wealthy father once said to me at a lunch on Aspen Mountain he said, “Andy you have to decide are you a person who likes to be told what to do or are you a person who likes to tell other people what to do?”
This conversation has stuck with me since 1994 and now I think with the help of a little wood box wisdom I can answer you Lee. I am both those people. I enjoy good coaching and receiving help from a mentor or friend and I also like sharing my expertise and influencing others.
I can do what I am told. And I can do all the things I want to do too. I can tell people anything and I can tell them what to do. I think what’s been most important to me are what things I’m telling myself to do. Telling myself what to do and doing it. Showing courage through action and wisdom by acting on the right things, this is how I strive to be brave and wise.
Tell yourself to do some really hard things and see what happens, you may be surprised. We can do hard things, really hard things, impossible things it’s in our nature to achieve the things we conceive. Name three things you'd like to do but think it’s just too hard. Go back to school, write a book, and be a great husband and father are mine.
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
My youngest daughter Mary has shown a natural talent for computer art. She callled this one, "black and white." She started calling me to the computer saying, "Save this for me Daddy?" I was struck by this art and she has done several more that have just blown me away. "Daddy will you save dis?"
"mary 3"
I understand that as a father I am really bias but this art is awesome. Totaly blows my mind. Mary you rock! Yes Mary, I will save dis. She called me dumbdumbdaddyo the other day ansd it melted my heart. She told Suzy, "Mommy, I love you like a sweet potato."
Monday, July 16, 2012
Wood Box Wisdom
Looks like my dad typed this one up himself.
I remember him always hammering away on an electric typewriter at incredible speeds (100+ words a minute) and he always used a carbon sheet in between to sheets to make a copy. He probably wrote this sixty years ago, but so pertinent today! My dad was a lobbyist and a spokesman for industry and free enterprise his whole life. He was a conservative inside the beltway and this is the sort of thing he would use in a speech to agitate his liberal friends.
I am glad he is not here to witness the dismantling of the American free enterprise system, the negation of the Constitution and the loss of freedom we are experiencing today.
God bless America,
please!
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
Wood Box Wisdom
The wood box has been dishing out a lot of wisdom on truth lately. It must be because whenever I hear something or someone proselytizing on the virtues of truth I always think, "the truth about what?" Here Nietzsche hits pretty close to answering my thought in the opening of this quote. There are literally "mountains of truth"; truth of the matter, truth about opinion and fact, truth about feelings and impressions, truth about the past, universal truths, un-discovered truth, plain truth, self-evident truths, the God's honest truth, my truth, your truth, what is the truth? In my research I have found the root of the word is over 2,000 years old, an Old Norse word meaning faith. I find this appropriate because you must have faith to discern the truth. I think the truth is a finite point. I think truth defines fundamental reality apart from and transcending perceived experience: the basic truths of life. These are the truths Nietzsche is talking about and I know I have not been climbing in vain. To discover the truth is to know right from wrong, good from bad, righteousness from evil. To know the truth is to know thyself.
truth
2.
conformity with fact or reality; verity: the truth of a statement.
3.
a verified or indisputable fact, proposition, principle, or the like: mathematical truths.
5.
actuality or actual existence.
6.
an obvious or accepted fact; truism; platitude.
8.
( often initial capital letter ) ideal or fundamental reality apart from and transcending perceived experience: the basic truths of life.
9.
agreement with a or original.
10.
accuracy, as of position or adjustment.
11.
Archaic . fidelity or constancy.
12.
in truth, in reality; in fact; actually: In truth, moral decay hastened the decline of the Roman Empire.
Sunday, July 1, 2012
Time, Treasure or Talent!
I got an update letter from the coach of my old football team and he spoke of the three T's of giving back. Time, treasure or talent and lately I've been feeling like I have not much of any of those things to share. The schedule looks brutal next year with a opener against Ohio State in Columbus and Boise State in the third game. It made me think of beating LSU and then came a memory of my Senior year when we were crushed by the University of Miami. In no other endevuer but football does taking on the biggest and the best not only carry with it a good chance of loosing, but a very good change of getting physicaly beatun up. I know from experience, but no other beating is as rewarding as the one you get when you win!
I once heard when you are trying to remember someone who has died and it starts getting hard to remember their face put them into context. Think of a place that you and they have shared. Visualize them in it and their face will be there. This has given me great comfort in the past and as I started seeing my dad at the Miami U vs U of Miami game I clearly remeber him standing seven feet tall.
What can you say to a team that has to face the Ohio State Buckeyes on opening day? I figured I would tell them the story of how we beat LSU and tell the story about playing one of the best teams in history in front of my dad. This letter was the result:
June 27, 2012
Dear Coach Treadwell and team,
Thank you for your recent alumni update letter. Your mention of the three T’s made me realize I do have something to share. A story. I am a proud Miami Redskin from the class of ’88. I was the leader of the black and blues for four years, a third string tight end and second string long snapper for my entire career. As the center wedge man for kick-off returns I received multiple concussions and in retrospect credit this for my chronic inability to fulfill Coach Rose’s expectations as well as a myriad of other problems I have only recently been able to comprehend.
By the grace of God I graduated from Miami in four years from the business school, but my relationship with Coach Rose and an unfortunate experience with the Butler County police force soured my desires to ever return to Oxford. But enough about me and the problems that have haunted me for over twenty years, I write this letter because I have witnessed greatness so frequently that its essence is what I wish to share.
My father was a Marine and war hero in the Pacific and after the war somehow made it to the University of Maryland, married my mother, earned a scholarship and in his senior year had a perfect season. They went undefeated and beat #1 ranked Tennessee in the 1952 Sugar Bowl. He went on to graduate from G. W. Law School. He taught me everything I know about winning. And make no mistake life is about winning. It is how you get the girl, the degree, the job, the career and the good life. You can always find a way to win. You may fail, but never be a failure. Never be someone who gives up before the game is ever played.
My senior year at Miami we played Jimmy Johnson’s undefeated #1 ranked University of Miami, Hurricanes and my dad made a big deal about making it to Florida to see the game. Said he had fond memories of playing in the Orange Bowl and said it was his only chance to see me play on a field that he had also played on.
We still had a chance to win the MAC so Coach Rose didn’t want our starters getting too beaten-up so I played most of the game. In the first quarter I caught a pass in the end-zone that would have put us up 10-3, but I was called for offensive pass interference and it was called back. Coach Rose went crazy and almost got thrown out of the game for being hysterical about the call and as I held him back from killing the referee he literally almost tore my head off. It went badly from there and we lost 53 to 3. Later my father told me he could not have been more proud. He said I kept my coach from making a terrible mistake and for that Coach Rose never thanked me or forgave me.
The year before we had beaten LSU in Death Valley in front of 102,000 when they were ranked #4 in the nation and then we won the MAC and my dad thought my greatest moment was having my helmet ripped off my head by my head coach in the Orange Bowl in a humiliating loss to the eventual national champions. It would take me nearly 25 years to understand this and to realize my father’s true greatness.
He died seven years ago. The same week my second daughter was born. Later, my mom gave me a box with some things he wanted me to have; a small coin collection, his metals from the war, his Sugar Bowl watch, his letter jacket with a National Championship patch, his love letters to my mom while on a road trip to the Gator Bowl his sophomore year at Maryland, and a wood box full of clippings he had collected throughout his life. It took me six years to open that box. Now I blog about him at dumbdumbdaddyo.com.
I once heard that a legacy is not what someone leaves you, but it’s what someone leaves inside of you. It is only recently that I have realized my father has left me a fortune. Greatness is not something you do or achieve it is who you are. You must be great. What’s great about me is that I am my father’s son and I am a Miami Man.
My dad told me once that living the good life was all about winning. In football as in life the harder you work the more likely you are to win. The difference between winning and losing always comes down to a hand full of plays and how well you come together as a team. Against LSU we all had a hand in the victory, but the difference was that early in the first quarter a third string defensive tackle named Bobby Getz bull rushed a punt and got a hand on it! And then he played like a mad man for the rest of the game and had a few key sacks. From that moment on we knew we could win, 24 – 12 Miami beats the #4 team in the nation, golden moment, timeless. It can happen for you.
If you manage the handful of plays that will swing good fortune in your favor; if you recover the fumble, make the interception; block the punt, if you let them make the mistakes you can win. If you come together as a team better than they do you can win. Many of you may have wanted to play for Ohio State, but you have an opportunity to do something infinitely better; beat Ohio State and graduate from Miami University! Don’t let anyone make you believe otherwise, YOU CAN WIN!
Love and honor to Miami,
Andy Keith
Class of ‘88
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