Best Newspaper Photo Ever

2012 Holy Family Bless Your Pets Day!

Wood Box Wisdom on Struggle

 

It has been far too long since I looked in my dad's wood box. As usual this scrap was the first I read and as usual struck me a as just what I need to hear. "The things you treasure more and more are the things you had to struggle for..." What do I treasure?

 

My dad's first "big job" was with the Lumberman's Association and this clip from a lumberman poet is obviously from that time in his life. It was the mid-1950s and since that's ten years before I was born it is the time in my dad's life that this blog was created for me to discover. A lumberman poet? I must look this guy up. His wisdom my father share is solid and true. What we truly value and desire are things for which we are willing to struggle and the things we will treasure as time goes by are those very things that were not easily acquired. Family, Love, Respect, Education, Friendship, Wisdom, Good Health, Happiness, these things I treasure and struggle for and none are easy but all make life worth living. These are the ends. There are many means. I struggle at time for the means to these ends. I think the wisdom in this clip is to discover what you treasure so that the daily struggle is justified. Struggle is a funny word to me. It's like strut and giggle. There I go cracking myself up again... My struggle will never be the same! Thanks Pops.

Thank you John Grisham for the "Best Book Ever"

Best book ever if you are still wrestling with the memories of a coach who pushed you way harder than anyone had a right to push. Sometimes fiction has a way bringing understanding to me that instruction, education or study never could. Every once in a while, by chance, I will read a really good book that so dramatically affects me that I have to try and get away from it for a while to be sure my initial impression is true.

 

This book is one of those books. Over a month ago I could not put it down. I read it over two nights and must admit it has changed how I look at my past. Growing up I played a lot of sports. A lot. And In doing so had a lot of coaches. Some great and some, not so much. Like John Grisham, I played football and was not an all-American. Unlike him I do not have a gift for fiction. In, "Bleachers" he tells an incredibly moving story of an all-American football player who has returned home as an adult for the eminent death of his estranged legendary high school football coach.

This book struck me on so many levels I do not know where to start. I am glad I waited for this story to sink and in doing so was able to find a deeper more significant moral that now I must share. Those who have made us greater than we are or could have ever hoped to have been without them are very, very special people. Love them or hate them we are their legacy. A legacy is not what people leave us, but what they leave inside us. I believe the human heart is a blend of our intellect and soul. I know in my heart that my father, my greatest coach, left me a legacy I will spend the rest of my life trying to understand and appreciate.

This little book that I bought for 50 cents to save it from a dumpster did more to further this understanding and appreciation than anything, save the love I have for my wife and the birth of my own three children.

My dad had a coach like the one in this book. They had experienced the kind of success described in this story. In his senior year at Maryland my dad, under the legendary coach Tatum went undefeated and in the 1952 Sugar Bowl defeated #1 ranked Tennessee. The book helped me understand why he spoke so little of his coach and how he always seemed to diminish the magnitude of such an accomplishment. I think sometimes people are so close to your heart and buried so deep in your soul that to speak of them distorts your very essence.

As I read this book I could only think about myself and the great men who coached me over the years. The best being Coach Rodger Manuel, who first cut me from the eighth grade basketball team, but believed enough in me to advance me to varsity baseball as a sophomore. Coach Cameron and Coach Rose, my high school and college football coaches still ramble around in my heart and mind and I may never know or be able to articulate how I feel about them, but their affect on my life is immeasurable. Both these men made me make similar stands as the primary character in this book. Both these men made me the man I am today and for that I am begrudgingly grateful.

As this book has set in I think more and more about my Dumb Dumb Daddy O. He was a great coach. He was an awesome father. He is in my very heart, soul and mind.

Thank you John Grisham for the greatest football story ever.

why joy?

The post that precedes this one was a major style change. I wrote it in the classic Facebook inspirational post style because that is how I saw it in my head. Late in the afternoon on Friday I got the bad news I didn't get the job in Nashville. On Wednesday morning I got the call I had made it to the final three and was invited to interview in Nashville 8am Thursday. It was four hours of intense interviewing with a national director, operations manager, and two district business managers from Pfizer. After booking the flights and hotel arrangements and in the next 24 hours speaking to 6 of 9 team members of the district I would be joining, studying all the research I had gathered on the key accounts of the territory I would be working, learned the specifics of the managed care environment for Tennessee, familiarized myself with the human growth hormone drugs I would sell, studied the disease states of Human Growth Hormone Deficiency and Macromegaly, arranging for two letters of reference emails for the interview team, traveling halfway across the country and back on less than 2 hours of sleep and by 5pm Friday back at my desk taking the call that I didn't get it. Once again Pfizer very politely said they didn't want me. Saturday morning I woke up severely depressed. It was a horrible funk. I was so upset I found myself avoiding my family because I was afraid I would loose it. I just felt like crying.

Later that morning I saw on my Blackberry an email from the national director who I had interview with and he had sent a reply to my thank you email from the day before. He obviously knew I wasn't the chosen one, but he sent a reply that changed everything. He said he hoped my youngest daughter's ear infection would heal quickly and wished my family a joyful weekend while baptizing my other daughter. And there it was. There was all kind of joy to be had and I wasn't letting it happen. I cried tears of joy in a very hot shower and all I could think was, "Joy Will Happen if I Let It...Joy Will Happen if I Let It...Joy Will Happen if I let It!" And It did. I got myself out of the way and there it was. My wife introduced Chloe to the congregation in awesome fashion and I performed the baptism and we celebrated later with friends at the Golden Corral. There was real joy in our family. The kind of Joy I had been standing in the way of since Christmas morning almost a month earlier. Being laid of is stressful, but I now refuse to allow any worldly circumstance to exclude me and my family of the Joy God has given us.

Joy will happen if you let it.

joy

Joy

Will happen

If you

 let it.

Get it?

Silver Tuxedo at the White House

Nancy and Jeff Keith

White House State Dinner 1980 (something)

 

This is my mom and dad at a White House State Dinner and yes that is a silver tuxedo. I think it was during Regan’s first term. I don’t remember much about this night, but I do remember that tux. I think I remember them being picked up at our house in Potomac by a chauffeured limousine. That would have been no big deal because whenever we would fly somewhere as a family we would always be chauffeured in a stretch-limo to the Presidential Suite in whatever hotel we were staying in, isn’t that how everybody traveled? Being an Executive Director of a major association did have its perks. Every year there would be several big trips. The family vacation and then there would always be the convention where he was in charge and then there would be the ASAE (American Society of Association Executives) convention where he was a member. At one point he was the President and the Chairman of the Board for ASAE as well. He was the Executive Director for AMSA, NTDRA, NPSA and lastly ADTSEA while I was growing up.

He once confided in me his biggest regret. I was in my mid-twenties and was helping him with rehab and physical therapy after his second major stroke. As he was starting to come out of a major funk he started confiding in me a lot. We were doing our stretches in the hot tub at Sneakers and he said, “I always regretted leaving Cleveland. Leaving the Stamping Association was the dumbest thing I ever did. It was my big shot to bring your mother home to Maryland, but within a year of moving here we put your sister in the ground and I knew I had made a mistake.” I told him I thought moving here from Cleveland was the best thing that ever happen to me. And I meant it.

That was the summer of 1993 and I had moved in with my parents in Ocean Pines for two reasons. I was a broken hearted failure of a salesman with nowhere else to go and my mother asked me too. She was sobbing on the phone and she said she was sorry but had to ask. She said, “Since this last stroke your father has given up. He is just waiting to die and you are the only person on this earth who can raise his spirits.” So I went. And it was the best summer I had ever spent in Ocean City and that’s saying something.

It’s hard to write about those times. It has taken me over a hundred posts in dumbdumbdaddyo to finally get here, but what my father-in-law always says, “No matter where you go there you are!”  I guess this project never was about celebrating what a great man my father was when he was young but how hard it was to see him get so old. When you are one of the toughest men on earth it takes a lot to finally put you in the ground.

 

Thirty Seconds of Incredible Bravery

My Dad once told me with thirty seconds of incredible bravery you can accomplish almost anything. It only takes thirty seconds of incredible bravery to acknowledge the fear and then push forward. Being brave is usually about taking that first step or speaking that first word. Everything is a lot easier once you get rolling. With thirty seconds of incredible bravery you can become unstoppable.

He knew thirty seconds was the average span of attention. He also knew his youngest son was way bellow average, in fact, comically low in this regard. He changed his philosophy on being incredibly brave to something more my speed. He said once, "Bitty Buddy, I know you, and you my son only have to be incredibly brave for three seconds and you can change the world. It takes only a couple seconds to punch a bully in the jaw. It only takes only a few seconds to decide what's right and then doing it is easy."

He always said, "The more you do something the easier it gets." Facing your fear is the same way. The more you do it the easier it gets. Being brave is not being fearless. "Being brave is being scared shit-less and still moving forward. Being afraid is natural.  Being brave takes practice. Being brave is taking that first step, taking that first swing, taking that first leap, speaking that first word knowing that you will most likely fail, but trying anyway. Being incredibly brave is trying again and succeeding."

He also always said, "Fear is a waste of time!" He had had a lot of practice.

My Dad

Jefferson Donald Keith, 1945

A Marine in the South Pacific.

Maryland Terrapins, Jan. 1952

My Dad after beating #1 Ranked Tennesse, winning the Sugar Bowl, and completing a perfect undeafeted season. Under coach Tatum's left hand. It was his last game. He knew a little something about being brave and about moving forward.

Best Christmas Card Ever!

Jeff Keith and Ben Pratt, 1983

Ben and my dad at our Senior high school banquet for football. In his Christmas card Ben enclosed a note that his father had died recently and while going through his stuff he found these pictures and thought I might want them.

Andy Keith, Matt Leahfeldt, and Burke Slater, 1983

 

Notice my DDD giving me horns! He was a kidder, teaser, tickler and loved to make us laugh. I almost didn't notice the horns but seeing them hit me pretty hard. I think I missed a lot of things back then especially a lot of really good things about my dad. It was definitely his horns because that's the way he did it, with both hands and not with the more popular one handed peace sign version. What I would give to go back to the last few years of him being playful and silly and happy. This was my senior year so this marks the demise of the man I started blogging to remember. He had already lost his last, "big" job and was about a year away from his first heart attack.

I  just recently lost my job. Laid off just before Christmas and I have really struggled emotionally. Finishing this post is the first blogging I've done since I got the news a month ago. A friend of mine who was also laid off at the same time called me the other day to ask if I've been writing. He confided that he is a professional writer and has had writers block since the day we were "displaced". His theory is that as stress increases creativity decreases. I agree with his theory. This leaves me two alternatives; one, stop blogging or two, learn to cope better with the stresses of unemployment and learn to enjoy life again stress or no stress!

I was in the cardio-cinema at Gold's Gym humping out a few miles on the treadmill today when I had a revelation. I have become my father, and not in a good way. The one who's pain and suffering and frustration and anger I lived with as I was becoming a man. The one who had his identity all wrapped up in his career and while I was in high school lost it all. When you have had so much it's hard to loose it all. I witnessed him loose his career, his wealth, his homes, and his health.

Several times since I started this blog these cardio-cinema revelations have hit me like a ton a bricks. Fortunately it's dark because no one likes to see a big bald guy like me crying like a baby. What came to me was a memory I've buried deep down inside and I wish I had just forgotten all together. It's when I told my dad I had been offered a football scholarship to Miami University and I was hoping it would make his day. Instead through tears he sobbed an apology. He said he was sorry. He didn't want it to be this way. He said he didn't want me to feel like I had to take a scholarship to be able to afford to go to college. He said he always thought when I got my scholarship (he said he always knew I would get one) that he was going to tell me not to take it. But if I didn't listen and accepted it anyways (which he knew I would) he was going buy me any damn car I wanted (I was driving my sisters old beat up Pacer at the time). And then he said he was sorry he was crying and he was very proud of his Bitty Buddy.

The Keith Kids 1968 - ish

This is by far my favorite picture taken by DDD! One of my earliest memories is from this day. Their was this narrow rock ledge over a ravine that you had to put your back against the cliff face and shuffle your feet to climb up to the trail. At the time it seemed very scary, high up and dangerous I would love to see it now and see what my Dad thought a good outdoor adventure for his kids. Knowing Dumb Dumb Daddy-O it probably was very scary, high up and dangerous!

Karen, Carol, Jay and Andy, 1969

My Dad's Purple Star Saphire Ring

My Dad always said these things that at the time made no sense and at times felt obnoxious, mean or sarcastic when correcting me so most of the time I didn't listen. He must of known that recordings of him were being made in the back of my mind and thirty years later he would make perfect sense.

One thing he would always say, "It's OK to get angry! If you get mad you still have a chance to win, but if you start feeling sorry for yourself you've already lost!"

I think he said something like this when he saw me help a guy up who had cheap-shotted me in football. "I think you play a little better when your mad. Playing defense is not about being nice."

 He said something like it when I got a post surgical staph infection in my knee the spring of my Senior year. During the thirty days I was in the hospital I had to come to terms with loosing my dreams of being a professional baseball player (I actually had had a pretty good shot at it) and come to terms with loosing my football scholarship and on day seven, in traction, with tubes running in and out of everywhere come to terms with the very real possibility of loosing my leg. I remember saying something really nasty to him when he'd asked me if I had given up and he said, "Good, get mad at me and get really mad at this thing, I'd rather see you angry than feeling sorry for yourself!" He then brought me some shrimp fried rice.

So I got some bad news at work today. I have been, "displaced" as of January first. Merry Christmas.

I was walking my dogs in the snow and I looked down at my freezing hands and my Dad's ring must have hit the sun just right and the star in the middle winked at  me. I was looking down and strating to feel pretty darn sorry for myself and there he was telling me it was alright to be angry but not to feel sorry myself. "You can still win this one Bitty Buddy. You always play a little better when you're mad."

I have to take my DDD's advice with a grain of salt. What may have worked when I was an 18 year old playing football doesn't always bode well for a 46 year old 6' 3" 229 pound  bald guy who out-weighs his wife and three daughters combined. I've found that if I temper my anger with gratitude I can still win a few battles and not scare everyone off.

I am grateful Pfizer paid for my Masters Degree before kicking me to the curb. OK sarcasm is hard to grow out of but I am grateful and would do it all again in a heartbeat if I could.

Thank you Pfizer. You'll be see me again.