Great mentors have blessed me through life with the occasional bits of wisdom that have proven benchmarks. Here are two of those hard-earned bits of wisdom and one lesson learned from them.
Great mentors have blessed me through life with the occasional bits of wisdom that have proven benchmarks. Here are two of those hard-earned bits of wisdom and one lesson learned from them.
Mentors worth having
Great mentors have blessed me through life with the occasional bits of wisdom that have proven benchmarks.
There was my, now gone, three-war fighter pilot law partner, who gave me the sound advice, “Don’t ever kick a horse turd in this town. Somebody’s uncle is underneath it.”
Jack came to Belleville, Illinois, from nearby Scott Air Force Base, to practice law after a thirty-year Air Force career spanning World War II, Korea and Viet Nam.
Like Jack, I didn’t grow up in the gritty industrial Illinois suburbs of St. Louis, but rather arrived and stayed as an Air Force transplant. His saying translated as “don’t talk bad about anyone to anyone, because you don’t know the relationships that date back decades and even generations to the ethnic enclaves, parishes and union halls of East St. Louis and surrounding towns.
I remember well a now retired judge telling me proudly that his fiancée, soon-to-be wife was the granddaughter of Mayor Fields. The pronouncement meant nothing to me. But to the Judge, an Irish kid from East St. Louis, it meant he’d arrived in society. Mayor Fields was Alvin Fields, a long -time political figure in the rough and tumble world of “East Side” politics and former mayor of East St. Louis, Illinois.
The marriage meant clan, tribal and kin relationships far beyond my outsider knowledge. I simply smiled and said congratulations.
That somebody you’re talking bad about to somebody is in all likelihood married to the first somebody’s wife’s, cousin’s sister-in-law. And the East Side, as metro-St. Louis’s bordering Illinois counties are known, is much like Chicago or Detroit or Boston, or for that matter, the Balkans, in that there are family feuds, grudges and animosities that have fueled generations of discord that make the Hatfields and McCoys look like a country club golf match. The clan alliances via marriage, social clubs or union memberships render the landscape even more treacherous for the unwary.
Lesson learned: talk less, listen more and be careful what you’re kicking.
Congressman John Dingell of Michigan likewise provided me great mentorship. John began his service as a Congressman in 1955. He was the longest serving congressman in US history. He served fifty-nine years.
I was six-years-old when John won his first election to Congress. He was the dean, or longest serving member of Congress, when I took my seat in 2013, fifty-eight years later. As a sixty-three-year-old, I was, if not the oldest freshman, awfully close to it, even so, John lapped me by near a quarter-century. With his near six decades in Congress, his seniority and congressional experience were intimidating.
Early in my term, I walked on to the floor of the House of Representatives as votes were about to begin. John, sitting a couple of rows behind the minority leader’s seat, asked me to join him. Seats are not assigned in the House, but just like in church, people tend to sit in the same pews, with Republicans on the right and Democrats on the left. As a freshman, I hadn’t made a commitment to any particular seating location, and in fact never did commit. “Thank you, Congressman,” I replied as I sat next to him. John, leaning on hi wooden cane, said, “It’s just John.”
He went on to say, “You know Bill there’s one important thing to remember about this place, there’s a lot of people here who think they’re pretty important. Just remember their vote doesn’t count one bit more than yours. Nancy Pelosi, John Boehner, they get one vote, just like you.”
“Yes sir,” I replied, out of decades of military habit, as well as common courtesy. “It’s John,” he said.
With that lesson and with the fact that I was neither a professional politician nor in search of a political career, it made it easy for me to vote my conscience. And with that lesson, I urge you to register and to vote. Your one vote is worth the same as every other voter in this great nation of ours. But if you don’t vote you’ve surrendered your right to those who do. Vote like your rights depend on it. They do.
(C) William L. Enyart 2021
www.billenyart.com
Email: bill@billenyart.com