Tradition - not always a bad thing.

Tradition. The word gives me conflicting feelings. There are so many positives and yet so many negatives. For years, I despised the mention of the word - partially because I hate the way people get bogged down in it and refuse to change and partially because I refused to realize how important it was to my own life.

But I recently had an experience that has shown me the importance of tradition and it has taken a few weeks for the lesson to sink in completely.

I spent four years working with the football program at Jacksonville State University (yes, the ones on SportsCenter after beating Ole Miss). I was there under legendary coach Bill Burgess. Coach Burgess used a hard-hitting, old school approach to football and life. He built a tradition that we were all proud to be a part of. It was an experience that was instrumental in my life. Even now, I use lessons I learned on the game and practice fields of that era.

Without getting into gory details of backstabbing and conniving politicians, most of whom are now dead and basically forgotten, Coach Burgess, the coach with the highest winning percentage in school history and the program's only national championship - won on the field and not in a poll - was fired and ran off of campus. It was shameful and disgraceful.

Years passed and the men known as "Burgess Boys" - all the assistant coaches, players, equipment managers and trainers that served under Coach Burgess began to organize and lobby for an honor for our great coach.

In the meantime our team went on a roller coaster ride. There was the incompetent successor of our coach, who managed to lose the respect of every person in the athletic department in a matter of months. And then there was the hiring of a man who had been out of coaching for years - a man that began to restore the program and try to connect the players to the heritage of the team. While the team had been successful in recent years there just seemed to be something missing.

So when the University launched a massive stadium renovation and expansion project the Burgess Boys knew just what needed to be done. Our coach's named needed to be on that facility somewhere. So many of my former colleagues took to the campaign. After months of publicity and pressure from Burgess Boys and every sportswriter that knew of the effort, the university finally agreed to cease the the attempts to wipe Burgess from the memory of the program. They agreed to name the field after him.

In a fitting ceremony, this season's home opener was a dedication of the new stadium and a renaming of the field. Our coach was honored at mid-field, the band played, the fans cheered, Burgess Boys came out in droves to encourage the players and a video screen played highlights from the Burgess Era and declared "This house was built by champions, for champions". The connection to heritage - our championship football tradition - was made. No longer would kids ask about the strange trophies in the lobby and wonder where they came from. Tradition was finally paroled and would once again be part of the program. That was what the team was missing all these years - the knowledge of where they came from. The confidence of knowing who they were when they wore "Gamecocks" on their jersey.

Since that evening I have thought about the implications of what happened - not only for the team but for me and my family. As I raise my sons, it is important for me to teach them who they are, where they came from and why they are important. The spiritual, cultural, familial, and educational significance of tradition is now evident to me even more than ever before. It is vital to their success.

And so I can add to the lessons provided to me by Jax State football. Over ten years after leaving the field house for the last time I have learned the importance of filtering out the difference between tradition and monotony, between heritage and humdrum.

The Right to Read

"I cannot live without books" -Thomas Jefferson

"The best of my education has come from the public library... my tuition fee is a bus fare and once in a while, five cents a day for an overdue book. You don't need to know very much to start with, if you know the way to the public library" -  Lesley Conger

"The books that help you the most are those which make you think the most" -  Theodore Parker

"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them." - Mark Twain

"The proper study of mankind is books." -  Aldous Huxley

"How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book." - Henry David Thoreau

I'm a book junkie. I don't mean a Kindle or iPad junkie. I mean paper and ink bound in a manner in which you can hold the substance of it in your hand. I like the way a book feels on the fingers and the way they can be arranged on a shelf. And a good book is a true joy. Credit this quote to me...because I just said it now.


In honor of Banned Books Week, I have decided to share these quotes with anyone willing to read them. In each one of these quotes I find a truth that tugs at my heart. I cannot imagine a life spent without books. We are blessed in America to have a practically limitless access to books. It is also true that books have had a profound impact on my thinking, my understanding of myself and others, my faith, my political views, my outlook on being a father and a husband, my competency in my career - just say "everything". It all evolved out of books.


I'd love to finger-point, place blame, line up the usual suspects for identification. But I'm not going to. Simple and to the point banning books cannot be of benefit to our society. Period. If we are committed to free speech, intellectual honesty, open exchange of ideas and any sense of a meaningful education, we cannot limit access to books and the impact they have on our life.


There are many excuses that people use to try to stifle the voice of people they disagree with. But in the end, that is all that can be produced - excuses. I've spent the last few minutes scanning a list of the most commonly challenged books in America and was proud to see how many of them I have read and even more proud to see some of my sons' favorites on the list as well. Hopefully they are going to grow up to know that all good books have been banned somewhere at some time.


A quick example - The greatest book ever penned in the South, and therefore on this continent, was "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee. People have lobbied to ban it from various locales because, true to the setting and the era of the book, people used "the 'n' word" when referring to black people. There were also several depictions of a shameful era in our history where people were mistreated, denied justice, oppressed, even killed because of their skin color. I'm glad that my kids will have such literature that will show them how ignorant our forebears were and how far we have come. I also want them to be able to wear Tom's shoes and sit in the defendant's chair at the Macomb County Courthouse and know why it is so very important that we never go back. "TKAM" is one of the most important books ever penned in the South. Banning is ignorance on the same level as the Ewell clan.


I have, in the past, decided to read books that have been challenged or banned to get to the real root of why they are so evil.. If you care to do the same I'll include links to lists of banned and challenged books. See for yourself if you have been partaking of filth and see if you'd like to imbibe further:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-commonly_challenged_books_in_the_United_States

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_books_banned_by_governments

http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/banned/frequentlychallenged/challengedclassics/index.cfm

Dangerous stuff. Happy reading and remember, you don't have to burn a book to destroy it. You merely have to make sure no one reads it.

The Legacy of a Lost Boy

I'm a proud dad this morning. My middle son has a role in our local community theatre's production of Peter Pan. He isn't in a major role - but I couldn't be any more proud if he were the Pan himself. He plays a supporting "Lost Boy" role that isn't even named in the script. Those who know and love him know the character as "Dirty Dan" - the dirtiest Lost Boy of them all.

I enjoyed watching him crawl in and out of the tunnels into the cave, playing amongst fairies, trying to catch mermaids and defying Captain James Hook on the deck of the Jolly Roger. In the closing scenes of the show, he flew to London with the other Lost Boys to be adopted by the Darling family. My last glimpse of him was as he was led out of the night nursery door towards the drawing room which was to be his new abode.

What followed his exit was what gave me the idea for this entry. Our Narrator, "James M. Barrie" himself, went on to explain that while Peter remained in Neverland as a boy forever, all the other boys eventually quit believing and grew up to be men with families of their own. Wendy would become too old to make the flights to Neverland and her daughter, Jane would serve as Peter's mother. And then Jane's daughter Margaret would succeed her. And the tradition would continue.

And then the question came to my mind - "I wonder what became of my beloved Dirty Dan?"

We often hear what happens to the famous, the well known, the high profile people in our society. We learn of their triumphs and tragedies alike. But we often lose track of the regular folks - those whose names aren't listed in the script, unless there is some special connection to them.

Since there is a special connection between me and Dirty Dan, I wanted to know what became of him. There is the sad thought that he could have lived in Neverland and then become so jaded or cynical as to forget the glories of a part of his life lived in such a magical place and lived in such a way as to be the envy of real boys everywhere. There was also my curiosity about what career he chose, who he married, what his children were like and if they would ever know what an amazing childhood their father had.

And then it hit me. "That's all up to Dan".

Dan, like the rest of us, had the opportunity to lay out his legacy. He would live the story that would be told about him. His legacy would depend on the life he lived.

While Dirty Dan was a fictional boy who was adopted by a fictional man, the actor playing the role is a very real boy with an equally real dad. I see the moral of Dan's story, at least for me, is that I have the opportunity to give the real boy the tools to build the legacy that he will leave to real children and grandchildren - and to give him the tales of my own legacy to pass along. If I give him nothing to share, my own role will be one that is not even mentioned in the "script" of his life and he will probably cease to believe. And I will fade into obscurity.

That's some pretty heavy stuff to get from a simple kids' show in a small town theatre in Georgia. Just the ramblings of a proud dad that wants to make his son proud as well.