Louisa May Alcott, the author of Little Women, was encouraged to find work as a servant or seamstress by her family.
Beethoven handled the violin awkwardly and preferred playing his own compositions instead of improving his technique. His teacher called him hopeless as a composer.
The parents of the famous opera singer Enrico Caruso wanted him to be an engineer. His teacher said he had no voice at all and could not sing.
Charles Darwin, father of the theory of evolution, gave up a medical career and was told by his father, “You care for nothing but shooting, dogs and rat catching.” In his autobiography, Darwin wrote, “I was considered by all my masters and by my father, a very ordinary boy, rather below the common standard in intellect.”
Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor for lack of ideas. Walt Disney also went bankrupt before he built Disneyland.
Thomas Edison’s teachers said he was too stupid to learn anything.
Albert Einstein did not speak until he was four years old and didn’t read until he was seven. His teacher described him as “mentally slow, unsociable and adrift forever in his foolish dreams.” He was expelled and was refused admittance to the Zurich Polytechnic School.
Louis Pasteur was only a mediocre pupil in undergraduate studies and ranked 15th out of 22 in chemistry.
Isaac Newton did very poorly in grade school.
The sculptor Rodin’s father said, “I have an idiot for a son.” Described as the worst pupil in the school, Rodin failed three times to secure admittance to the school of art. His uncle called him uneducable.
Leo Tolstoy, author of War and Peace, flunked out of college. He was described as “both unable and unwilling to learn.”
Playwright Tennessee Williams was enraged when his play Me, Vasha was not chosen in a class competition at Washington University where he was enrolled in English XVI. The teacher recalled that Williams denounced the judges’ choices and their intelligence.
F. W. Woolworth’s employers at the dry goods store said he had not enough sense to wait upon customers.
Henry Ford failed and went broke five times before he finally succeeded.
Babe Ruth, considered by sports historians to be the greatest athlete of all time and famous for setting the home run record, also holds the record for strikeouts.
Winston Churchill failed sixth grade. He did not become Prime Minister of England until he was 66, and then only after a lifetime of defeats and setbacks. His greatest contributions came when he was a “senior citizen.”
Eighteen publishers turned down Richard Bach’s 10,000-word story about a “soaring” seagull, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, before Macmillan finally published it in 1970. By 1975 it had sold more than 7 million copies in the U.S. alone.
Richard Hooker worked for seven years on his humorous war novel, M*A*S*H, only to have it rejected by more than a dozen publishers before Morrow decided to publish it. It became a runaway bestseller, spawning a blockbuster movie and a highly successful television series.
~Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen
John Corcoran — The Man Who Couldn’t Read
To the uneducated an A is just three sticks.
~A.A. Milne
For as long as John Corcoran could remember, words had mocked him. The letters in sentences traded places, vowel sounds lost themselves in the tunnels of his ears. In school he’d sit at his desk, stupid and silent as a stone, knowing he would be different from everyone else forever. If only someone had sat next to that little boy, put an arm around his shoulder and said, “I’ll help you. Don’t be scared.”
But no one had heard of dyslexia then. And John couldn’t tell them that the left side of his brain, the lobe humans use to arrange symbols logically in a sequence, had always misfired.
Instead, in second grade they put him in the “dumb” row. In third grade a nun handed a yardstick to the other children when John refused to read or write and let each student have a crack at his legs. In fourth grade his teacher called on him to read and let one minute of quiet pile upon another until the child thought he would suffocate. Then he was passed on to the next grade and the next. John Corcoran never failed a year in his life.
In his senior year, John was voted homecoming king, went steady with the valedictorian and starred on the basketball team. His mom kissed him when he graduated — and kept talking about college. College? It would be insane to consider. But he finally decided on the University of Texas at El Paso where he could try out for the basketball team. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes ... and recrossed enemy lines.
On campus John asked each new friend: Which teachers gave essay tests? Which gave multiple choice? The minute he stepped out of a class, he tore the pages of scribble from his notebook, in case anyone asked to see his notes. He stared at thick textbooks in the evening so his roommate wouldn’t doubt. And he lay in bed, exhausted but unable to sleep, unable to make his whirring mind let go. John promised he’d go to Mass 30 days straight at the crack of dawn, if only God would let him get his degree.
He got the diploma. He gave God his 30 days of Mass. Now what? Maybe he was addicted to the edge. Maybe the thing he felt most insecure about — his mind — was what he needed most to have admired. Maybe that’s why, in 1961, John became a teacher.
John taught in California. Each day he had a student read the textbook to the class. He gave standardized tests that he could grade by placing a form with holes over each correct answer and he lay in bed for hours on weekend mornings, depressed.
Then he met Kathy, an A student and a nurse. Not a leaf, like John. A rock. “There’s something I have to tell you, Kathy,” he said one night in 1965 before their marriage, “I... I can’t read.”
“He’s a teacher,” she thought. He must mean he can’t read well. Kathy didn’t understand until years later when she saw John unable to read a children’s book to their 18-month-old daughter. Kathy filled out his forms, read and wrote his letters. Why didn’t he simply ask her to teach him to read and write? He couldn’t believe that anyone could teach him.
At age 28 John borrowed $2,500, bought a second house, fixed it up and rented it. He bought and rented another. And another. His business got bigger and bigger until he needed a secretary, a lawyer and a partner.
Then one day his accountant told him he was a millionaire. Perfect. Who’d notice that a millionaire always pulled on the doors that said PUSH or paused before entering public bathrooms, waiting to see which one the men walked out of?
In 1982 the bottom began to fall out. His properties started to sit empty and investors pulled out. Threats of foreclosures and lawsuits tumbled out of envelopes. Every waking moment, it seemed, he was pleading with bankers to extend his loans, coaxing builders to stay on the job, trying to make sense of the pyramid of paper. Soon he knew they’d have him on the witness stand and the man in black robes would say: “The truth, John Corcoran. Can’t you even read?”
Finally in the fall of 1986, at age 48, John did two things he swore he never would. He put up his house as collateral to obtain one last construction loan. And he walked into the Carlsbad City Library and told the woman in charge of the tutoring program, “I can’t read.”
Then he cried.
He was placed with a 65-year-old grandmother named Eleanor Condit. Painstakingly — letter by letter, phonetically — she began teaching him. Within 14 months, his land-development company began to revive. And John Corcoran was learning to read.
The next step was confession: a speech before 200 stunned businessmen in San Diego. To heal, he had to come clean. He was placed on the board of directors of the San Diego Council on Literacy and began traveling across the country to give speeches.
“Illiteracy is a form of slavery!” he would cry. “We can’t waste time blaming anyone. We need to become obsessed with teaching people to read!”
He read every book or magazine he could get his hands on, every road sign he passed, out loud, as long as Kathy could
bear it. It was glorious, like singing. And now he could sleep.
Then one day it occurred to him — one more thing he could finally do. Yes, that dusty box in his office, that sheaf of papers bound by ribbon... a quarter-century later, John Corcoran could read his wife's love letters.
~Gary Smith
Don’t Be Afraid to Fail
Don’t look where you fall, but where you slipped.
~African Proverb
You’ve failed many times, although you may not remember.
You fell down the first time you tried to walk.
You almost drowned the first time you tried to swim, didn’t you?
Did you hit the ball the first time you swung a bat?
Heavy hitters, the ones who hit the most home runs, also strike out a lot.
R. H. Macy failed seven times before his store in New York caught on.
English novelist John Creasey got 753 rejection slips before he published 564 books.
Babe Ruth struck out 1,330 times, but he also hit 714 home runs.
Don’t worry about failure.
Worry about the chances you miss when you don’t even try.
~©United Technologies Corporation 1981
Abraham Lincoln Didn’t Quit
The sense of obligation to continue is present in all of us.
A duty to strive is the duty of us all. I felt a call to that duty.
~Abraham Lincoln
Probably the greatest example of persistence is Abraham Lincoln. If you want to learn about somebody who didn’t quit, look no further.
Born into poverty, Lincoln was faced with defeat throughout his life. He lost eight elections, twice failed in business and suffered a nervous breakdown.
He could have quit many times — but he didn’t and because he didn’t quit, he became one of the greatest presidents in the history of our country.
Lincoln was a champion and he never gave up. Here is a sketch of Lincoln’s road to the White House:
1816 His family was forced out of their home. He had to work to support them.
1818 His mother died.
1831 Failed in business.
1832 Ran for state legislature — lost.
1832 Also lost his job — wanted to go to law school but couldn’t get in.
1833 Borrowed some money from a friend to begin a business and by the end of the year he was bankrupt. He spent the next 17 years of his life paying off this debt.
1834 Ran for state legislature again — won.
1835 Was engaged to be married, sweetheart died and his heart was broken.
1836 Had a total nervous breakdown and was in bed for six months.
1838 Sought to become speaker of the state legislature — defeated.
1840 Sought to become elector — defeated.
1843 Ran for Congress — lost.
1846 Ran for Congress again — this time he won — went to
Washington and did a good job.
1848 Ran for re-election to Congress — lost.
1849 Sought the job of land officer in his home state — rejected.
1854 Ran for Senate of the United States — lost.
1856 Sought the Vice Presidential nomination at his party’s national convention — got less than 100 votes. 1858 Ran for U.S. Senate again — again he lost.
1860 Elected president of the United States.
The path was worn and slippery. My foot slipped from under me, knocking the other out of the way, but I recovered and said to myself, “It’s a slip and not a fall.”
~Abraham Lincoln after losing a Senate race
~Source Unknown
Lesson from a Son
If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins.
~Benjamin Franklin
My son Daniel’s passion for surfing began at the age of 13. Before and after school each day, he donned his wet suit, paddled out beyond the surf line and waited to be challenged by his three- to six-foot companions. Daniel’s love of the ride was tested one fateful afternoon.
“Your son’s been in an accident,” the lifeguard reported over the phone to my husband Mike.
“How bad?”
“Bad. When he surfaced to the top of the water, the point of the board was headed toward his eye.”
Mike rushed him to the emergency room and they were then sent to a plastic surgeon’s office. He received 26 stitches from the corner of his eye to the bridge of his nose.
I was on an airplane flying home from a speaking engagement while Dan’s eye was being stitched. Mike drove directly to the airport after they left the doctor’s office. He greeted me at the gate and told me Dan was waiting in the car.
“Daniel?” I questioned. I remember thinking the waves must have been lousy that day.
“He’s been in an accident, but he’s going to be fine.”
A traveling working mother’s worst nightmare had come true. I ran to the car so fast the heel of my shoe broke off. I swung open the door, and my youngest son with the patched eye was leaning forward with both arms stretched out toward me crying, “Oh, Mom, I’m so glad you’re home.”
I sobbed in his arms telling him how awful I felt about not being there when the lifeguard called.
“It’s okay, Mom,” he comforted me. “You don’t know how to surf anyway.”
“What?” I asked, confused by his logic.
“I’ll be fine. The doctor says I can go back in the water in eight days.”
Was he out of his mind? I wanted to tell him he wasn’t allowed to go near water again until he was 35, but instead I bit my tongue and prayed he would forget about surfing forevermore.
For the next seven days he kept pressing me to let him go back on the board. One day after I emphatically repeated “No” to him for the 100th time, he beat me at my own game.
“Mom, you taught us never to give up what we love.”
Then he handed me a bribe — a framed poem by Langston
Hughes that he bought “because it reminded me of you.”
Mother to Son
Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair. It’s had tacks in it.
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor —
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So, boy, don’t you turn back,
Don’t you set down on the steps
’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now —
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
I gave in.
Back then Daniel was a just a boy with a passion for surfing. Now he’s a man with a responsibility. He ranks among the top 25 pro surfers in the world.
I was tested in my own back yard on an important principle that I teach audiences in distant cities: “Passionate people embrace what they love and never give up.”
~Danielle Kennedy
Ziggy ©Ziggy and Friends. Distributed by Universal Press Syndicate. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
Failure? No! Just Temporary Setbacks
To see things in the seed, that is genius.
~Lao-tzu
If you could come to my office in California to visit with me today, you would notice across one side of the room a beautiful old-fashioned Spanish tile and mahogany soda fountain with nine leather-covered stools (the kind they used to have in the old drugstores). Unusual? Yes. But if those stools could speak, they would tell you a story about the day I almost lost hope and gave up.
It was a recession period after World War II and jobs were scarce. Cowboy Bob, my husband, had purchased a small dry cleaning business with borr
owed money. We had two darling babies, a tract home, a car and all the usual time payments. Then the bottom fell out. There was no money for the house payments or anything else.
I felt that I had no special talent, no training, no college education. I didn’t think much of myself. But I remembered someone in my past who thought I had a little ability — my Alhambra High School English teacher. She inspired me to take journalism and named me advertising manager and feature editor of the school paper. I thought, “Now if I could write a ‘Shoppers Column’ for the small weekly newspaper in our rural town, maybe I could earn that house payment.”
I had no car and no babysitter. So I pushed my two children before me in a rickety baby stroller with a big pillow tied in the back.
The wheel kept coming off, but I hit it back on with the heel of my shoe and kept going. I was determined that my children would not lose their home as I often had done as a child.
But at the newspaper office, there were no jobs available. Recession. So I caught an idea. I asked if I might buy advertising space at wholesale and sell it at retail as a “Shoppers Column.” They agreed, telling me later that they mentally gave me about a week of pushing that beat-up heavily laden stroller down those country roads before I gave up. But they were wrong.
The newspaper column idea worked. I made enough money for the house payment and to buy an old used car that Cowboy Bob found for me. Then I hired a high school girl to babysit from three to five each afternoon. When the clock struck three, I grabbed my newspaper samples and flew out of the door to drive to my appointments.
But on one dark rainy afternoon every advertising prospect I had worked on turned me down when I went to pick up their copy. “Why?” I asked. They said they had noticed that Ruben Ahlman, the President of the Chamber of Commerce and the owner of the Rexall drugstore did not advertise with me. His store was the most popular in town. They respected his judgment. “There must be something wrong with your advertising,” they explained.
Chicken Soup for the Soul: All Your Favorite Original Stories Page 20
