The Soul of It All

by Michael Bolton

  Shortly thereafter, I talked with Jackie about my interest in starting my own charitable foundation. Michael Bolton Charities would soon benefit organizations that offer assistance to abused women and children. She agreed to help me with the launch, and has been the director of the organization ever since. Assisted by Andrena Gagliardi, the dedicated woman we all know and love, they have committed such a big part of their lives to improve the quality of life for a lot of people they’ll never meet. It would be impossible to do any of the work MBC does without Jackie, Andrena, the generous volunteers, and our resourceful and committed board members. MBC would be nothing without them.

  Early on, we approached the Yale Child Study Center for guidance and information. Our research into families living in shelters revealed that poverty and violence were the leading factors that led to their losing or fleeing their homes. We partnered with the Yale center to provide trained family advocates to women and children at risk. They work with the mothers, helping them transition into homes or apartments with their children, escaping high-risk situations. The goal is to give them the tools and support they need so they never return to any shelter, or to an abusive relationship.

  Our critical mission is to diminish and help end the cycle of abuse and violence against women and children, and to educate and positively affect young males because, as my father told me, true men are not violent toward women. Some men—and we are speaking about many husbands who are living in the Stone Age—believe for whatever reason that the way they treat the women in their own homes is a “private” or “family” matter. The Violence Against Women Act and human rights laws in this country disagree. I was a newcomer to this field, so Jackie and I consulted with experienced professionals and their organizations. We tapped their expertise, asking what we could do to help and what needs we could serve. One of our focuses has been to work with the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence to advocate for protective legislation in the U.S. Congress. I was proud to join forces with Rita Smith, the former executive director of NCADV and one of the most inspiring and enduringly committed people I have ever met, and with my friend Meredith Wagner, the former executive vice president of communications, public affairs, and advocacy at Lifetime Television, as we met with members of both houses in Washington, D.C.

  We found willing champions for our efforts in Bill and Hillary Clinton. Under President Clinton’s administration, the Violence Against Women Act was written into law. This law educates and guides law enforcement officials, prosecutors, and judges on the legal rights of women and children when confronted with abuse. It also provides funds for emergency hotlines that can help save lives and reduce the stress and trauma for women and children in need of assistance. The VAWA was co-authored in a bipartisan effort by Senator Orrin Hatch and then Senator Joe Biden, who shared the conviction that our laws need to be clear on protective measures for women in abusive situations. This is a perfect example of our democracy at work and at its best. Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle found common ground and created legislation that truly benefits those who have no power or clout. Many say that this vital legislation was one of the highest achievements of these two political leaders, since this law will help break the cycle of violence that has damaged and even ended the lives of innocent women and children. That’s when I witnessed how powerful our system of government can be, when Democrats and Republicans pull one another toward a common goal and away from gridlock, as the Founding Fathers intended.

  We continue to meet with members of Congress each year to ensure funding for the provisions in this multibillion-dollar bill. Women are well aware of the need for these protections and services, so I have focused on taking the message to men of all ages that we cannot accept violence toward our wives, our girlfriends, our mothers, our sisters, or our daughters. I am most excited about the creation of Family Justice Centers nationwide, based on an innovative approach to family violence developed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City with the help of dedicated people like Yolanda Jimenez (another one of my heroes), commissioner of the city’s Office to Combat Domestic Violence. Mayor Bloomberg gave a moving speech after we all had just heard the heart-wrenching story of a single mother who had nowhere to go with her young son while living in constant danger at the hands of a violent offender. There was not a shelter in place for them. Mayor Bloomberg faced the woman and said, “Shame on us.” Shame on us for not providing an alternative to a mother’s day-to-day hell of trying to protect herself and her child. Mayor Bloomberg is so clearly a champion and continues his commitment to more Family Justice Centers. He and Commissioner Jimenez have set us on our present course. These are free, one-stop shelters and centers for women and children where they are provided vital services, including security, medical treatment, child care, and legal assistance in the form of an in-house prosecutor’s office.

  My organization is working on opening the first Family Justice Center in my home state of Connecticut, and our plan is to be advocates for replication of these much-needed centers around the country. I’m grateful that public officials are recognizing that these centers can save lives, spare victims, and help women and children stay out of the welfare and foster-care systems. The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. said that laws don’t move the heart, but they restrain the heartless. Abusers are often victims of abuse themselves, so these Family Justice Centers can help break that cycle. This is another major goal of MBC.

  Since 1993, we’ve disbursed more than $10 million to organizations across the country, including the National Domestic Violence Hotline, Prevent Child Abuse America, MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership, the New York City Family Justice Center, Yale Child Study Center, the Domestic Violence Crisis Center, Mount Sinai Sexual Assault Victims Intervention Program, and the Children’s Advocacy Center.

  In order to heighten awareness even more, I decided to executive-produce a documentary for Lifetime, Terror at Home, addressing domestic violence in America. The song “Tears of the Angels,” which I wrote for the film, was nominated for an Emmy.

  A NEW GAME

  At first, we raised money for MBC with celebrity softball tournaments, but fourteen years ago, I took up a new game and eventually it became my favorite way to raise money for our mission to help women and children at risk. After four decades of playing baseball, softball, tennis, and almost any sport but golf, I finally gave in about fifteen years ago and joined my friends lawyer Mickey Sherman and director Barry Levinson for a round of that game while on vacation in Maui.

  I’d never understood the appeal of golf before but on that occasion, I “got it,” just as concert promoter Jimmy Koplik finally got “that Italian thing,” otherwise known as opera, after one of my performances. I discovered that golf was very good therapy for me. I got into the Zen aspects of the game, which call for letting go of the inevitable bad shots or bad moments, so that they don’t compound and affect the rest of your game or spoil the serenity of a few hours spent on a beautiful course with friends. Golf is about focusing on the moment, clearing negative thoughts from your mind, blocking out distractions, and enjoying the game, playing it one shot at a time.

  I’ve tried to apply that same approach to other areas of my life so that bad phone calls or other unpleasant moments don’t turn my whole day into a string of bogeys. Like most who play this sport, I’m not always as “Zen” as I’d like to be on the golf course or in life. I’ve been known to utter an occasional series of four-letter words on the course. Anyone who plays golf knows the joke that asks, “Why do they call it golf?” The answer is, “Because all the other four-letter words were taken.” Once, a caddie from Scotland, where the game was created, explained to me that whoever created that joke didn’t understand that golf was a far nastier four-letter word than all the others. But still, golf tournaments proved easier on our bodies than softball tournaments, and a better venue for both entertainment and fund-raising because so many more men and women enjoy playing that sport.

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sp; One of the perks of playing in celebrity tournaments was that I got to play a round with Arnold Palmer and the South African Man in Black, Gary Player, who gave me one of my first actual golf lessons. When word got out that I’d joined the club of celebrity golfers, I soon found myself invited to charity fund-raising golf tournaments, which quickly replaced celebrity softball games on my yearly schedule. These events have provided me with many hours of fun and much-needed time away from the recording studio and off the concert trail. I’ve enjoyed meeting the professional players, whose skill and focus often seem superhuman to me, and the other celebrities and guests in the Pro-Am tournaments. I’ve met quite a few people who are not exactly what I thought they’d be. It’s also true that I’ve rarely laughed as hard as I have at these events.

  Even if I’m not playing up to par, it’s hard to have a bad day on the golf course with playing partners like one of my favorite actors, Joe Pesci. Although Joe is an Oscar-winning dramatic actor, he is also relentlessly funny out on the course.

  Another of my favorite golf partners in celebrity events is the great director and actor Clint Eastwood. He and his beautiful wife, Dina, have been generous in supporting my golf tournament fund-raiser, which benefits my charitable foundation. In 2012, Clint offered up for bidders several tickets and VIP passes to his movie J. Edgar, which brought in some serious money for our charities.

  I’ve played rounds of golf with Kevin Costner, Kevin James, Samuel L. Jackson, Huey Lewis, Clay Walker, and Barry Levinson, but the first celebrity I was ever paired with in a charity tournament was the infamous shock-rocker and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Alice Cooper, whose legendary live shows combine snakes, killing machines, illusions, and horror into genre-bending performances. They say you really get to know a person if you play eighteen holes of golf together. I’d never met Alice, but that day on the golf course in my first Bob Hope Classic, I got to know a side of him that was more like Fred MacMurray, the gentle and lovable actor from one of my favorite childhood shows, My Three Sons. Rolling Stone has called Alice “the most beloved heavy metal entertainer.” I can honestly say that he was one of the most courteous, soft-spoken, positive-thinking, and supportive individuals I’ve ever played golf with—and everyone I know who has played with him says the same thing. You will never hear a four-letter word come out of his mouth. He always has something nice to say about your swing or follow-through, some type of positive reinforcement.

  Alice Cooper is also a great golfer, by the way. I believe his handicap is four or five, and he’s a great putter. On the golf course, he is one of the mellowest guys I’ve ever played with. He never gets irritated or bent out of shape if he hits a bad shot. At one point, I hit a really bad shot, but since he had been so calm I didn’t say what I was thinking. I did admit to him that I was thinking of a four-letter word, and his response was, “I thought you finished your swing very well on that.”

  “Don’t you ever have anything negative to say?” I asked.

  Alice gave some serious thought to that and replied, “Not really, no.”

  Golf courses and their beautiful clubhouses also provide a better setting for fund-raisers than the typical softball diamond. So I began hosting my own golf and concert charity events. In the last few years we have worked in conjunction with the Travelers Championship golf event to stage Michael Bolton & Friends benefit concerts in Hartford. We’ve also been putting on a Celebrity Golf Classic with several other corporate sponsors at the Ojai Valley Inn and Spa in Ojai, California. Our concerts have featured Shania Twain, Michael McDonald, Kenny G, Richard Marx, Dave Mason, Orianthi, Delta Goodrem, Wynonna Judd, Davy Jones, Bill Champlin, Paul Williams, and other great artists. I owe them all my gratitude, and we are also grateful for the generous support we’ve received over the years from my close friends Jâlé and Warren Trepp, Tani and Bill Austin, Terice and David Clark, Cindy and R. A. Raymond, Lisa and the late Patrick Swayze, and Michael Intoccia. My friends John O’Hurley, Tom Gross, and Jack Williams have also helped emcee, driving our auction prices upward.

  THE BIGGER PICTURE

  For me, the theme of the climb or struggle was not just about the disappointment of a record company going out of business or a record failing to launch. At one point, I was working against a constant backdrop of angst and fear that my family might have to confront the unbearable face of homelessness. The terrifying specter of an eviction notice was looming. Our landlord was a nice guy, but all my bouncing rent checks were causing him stress and fees he couldn’t handle. I’ll never forget the apologetic look on his face one day when he said he just couldn’t support us anymore and we would have to leave,

  But breaking down wasn’t going to save my family or give us a home. Giving up was never an option for me. As it’s been said, as long as there’s a why you will always find the how. My family was my “why.”

  Although my career path looked uncertain, I knew no other way. So I put my head down and worked harder, focusing on what I could do that would make my songs and singing better than what I had done before. I believe this determination and discipline helped lead me to success. In the writing and reading of my own story, I’ve found that it’s as hard to describe this tenacity and commitment as it is to describe how difficult and sometimes paralyzing the poverty was to me.

  I recently heard that each year more than three million Americans experience homelessness, and more than fifty million Americans couldn’t afford to buy food last year. That is where America is right now, and the enormity of that fills my heart with grief. How is that possible in this country?

  After attending many lavish fund-raising events, built around celebrities in the worlds of music, film, television, or sports, I decided to apply my own celebrity toward a charitable cause. The original intention of my foundation was to help struggling families in the state of Connecticut, because that was something I could so closely relate to.

  We discovered many women and families living in shelters whose homelessness was rooted in domestic violence. We dedicated the foundation’s mission to raising awareness and support around that plague. But today, twenty years down the road, we are coming back to the priority of writing checks to food banks and looking at ways to help families facing eviction notices.

  Bruce Springsteen’s recent anthem “We Take Care of Our Own” reminds me that leaders taking the oath of office to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic” need to recognize what Gandhi was talking about when he said, “Poverty is the worst form of violence.” We never thought 9/11 could happen. We had thought of and prepared for everything imaginable. Then the unimaginable happened. But the unimaginable is also happening to families all over this country who are struck by the misery and suffering of homelessness and hunger. Poverty is a form of domestic terror. In my opinion, this would be the right time to amend the oath of office that our presidents and other elected leaders take to include protecting all Americans from the banking system and special interests, which many of us believe contributed to putting our economy in the condition it’s in today.

  I see this often as I travel the country, and it’s so painful to observe. I’ve heard of family businesses that have endured for generations shutting their doors and of hardworking couples who’ve lost their homes.

  In hard economic times, it’s always those with the least who are hurt the most.

  It’s tragically poignant that the inscription on the Statue of Liberty no longer applies only to the immigrants it was intended for but to tens of millions of Americans right here at home. The statue and the words inscribed were meant as a beacon to the whole world. It doesn’t say, “Bring us your strong, your ambitious, your rich, your powerful”; it says:

  Give me your tired, your poor,

  Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

  The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

  Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

  I lift my lamp beside the golden door!


  The American Dream once taught us to believe in our right to a decent life, to provide for our families, to have health care, and to send our kids to school. I am hopeful that dream can be revived and made a reality again. The collaborative and committed efforts of a community—the kind of efforts we’re witnessing in Detroit—can become a model for the rest of the nation.

  Detroit has been one of the areas hardest hit by the recession, but committed business leaders with deep roots there, particularly Dan Gilbert and his revitalization team, led by Bruce Schwartz and Dan Mullen, are fighting to bring the city back, and, in some small ways, I intend to make a contribution to their cause. While completing my latest record in 2012, I visited the Motown Museum and was struck by the great contributions that Detroit has made to both our culture and our economy over the generations. This city deserves our support now. Detroit celebrated racial diversity and multiculturalism before most people had ever considered those concepts or their implications for society. Groundbreaking black artists and pioneering African American entrepreneurs who would stir and inspire the world began their careers in Detroit, where the auto industry helped create and equip the American middle class, the backbone of our country.

  My father was a proud member of the middle class. He believed in the American Dream and he taught me to believe in it as well. He believed that he could work hard, take care of his family, and achieve his dreams of building a prosperous, safe, and secure life for us all. Before the rumblings of divorce disrupted our family and our upwardly mobile lifestyle, we very much lived that dream. I was about six years old when I took a mental snapshot that has always stayed with me. I was watching my dad wash his Ford after he arrived home from work. I remember feeling very secure in that moment and protected in my environment.