Saturday, November 24

A good man

I first met Stewart Acuff in a friend's backyard in Little Rock on the 4th of July in 1978. Stewart was 22 and had just graduated from a little Baptist college across the state of Missouri from where he grew up. He was coming to work for me as a community organizer-trainee in Texas that week.

I invited Stewart to grab a plate of picnic food and sit down on the grass and chat. We hit it off from the start, but he asked me if I could let him off from his prior commitment to start that week so he could go back home for a week to honor a commitment he apparently had made to his father, a Baptist preacher, to go home and teach Sunday School one last time.

I'm sure Stewart expected me to be okay with that. After all, who could stand in the way of a young man teaching Sunday School one last time, let alone honoring his commitment to his Dad?

I could. Problem was, I didn't know his father and mother. (Eventually I got to know them both a little. Once that happened it was clear to me how Stewart had turned out to be such a good person and a great friend.) It wasn't easy back then to hire and train talented organizers. I was a little concerned that if he went home for another week to his Mom and Dad and told them again how he was about to run off to a faraway state and help poor people get organized to fight the power for a salary of $4,000 a year, he would never make it to Texas. Mom and Dad might talk some sense into him.

I didn't tell him flat-out "No." Instead I appealed to his obvious spirituality and said something about the commitment he had made to come to organizing being something between him and God, that I had no personal power to let him out of. I said it without stuttering. He came to Texas without going back home.

We've been the best of friends pretty much ever since. Every day with the work he does he makes me proud. He spent some good time training with me as an organizer in Texas, and then he came to work with me again years later when I running something called the New Hampshire People's Alliance. Later he went into union organizing and is now the National Director of Field Organizing for the AFL-CIO.

As long as I continued to do organizing work, he always made me better at what I did. We also have shared a lot with each other about the trials and tribulations we each have faced trying to balance the desire to live a good life as a man with the frailties and challenges that being a man has thrown in each of our paths.

Along the way, as you can see from a video or two here, he's never gotten too far away from teaching Sunday School.

Keep up the preachin' and the teachin', Stewart.





Friday Soundtrack

Here's a nice travelin' song for my daughter Kip who heads back to LA today after a nice visit.




After Thanksgiving Soundtrack


Bob Dylan - It's All Over Now, Baby Blue


Shawn Colvin - Sunny Came Home


Bonus track

I just got a great email from my friend Ned, who responded to some recent entries and specifically to the Elvis cover of Eddy Arnold's "I Really Don't Want to Know" by sending me a wonderful, rich essay he wrote recently on The King. I can't wait until I finish my current (tardy) copywriting assignment so I can spend the time with it that it deserves, probably tomorrow evening. Meanwhile, back at you, Ned, here is my favorite Elvis song, not "Don't Be Cruel" but just "Don't," which I never noticed back in the day but discovered 15 years ago on a 20 #1 hits compilation. It's such a rich and vulnerable song. (It is also covered wonderfully and breathlessly by Bernadette Peters, although the only track I ever found of that cover was on an LP of hers).



I also have to thank Ned for this. In his email he mentioned, and correctly remembered the title of "The Book of Ezra," my quirky but unfinished novel from sophomore year. Now that is a friend. Thanks, buddy. I love you for that.

PS - I just discovered the Bernadette Peters cover in my collection of purchased iTunes songs, so I am happy to report you can get it from Mr. Jobs for less than a buck.


Sunday Morning Soundtrack

Hot damn! Went off my diet for 5 days and lost another half a pound anyway! It strikes me that maybe I am actually making some fundamental changes in how I eat. This is a good thing. Plus I had 2 great workouts and a really nice long walk around Jamaica Pond and all over JP with my daughter Kip.

So, I Take Five days off, and here's our soundtrack, of course.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

he's my uncle yayayayay!!!!!!!!!!i love him so much he is a great guy!!!!!