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.
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
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.
So, I Take Five days off, and here's our soundtrack, of course.
1 comments:
he's my uncle yayayayay!!!!!!!!!!i love him so much he is a great guy!!!!!
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