Juliette Gordon Low

Back in June of 2014, the First Lady and I celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary by visiting Savannah, Georgia. We had a fabulous time, saw some marvelous sights, and ate some delicious food.

One of the touristy things we did was to visit the home of Juliette Gordon Low, founder of the Girl Scouts. Ann has always spoken very highly of her time as a Girl Scout, and I believe those years were very important in forming the woman she has become. And in learning about Ms. Low, I found it very easy to identify with her and how she was able to find a way to make a significant difference on the world we live in.

The Juliette Gordon Low home in Savannah, now a National Historic Landmark.

In learning Low’s life’s story, everything so clearly points to the formation of an organization like the Girl Scouts. As a child she was always interested in the arts, writing plays, poetry, and was skilled in sketching. She and her cousins helped sew clothing for children in the neighborhood. She attended school in Virginia and also in New York City, and did a fair amount of traveling in Europe and in the United States. She even returned to the states during the Spanish-American War to help care for wounded soldiers. So she was definitely a woman of the world who saw and learned a lot of things.

In 1886, she married William Mackay Low at Christ Church (Episcopal) in Savannah [side note—we worshiped in this church during our trip and it was an amazing experience]. They lived in England although she continued her travels. The marriage lasted 19 years, but they were not happy years. They were separated at the time of his death in 1905.

This is where I really started to connect with Ms. Low. Her life was suddenly at a bit of a crossroads, much like mine is at this point.

She spent several years casting about for meaning until 1911 when she met Sir Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts. In 1912, Low returned to Savannah and created the Girl Guides. The ambition was to teach young girls self-reliance and resourcefulness, and maybe even help them learn about a life as a professional and not necessarily as a homemaker. Starting with 18 Girl Guides, the Girl Scouts USA are now 2.8 million strong, and this organization has shared its values with 59 million women and men worldwide.

And what makes this story more remarkable is that she did all these things despite having back problems and being mostly deaf in both ears for most of her life. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1923 but kept on working until she died in 1927. President Obama posthumously awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012, the highest civilian award in the U.S.

Juliette Gordon Low definitely chose the right path—certainly an untraveled path, and made a difference in the lives of countless young girls, my wife and her friends included. Ms. Low found a way to help people and to make a difference, and I truly admire her for finding a way. She serves as a role model to me.

NCAA Tournament

            I have been up to my eyeballs with schoolwork this semester. I have tried to work harder so I can rise to the level of effort that graduate school requires.

            One casualty is the annual tradition of filling out an NCAA tournament bracket. Or in my case, six brackets. It seems like everyone does it, and it’s great fun trying to figure out who will win, and who will pull off the upset. But this year, the First Lady and I did not fill a bracket out for the first time in many years. Speaking for myself, I just didn’t have the energy for it. Besides—the more I try to analyze things, the more I look at statistics and what not… the worse I seem to do. We were in a basketball pool during the season and it was the same thing. When we tried harder to analyze the teams and schedules, we fell further and further behind.

            So we didn’t fill any brackets out this year. The thing is, watching the games has been just as compelling as it has always been. As an added bonus—our brackets weren’t ruined when Iowa State lost to UAB. They would have if I’d filled one out, since ISU looked really good in the Big 12 Tournament. In addition, who really looks at their picks after the second day of the tournament? If you’ve entered an online group, do you really care anymore once your bracket is blown up? I don’t.

            Only two teams I care about made the big dance—NMSU and Georgia. The Aggies because the campus is in Las Cruces, some of my old stomping grounds. UGA because, well, I go to school there and we had season tickets and had a great time. Neither side won their first-round game, so now it’s a free for all. I’m trying to care about North Carolina, since the wife roots for them (she has an MBA from UNC). It’s difficult, and I just don’t give my heart away that easily. But I’m working on it.

            It’s actually kind of nice to not really care about any of the teams still alive—no emotional attachment means no stress.           

Over Dinner

I recently saw a topic thread online that sounded like a fun experiment. It’s where you can invite any two people (living or dead) to join you for dinner, but you are not allowed to join in the conversation. Order your food and drinks, but otherwise just keep your mouth shut and don’t ask questions. Just listen to your two guests talk. Oh yeah, one parameter—you can’t invite God, Adolf Hitler, or Abraham Lincoln. Too easy. I came up with several pairs—some are diabolical, some are historic, but I hope you would find them entertaining. The thought is to share them over time.

The first pair I’ll throw out there is sports related—Vince Lombardi, longtime coach of the great Green Bay Packer teams of the 1960s, and Bill Belichick, current coach of the Super Bowl Champion New England Patriots.

I’m not here to discuss Belichick’s ethics, which have been hashed and rehashed for a very long time. Neither he nor Lombardi should be considered saints.

Belichick is not exactly known for being a chatterbox, but I hear his players love playing for him, mainly because he wins football games. I don’t begrudge that—we all have our reasons. He knows part of his job is talking to the media, and that’s where his reputation comes into play. Coaches do not want to share anything that might clue an opponent in to a weakness, so he does not like to talk where there are cameras around. I imagine his players don’t care about that. Plus, I’m wiling to bet Belichick is more of a social being on the practice field or in meeting rooms. He is also a master at breaking down game film and getting many different parts to work together. He likely learned these skills as a boy when he would spend time with his father, who was an assistant at the Naval Academy.

Vince Lombardi lives on primarily through books and NFL Films videos. He was one of the Seven Blocks of Granite on the Fordham football team in the 1930s (interesting that he was the starting offensive tackle at 5’8” and 180 pounds). The image that comes to mind is one of a stereotypical old-school football man. He’s a world champion coach, winner of five NFL titles in seven years, including the first two Super Bowls. The man most definitely knew what he was doing.

Belichick graduated from Annapolis (Md.) High School in 1970, and Lombardi was coach of the Washington Redskins for the 1969 season, and he died in DC in 1970, so there may be some sort of connection there. It would be fascinating listening to nearly 100 years of football history, since these two men could form a timeline that runs as far back as the 1920s.

            I feel sure my food would get cold—I consider myself an (very) amateur historian and I don’t think I’d eat. I’d just listen to the stories and to the history lesson.