Scott Fitzgerald is remembered primarily for living fast, dying young, and writing The Great Gatsby. But he also said, more than once, “there are no second acts in American lives.”
What he meant by that isn’t entirely clear. But it is also clear that nothing could be further from the truth. There are second acts, sometimes third acts and more.
Maybe sometimes there shouldn’t be – think Richard Nixon. But also think of Winston Churchill, a has-been failure on his 64th birthday.
A year and a half later, he was prime minister of Great Britain, and was the only leader left willing to defy the odds and stand up to Adolf Hitler. Because he did, the world was saved.
And on a local level, think of men like Charlie Beckham, who made some mistakes, got some prison time – probably more than he deserved — but refused to get bitter.
He got out, went back to work for the city, and served six mayors in many different jobs. When he finally retired for the second time this summer, Mayor Mike Duggan said that for him, Beckham had been “an invaluable advisor and leader.”
Something like that goes on often at Focus Hope. People’s heads weren’t where they should have been when they were in school. They got into drugs, maybe, or other negative behavior. Or maybe they just never had a chance or believed they were good enough, and now want to turn their lives around. Focus Hope gives them an opportunity to do that.
Oh, they have to do the heavy lifting themselves. They have not just to learn but to learn how to learn. They have to learn how to get and keep a job. But thousands have done it.
For many years, the media credited Father Bill Cunningham and Eleanor Josaitis for Focus Hope, and it is true that it would not have started without them. But they’ve been gone for years now, and it is still going strong. And even when they were here, Focus Hope would never have succeeded if thousands hadn’t wanted to make it.
I mentioned Churchill earlier. Any other leader would have made peace with the Nazis after the fall of France. Had he done that, no American troops could ever have been in a position to liberate the continent of Europe.
But Churchill didn’t do that. Five years later, he appeared on a balcony in London with the king before thousands of cheering Londoners the day the Nazis surrendered. When someone called him a hero, Churchill said it was the British people who had been the lion.
“I just had the luck to be called on to give the roar,” he said.
Focus Hope has been working for half a century to lift folks up, and give them the tools to do a little roaring themselves, to have decent jobs and careers. They are still doing it. Bobby Kennedy, who died just as Focus Hope was getting underway, may have said it best:
“Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”
There are those who build walls, and those who, like Focus Hope, tear them down. I know what side I want to be on.
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