Yes, I’ve seen the steady flow of news stories containing terms like “alarming” or “dire”… predictions including words like “severe” and “ominous”. It’s almost enough to make an optimist ponder my hardwiring. Almost. Through personal encounters, however, my hopes are nurtured. Some of this comes from recent time with family: Glorious gatherings with siblings, scattered nieces and nephews, too. And time in Chicago with grandkids and their parents and our newly married son and his wife. Overwhelmingly, all is well.
While family is a wellspring of contentment, it’s not the focus of this ramble. I want to tell you about four young men of a similar age, now transitioning from boyhood to early adulthood. Individually and collectively, they personify great potential. I’m sold on their abilities and the positive impact they’ll have in the world.
David is a child of immigrants, middle child of five, the only male. His parents were born in Vietnam, and now live in nearby Austin, Minnesota, his father employed at the same Hormel plant where my family members have worked for decades. David is shy and quiet. He’s also exceedingly bright, musical (piano), and family-oriented. Mid-summer, Wallin Education Partners paired us with David and we committed to help support his college education. David attends the University of Minnesota, studying computer engineering. First semester courses included calculus, physics, computer programming, and a writing class. We connected for a pre-Christmas dinner, curious about David’s adjustment. As often happens during those first few months, considerable growth has occurred. As I write this, David is traveling with his sisters (without parents!) to Japan. I anticipate they’ll return better people… travel ALSO promotes growth.
I met Matthew at Hawkeye Boys State in 2021, after his junior year in high school, and urged him to become a Boys State counselor, which he did in 2022. Matthew is engaging, outgoing, and up for adventure. After high school, he headed to Virginia Military Institute. It wasn’t a comfortable fit and he departed after several months. Embarking on a gap year he hadn’t envisioned, Matthew hiked the Pacific Crest Trail, striking out solo last spring. After months of minimal communication, he called to say he’d committed to a six-year Army stint focusing on counterintelligence. While home on break, we met for lunch prior to Christmas. He relayed hiking tales, convincing me that with Army support, he’ll refocus on his education. Meanwhile, I’m glad (and proud) we have intelligent people in counterintelligence.
I’ve written about Lou before. Lou is from Massachusetts, and lived with us for several months during his gap year after high school, while he worked in a successful 2022 congressional campaign. He just finished his first semester at Harvard where, in addition to a full course load, he writes for the college newspaper and made the baseball team. Lou is unusually engaging, enterprising, and quietly confident, as if knowing his story will end happily. In a Christmas text, he said he’s headed to Hong Kong during the break. Ah, travel…
Carter and I met at Hawkeye Boys State in 2022; he joined me as a counselor in 2023. With college credit gained by taking courses during high school, he entered the University of Iowa last fall as a junior. The best way to describe Carter’s giftedness: of six statewide officers elected at Boys State, four came from HIS barracks (which was one of sixteen). Focused, poised, whip-smart, AND entrepreneurial, Carter is tentatively pointed toward law. If there’s a career niche encompassing his many sterling qualities, he’ll undoubtedly find it – and thrive.
I mention these four not merely due to their remarkable skills, available in abundance, but due to their considerable promise. In a world of incalculable challenges, they give me hope and instill confidence. I know it’s early; they’ll encounter difficulties, even periodic setbacks. Nevertheless, I’m betting on them – and on their female counterparts (maybe a future column?). Three closing observations: First, our world desperately needs these young men. Second, when applied appropriately, exceptional talent almost always prevails. Third, so tell me… what’s the alternative?
Happy 2024 to David, Matthew, Lou, and Carter. And to readers of “Showing Up.” Let’s all keep in touch.
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I’m pleased to be part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. My colleagues:
Your choices do show great promise, but what of those not as gifted, or moderately left at the side of the road, so to speak, that have all of the same characteristics, but few support mechanisms? All sorts of things leave a talented and gifted up and comer with a slow start, back at the starting gate. With no support and a late start, I feel for these kids. There is less likely a college degree and if any education beyond high school, it will come from what they can afford, not neccessarily a bad education, but far from Harvard or VMI! How do I know this? I was one of the many that faced this as a poor farm kid, who struggled with family, no money and few choices. Two years in Vietnam after poor or close to no training as a turbine engine mechanic, only to be told that with a credical job specialty, that my company had plenty of enginemen, I was now assigned to the hydraulic shop! I managed, and I learned how not to be taken advantage of in a system that chews up humans everyday without so much as a thought to what they are doing to people. I traveled the world, made it around the globe by age 21, and did it in less than three years in the Army. I was home13 days and headed for New York City to straighten out my passport and off for a ten month trip hitch hiking Europe fromas fae north as Dwnmark to as far south ass Morrocco in Africa. I came home to New York City where my flight ended and hitch hiked back to Iowa in four days on a $20 billI borrowed in Genoa, Italy and arrived with seven dollars remaining when I got home to Iowa. From there I made some good starts only to have the rug pulled out from under me several times, got a couple of years college at Kirkwood Community College married, had a child, divorced, bought a house that almost financially killed me, but I kept it, paid it off and eventually got remarried. I'm 73 now, have had open heart surgery due to exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam, live a comfortable life in a small Iowa town with no contact with my son for over ten years. Not even close to some of the people you helped. How different it might have been with some encouragement we will never know! The fact that I have survived and done moderately well for me says enough. It certainly is a long way from that day in January when I got kicked out of my house in my senior year of High School, moved into a rooming house, worked two part time jobs, and graduated from High School on my own! No one knew anything about it at school, it wasn't their business. I aplaud you for helping out kids that need a little push, but I would suggest there are a hundred more that could simply use a kind word or some sympathtic encouragement that might not be headed for the top of their class at Harvard, but could make the world just as good being better parents, school board members, volunteers for Head Start or the local Community Action Program.
Hi Kurt, you've made me want to meet all four of these young guys. But I feel a special calling to follow Lou, the political campaign worker, newspaper writer and baseball player at Harvard. Will he be writing baseball while he plays it? I hope so. Please update us on all four of these fellows from time to time.