Success has many fathers, while failure is an orphan.

When asked about the Bay of Pigs disaster -the 1961 failed invasion of Cuba by United States forces – President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, in accepting responsibility for the failure, said,
“…Victory has 100 fathers and defeat is an orphan…”
JFK was quoting and translating, from Italian, the words of Count Galfazzo Ciano,
“La victoria trova cento padri, a nessuno vuole riconoscere l’insuccesso.”

   

I’m taking the liberty of tweaking their famous words and applying a different meaning.
I’m not accepting blame for anything that went wrong, although I do have thick skin, and typically do so when warranted.
Neither am I inflating my importance to any situation, though I do believe I have broad shoulders with which I am willing to carry more than my share of most loads.

No, this piece is an ode to a handful of people who gave birth to the boys we were, and developed us into the men we became.

I refer not to just to moms and dads but also the teachers, coaches, and mentors, that often intentionally and sometimes perhaps unwittingly played a part in getting those of us at the tail end of the Baby Boom generation, through our adolescence, into adulthood, to the point where we sit now, middle age.

As long as there have been scientists and scholars the debate has been waged; Nature vs. Nurture?
Are our personality and behavior shaped primarily by the gene pool that we emerged from (Nature)?
Or are they formed primarily by the sea of experiences we sail on (Nurture)?
It’s a difficult question to answer because in most cases the same people who spawned us are also those who raised us. Our parents taught us the basics and formed us, as well as they could, to be productive, contributing members of society.

At the University of Minnesota there have been renowned research projects known as, “The Minnesota Twins Family Studies”. From 1979 to 1999 Professor T.J. Bouchard began studying identical twins (since their genetic material matched 100%) that were being raised, for a variety of reasons, in different environments. Under Bouchard 137 pairs of twins (81 identical and 56 fraternal) were used as research subjects in 170 different studies. It was assumed that using twins would be the ideal way to study the impacts of nature versus nurture.

Bouchard and his researchers have interviewed twins from throughout the world about their interests, experiences, and medical histories. They found that identical twins reared apart have about the same chance of developing similarly as if they were raised together. Which would suggest that genetics (or Nature) plays a very strong part in the development of personal characteristics.

But differences between identical twins reared apart were revealed as well, meaning that there definitely is a nurture component at work as well.
But to what degree?
We may never know. 

All I really know for sure is that growing up in America, in Minnesota, in Bloomington, and coming of age in the late 1970’s was, to me, a privileged situation.

Oh sure we didn’t have the internet, but if we needed information we looked it up in a dictionary or encyclopedia. If we wanted to chat with friends we called them at their homes or rode our bike to their house to see them.

Mobile phones? Hell yeah. The handset from the phone mounted on the kitchen wall was as mobile as you could stretch the 12-foot coiled cord.

Fitness Apps? Nah, we had parks and schoolyards with baseball diamonds, hockey rinks, basketball courts, and fields for football and soccer, plus, other kids our age who were usually up for a game at the drop of a hat.

I was lucky enough to grow up in a parsonage right next to the church where my dad preached. Like in the movie, The Sandlot, there was a perpetual baseball game going in that churchyard most of the summer. You just had to walk out there and join in.
Once school started in the fall touch football became our thing.

When the snow flew my dad used to flood an ice rink in the backyard for us.
Mom placed carpet squares on the floor from our backdoor to my chair at the kitchen table allowing me to keep my skates on while eating dinner to keep the intermission between afterschool hockey and after dinner hockey to a minimum.
Thanks mom and dad!

Evidently there are proverbs from varying African cultures that can be roughly translated to,
“It takes a village to raise a child.”
I very much doubt that African proverbs were considered when my, and my friends’ dads volunteered to coach the Bloomington Athletic Association (BAA) teams we played on as kids. Nor when our moms helped carpool us to games and practices. All I know is that as kids we never lacked for adult guidance. Mentors who were willing to help were everywhere in our childhood. As we grew older, and went to high school, teachers, counselors, and coaches were available to mentor us as well.

Now that we’ve reached the autumn of our years I find it interesting to check in and see how things are progressing.
Some of the parents, coaches, and mentors are gone, but their influences live on.

One particular friend whose father coached many of my friends has now himself developed into possibly the most supportive and encouraging father for his children. His experience seems to have taught him the power and possibilities that emerge when encouragement and praise are used effectively.

Another friend whose parents worked blue-collar jobs providing well for he and his brothers, has worked hard for years at his white-collar job to become the ultimate super provider for his wife and kids. His parents and coaches obviously instilled in him a work ethic that would serve us all well.

And then there is another friend, whose father taught him the art of stickhandling without watching the puck and helped him develop the soft hands of a very talented hockey player, who now uses those hands to help the father perform routine daily tasks that many of us take for granted.  Selfless devotion to friends and family is not lost on either of them.

As for me you may have heard the stereotypes of preacher’s kids (PK’s).
Some believe that PK’s are more exposed to the tentpole events in life like births, marriages, and deaths, since their clergy parents are involved quite frequently with those events.
Oftentimes issues such as unemployment, marital discord, injustice, and poverty arise as concerns of congregation members that a Pastor may help counsel them through.
In many cases PK’s become hyper-aware of these issues partially due to their parents’ influence.
I believe those stereotypes fit me fairly well.

It’s often been said that the acorn doesn’t fall far from the oak.
I believe I can speak for my friends, as a group, by saying that we are grateful for the parents, teachers, coaches, and mentors, who shaped us and gave us our roots and our wings.

Indeed, far from being orphans, MANY fathers helped us become the men we are.