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"SUCCESS WITHOUT APPLAUSE"
John Wooden Video Clip (65 sec.): Coach Wooden on: "Make friendship a fine art and Build a shelter against a rainy day." (Items 5 and 6 from his Father's Seven Point Creed).
Tony Fuller, my dear friend, mentor, Author and Coach, and Wooden’s Wisdom contributing author told me how much he admired these two people and why. I asked him to write it up as a new issue for Wooden’s Wisdom. Here is Coach Fuller’s great work:
"Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air."
This text is an excerpt is from the poem "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" by Thomas Gray (1716-1771) (the full poem is our poem this week). The excerpt was given as a response by Coach Wooden to a question asked by a young eager junior high school teacher/coach after Coach Wooden had finished speaking at a luncheon in Malibu CA in1995.
The young Coach had asked; "What advice can you give me on how to move up the ranks in the coaching profession? I love my job. the school, my boss , and all my students, but I feel I am wasting away teaching and coaching at the Jr. High level."
After answering the question by reciting the excerpt from the poem, Coach Wooden explained more practically. "A pearl at the bottom of the ocean is still just as beautiful as it would be if it were displayed in the finest museum. Keep in mind, coaching on the Jr. High level does not make you any lesser of a coach, just as the person coaching on a level many may consider higher and more prestigious, doesn’t make him any greater of a coach."
Just as a person’s character and their reputation may be polar opposites, so too might a person’s true worth, and their desire for recognition!
It’s wonderful to want to be recognized, but true happiness comes from serving others.
My Junior College coach, Allen Lee Bradfield, coached Basketball, taught Calculus, chaired the math department, and served as Director of Athletics, at Vincennes Jr. College in tiny Vincennes Indiana from 1952 - 1979. In 27 seasons at Vincennes, he compiled a won/loss record of 608 - 177, won 3 National Championships, and sent countless players and assistant coaches to four-year universities. Because of his remarkable success, each year during his tenure at Vincennes, lucrative offers to coach at prestigious 4-year universities in power conferences would come his way, but each year he would respectfully decline and remain at Vincennes. He was a great Coach, but not many basketball people outside of Vincennes have ever heard of him.
I have been fortunate to have attained both a graduate degree and an Arizona secondary school teaching credential. Along the way I’ve come across many terrific instructors/teachers/professors that have helped me enormously. Yet, the most impactful teacher I ever had was Mrs. E. Golden who was my Jr. High school English and composition teacher.
Mrs. Golden taught English for over 5 decades at the same small Catholic school on the Eastside of Detroit. She was a phenomenal teacher, and the yard stick by which I came to measure myself and all other educators I’ve come in contact with. Her teaching made a difference in the lives of thousands of students across generations. She was a true treasure in every sense of the word.
Although fame and fortune never crossed her path, to those who had the pleasure of being taught by her she was the "wind beneath our wings and the most flawless diamond anyone could discover!"
Blessings,
Coach Fuller
Yours in Coaching,
Craig Impelman
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COACH'S FAVORITE POETRY AND PROSE
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds.
Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower
The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such, as wandering near her secret bower,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.
Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,
Each in his narrow cell forever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.
The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,
The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed,
The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.
For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care:
No children run to lisp their sire's return,
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.
Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,
Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;
How jocund did they drive their team afield!
How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!
Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the poor.
The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Awaits alike the inevitable hour:
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
Nor you, ye Proud, impute to these the fault,
If Memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise,
Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.
Can storied urn or animated bust
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can Honor's voice provoke the silent dust,
Or Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of Death?
Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
Hands, that the rod of empire might have swayed,
Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre.
But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page
Rich with the spoils of time did ne'er unroll;
Chill Penury repressed their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul.
Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood;
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.
The applause of listening senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,
And read their history in a nation's eyes,
Their lot forbade: nor circumscribed alone
Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined;
Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind,
The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,
Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pridev With incense kindled at the Muse's flame.
Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learned to stray;
Along the cool sequestered vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.
Yet even these bones from insult to protect,
Some frail memorial still erected nigh,
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked,
Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.
Their name, their years, spelt by the unlettered Muse,
The place of fame and elegy supply:
And many a holy text around she strews,
That teach the rustic moralist to die.
For who, to dumb Forgetfulness a prey,
This pleasing anxious being e'er resigned,
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
Nor cast one longing lingering look behind?
On some fond breast the parting soul relies,
Some pious drops the closing eye requires;
Even from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,
Even in our ashes live their wonted fires.
For thee, who mindful of the unhonored Dead
Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;
If chance, by lonely Contemplation led,
Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate,
Haply some hoary-headed swain may say,
'Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn
Brushing with hasty steps the dews away
To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.
There at the foot of yonder nodding beech
That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,
His listless length at noontide would he stretch,
And pore upon the brook that babbles by.
Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,
Muttering his wayward fancies he would rove,
Now drooping, woeful-wan, like one forlorn,
Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love.
One morn I missed him on the customed hill,
Along the heath and near his favorite tree;
Another came; nor yet beside the rill,
Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he;
The next with dirges due in sad array
Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne.
Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay,
Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn.'
THE EPITAPH
Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown.
Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,
And Melancholy marked him for her own.
Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
Heaven did a recompense as largely send:
He gave to Misery all he had, a tear,
He gained from Heaven ('twas all he wished) a friend.
No farther seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,
(There they alike in trembling hope repose)
The bosom of his Father and his God.
Thomas Gray (1716–1771)
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