The Intersection of Hope and Leadership

摘要

Growing up in a household headed by two parents whose lives were irrevocably shaped by two major events - the Depression and World War II - gave me a lesson in civic leadership without my even knowing it. Dinner table conversations were sprinkled extensively with stories of courage about people who touched my parents' lives directly and indirectly. Clearly the earliest and most profound influence on my mother was her mother, who raised four children on her own in St. Louis in the 1920s and '30s by working three jobs, pinching pennies and going that extra mile to get the necessities for her children - taking in boarders, doing others' laundry and battling the school administrators if she felt her children didn't get every opportunity to succeed. There was a common theme in everything my grandmother taught her children: The right combination of hard work and hope would help build a better life.