Marshall Ramsey

My career as a janitor actually began before my year at Pope High School after college. When I was in high school, I’d work at local schools when I wasn’t playing football. I spent most of my time at Rocky Mount Elementary working after school. But one Spring Break, while my classmates were chasing the Devil at Panama City Beach, I was working at Kincaid Elementary School. I was there for one week and worked a full 40 hours. It was a good paycheck for me and would fill the gas tank of my Firebird for at least a month (and it was thirsty.)

I don’t remember who I worked with, but I do remember having the art room to clean. It had a tile floor and I scrubbed the living heck out of that room. I threw myself into the job. I mopped it daily and polished everything in sight. I was intense.

The other custodians told me to quit making them look bad. (I figured I didn’t need to help because they were doing a good enough job on their own.)

I’m not sure I would have put that much effort into it if I had been there the other 51 weeks of the year. I know, that’s a sad statement. Would I have not been as intense? That question is bugging me about my life right now. I need that same intensity I had when I was at Kincaid Elementary. Now. I have a lot of stuff I need to do. And I need to do it well.

I run and run and run and run and then burn out. When I burn out, the amount of stuff I have to do doesn’t slow down. It just overwhelms me and starts falling through the cracks. I end up doing a lot of apologizing. So I’ve taken an hour this morning to sit in my quiet house an reflect on what I need to do and when I need to do it. I’m now writing this and my to-do list.

I am wondering, “Am I lazy or just tired.” To be successful, you have to push past tired. If you don’t try, that’s lazy. I fear being lazy. Life is too much of a gift to waste.

So it’s time to have Kincaid Elementary intensity. It’s time to get to work. One person can make a difference. And intensity is the ingredient that makes it all happen.

The earth’s shadow began to munch on the moon. I drove down the dark Mississippi road, dodging deer and watching as the eclipse began to spread. By the time I got to the football stadium for my workout, over half the moon was plunged into darkness. It was a powerful sight.

We stretched and like Harold in Harold and the Purple Crayon, the moon was always with us. It loomed over its shoulder, dying quietly. It watched as we ran 100-yard sprints with a parachute on. It supervised us as we did what’s called a “nipple drill.” It began to slip behind the stadium as we did Clark’s station.

By then the moon was blood red. A Blood Moon as they call it — a total lunar eclipse. I can see why past civilizations would freak out when there was one. It was eerie. Stars dared to poke their faces out. It was like the eye of a celestial hurricane.

There was something very powerful about working out beneath a total lunar eclipse. Sure, technically it was just the earth’s shadow blocking the sun’s light reflecting off the moon. But to see the moon plunge into darkness that quickly was a not-so-subtle reminder that we are truly not in charge.

The moon began to dip beneath the trees for its final performance. It had put on a fine show. A haunting show. As I ran off the field, I did a slow clap. It was the moon’s finest hour. Great job moon. Great job.

“We’re all born the same way but there are a million ways to die.”

Tall, thin and tired, Paul Slansky poured a handful on the dirt on the polished coffin and then rubbed his temples. Fifteen years of marriage, seven of them good, were now officially over. “‘Til death do you part,” the priest had said on that happy day. He was right, of course. Now he had said it again. Paul just didn’t think it would be so soon.

He looked over at his two sons. What the heck would they do without their mother? And how would he be a single parent? His youngest son wouldn’t remember his mom. Paul shuffled his feet uncomfortably at the thought. While he and Anna weren’t exactly wildly in love, the one thing they agreed on were their two boys, Jack, aged nine and Matt, aged six. They were the loves of her life.

He looked over at the giant statue of Jesus in the cemetery. “I know we’re just passing friends, but could you tell your Dad I need some serious help here.” Paul felt depression pulling him into the ground with his wife. At times he couldn’t live with Anna. But he sure couldn’t live without her.

The sun began to dip down beneath the mountains. A chill gripped the mourners as they scurried to their cars. One chapter had ended in Paul Slansky’s life and another one was about to begin. The chapter of single parenthood.

He stood in the field of stones alone with two boys who needed him more now than ever.

Paul Slansky had been a father like his father — not a very good one. He devoted most of his life to chasing his career and leaving the child-stuff to Anna. But what Paul had not understood was this: Your career won’t hold your hand while you are dying. As he held Anna’s in her last days, that epiphany illuminated his selfish soul. He looked over at the two boys in their ill-fitting suits. They were his legacy.They were his new career. Paul Slansky helped bring his boys into the world. Now he was going to raise them.

The following Monday, Paul walked into his office and turned in his two-week notice. His boss, flabbergasted, said, “Paul, seriously, take some time off. I know you have been hit hard by this.” But Paul didn’t care. He knew what he had to do.

So he sold the house, had a yard sale, took his 401K money and moved from the suburbs of Atlanta to the mountains of East Tennessee. Through the help of a friend, Paul got a job teaching business at a local high school. Now he and his boys were on the same schedule. He and his boys could explore the mountains together.

And that they did.

The first hike they took was to Abrams Falls in Cades Cove. His own mother had taken him there when his father had died of a heart attack when he was nine. Paul remembered her spreading his ashes carefully at the base of the falls. Now Paul was back. He and the boys took a rose to represent their mother. Paul watched as the water crashed down over the rocks. Time was like that water, constantly breaking the stone and carving out rock. The boys released the rose in the clear cool water.

Paul would always be there for them. And their mother would always be, too.

Paul would make sure of that.

It’s hard to say when the recent low points were for Ole Miss and Mississippi State were but my guess would be the Rebel’s 2010 loss to Jacksonville State and the Bulldog’s 2004 loss to Maine. I could be wrong, but my point is this: To truly appreciate yesterday’s amazing football Saturday, you have to understand exactly how far out of a hole both teams have climbed.

On paper, Ole Miss and State should have trouble competing in the SEC. They’re smaller schools who compete for the same talent pool of recruits. They don’t have the monster facilities that some of the bigger SEC schools have. And of course, both schools don’t have Alabama-like money to play with. Money is the mother’s milk of college athletics after all.

But HOW did both teams turn around so quickly? And how did they do it with so much stacked against them?

1. There was a radical culture change at the top.
This isn’t a comment on Larry Templeton or Pete Boone, but State’s Greg Byrne and Scott Stricklin and Ross Bjork molded their athletic departments into more modern athletic departments. College athletics is big business and today must be run like one. I remember when Bjork was hired, he came on my radio show and talked about his pillars of success. It has been fun to watch him implement them. Both Bjork and Stricklin are energetic professionals and have influenced the culture of their organizations.

2. Hiring coaches who are energetic winners.
Love them or hate them but Hugh Freeze and Dan Mullen compete to win. I remember when Hugh Freeze was hired, people wondered, “who is this guy?” But what critics seemed to miss was that Freeze won at every level he has coached at. He came in with a plan. And stuck to it. Mullen was brash and got under the skin of Ole Miss fans nearly immediately (TSUN) and reenergized the rivalry. Ole Miss responded by bringing in Freeze who immediately became the anti-Mullen. The bottom line? Defeated fan bases became reenergized.

3. Marketing, marketing, marketing.
Both schools have had misfires when it comes to the fan experience but what matters is that they are learning from those mistakes. They are tweaking and trying new things. Ole Miss polls its fans on how to improve game day experience. State creates the hashtag #hailstate to use Twitter in new ways. Constant experimentation leads to a better customer service experience.

4. Surround yourself with great people.
Dan Mullen came in and won the recruiting wars. Then Hugh Freeze came in an won them back. Both brought in enough talented young players who made a difference on the field immediately. You can’t win without energized, talented people surrounding you — in football or business. They built for today while building for the future. That gave fans hope. Which led to:

5. Building on small wins and turning them into big wins.
When State went to Jacksonville for the Gator Bowl and Ole Miss went to BBVA Compass Bowl in Birmingham, it was like National Championship games for the fan base. Because it showed them that after a long drought, things were changing. If you don’t have belief, you won’t have believers. And without believers, you won’t have support and money.

Ole Miss and Mississippi State’s success this weekend is about much more than just football. Their rapid turnaround is something that should be studied and modeled by business leaders and politicians who want to break a culture of failure. Imagine a failng business that hires a brash new leader who brings in motivated executives, hires good people, uses marketing to find out how they can serve their customers better and builds on small victories. I can’t imagine them doing anything but succeeding. Or imagine a government leader who makes his or her constituents believe again. You won’t be 49th for long.

Yesterday was an amazing day for football in Mississippi. But I can’t help but think it was a bigger lesson for us all.

“GO AWAY!” Marvin Hamill screamed as he sat up in his sleep. “LEAVE ME ALONE. I DIDN”T DO IT ON PURPOSE.” He had done this for the past 40 years.

Marvin Hamill had a secret. And Susan Hamill couldn’t pry it out. She had been married to him for two decades and never knew the source of his nightly nightmare. “No marriage should have secrets, particularly one like this,” she thought.

Marvin Hamill was a good man, a solid man. But a not particularly exceptional man. He was a member of the Third Baptist Church, a Vice Vice President of Fourth National Bank and the second-string catcher on his softball team. He’d fade into a tan-painted room if he walked into one. He was soft-rock in a punk-rock world. It was like something was holding him back. Something was haunting him.

But Susan loved him dearly. Except for the secret.

She looked at the clock again. 12:45 a.m. The room was as dark as bottle of India Ink, except for the red glow illuminating her husband’s twitching body.

He popped up again and started screaming, “NO!! GO AWAY!! QUIT HAUNTING ME.”

Susan started to turn on the light but she stared into the darkness at the end of the bed instead. It was hard to see anything but the blackness — but she swore she saw something at the end of the bed.

It was a faint flicker at first. But then is glowed brighter. The specter took shape — the shape of a little girl. She had long brown hair, brown eyes and a huge wound on her forehead. She might have been eight. The little girl looked at Susan sadly and put her finger to her blue lips.

Marvin was screaming louder now, “MAKE HER GO AWAY!”

The little girl walked over the Susan and held out her hand. Susan put her finger up to her heart. “Me,” she thought. The little girl nodded.

She led Susan from the bed into the walk-in closet. The little girl pointed to a pile of clothes in the corner. Susan got on her knees and dug through it. Her hand hit something solid.

It was a nondescript wooden box.

Susan’s hand shook as she opened. She didn’t know Marvin had a box like this. Inside of it was a yellowed newspaper article. Susan’s hand shook harder as she began to read it.

Jenny Woolworth, aged 8, died today after a tragic accident. Police report that she was accidentally hit with a baseball bat as she walked into the middle of a baseball game. The little boy who swung the bat’s name has been withheld due to him being a minor.

Susan looked up at the specter in front of her. She looked exactly like the little girl in the picture.

Tears streamed down Susan’s face. Her love, her Marvin, had been living a hellish nightmare of guilt for nearly 40 years.

The little girl motioned to Susan. They walked back to Marvin again and Susan kissed him on the forehead. Both stood in front of him. He screamed again. “NOOOO!!!!”

“Shhh,” Susan said. She took Marvin’s hand. “She has something to tell you.”

The little girl’s mouth began to slowly move. The sound she made was hard to describe. It sounded almost like harps and screeching. But what Marvin heard with his ears wasn’t what he heard in his head. The little girl continued with three simple words:

“I forgive you.”

Marvin Hamill crumpled into a pile of tears. Forty years of guilt flowed down his cheeks.

Susan said, “Honey, that’s what she has been trying to tell you for 40 years. She knew it was an accident.”

And on that dark October night, a wife and a little girl healed a broken man’s spirit.

My thumb fumbled for the switch. I pushed it smartly to the right and a LED light began to glow red. I didn’t feel nervous — practice brings calm, I guess. I heard my speech teacher Dr. Faye Julian’s voice in my head, “You have to have energy.” I always hear her voice before I speak. My heart beat a little faster. Then I heard my name. Polite clapping faded away.

It was time to earn my keep.

The folks at the Meridian Regional Airport invited me to be a part of their celebration luncheon — they had secured jet service to replace another airline named for a precious metal. It seemed appropriate to me to be speaking at the Riley Center — a place that had reinvented itself. I know I had. And so has the airport. And Downtown Meridian, too. I began to speak.

The worst moments in your life are seeds for the best.

That’s a hard sentence to justify at times. Yet I think about all those moments that seemed so terrible in my life. It was so hard to see the good in something that at the time seemed so sucky. But at the very least, a “worst” moment blasted me out of my of comfort zone. Nothing is ever accomplished in the comfort zone.

The worst moments in your life are seeds for the best.

A few funny cartoons brought laughter. I’ve come to enjoy speaking as much as anything I do. If an audience enjoys you, their energy is like a powerful narcotic. A brain that had been clumsy and balky a few minutes early started to fire on all cylinders.

Sometimes you hit a rock and it sinks you. But most of the time you just bounce off and head off in a better direction. If I had not been a custodian, I would have never been introduced to my wife. If I had not had melanoma, I would not have had a chance to pay my blessing forward. If I hadn’t had a few career hiccups, I would not have been standing in front of this crowd.

The worst moments force you to become creative.

They cause you to experiment. They are gifts served on a platter. Like sand in an oyster, the worst moments are the grit that make the pearls.

But you have to see it that way. And that’s the trick. It can be hard sometimes. Very hard.

I loaded up my car and turned the key. I thought of all the challenges I face in my life. I wondered how I could turn them into opportunity. Then I thought about what an amazing day I had had. I smiled and thought to myself:

The worst moments in life are indeed the seeds for the best.

And then I headed home.