Marshall Ramsey

“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.

Meridian’s Al and Fred Key had a problem. The Great Depression had threatened Meridian’s airport and they weren’t going to allow it to close.

So they did what they did best: They took to the air. And didn’t come back down for 653 hours.

Flying a borrowed a Curtis Robin, they constantly fed it gasoline during their nonstop flight. The Robin’s name? Ole Miss. The Ole Miss now hangs in the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum on the Washington Mall.

Al and Fred took off on June 4, 1935 and landed 27 days later, breaking the endurance record. In the process, they traveled an estimated 52,320 miles and used more than 6,000 gallons of gas.

To service the engine and refuel it, they built a little walkway out to the engine. And to prevent the fuel from spilling (and catching fire) when they finished refueling the plane, they and A.D. Hunter invented special value. That valve, in modified form, is what the KC-135 tankers use to refuel planes today. So it’s very appropriate that those very tankers are based at that airfield Al and Fred successfully kept open — Key Field.

I look forward to speaking to my friends at Meridian Regional Airport tomorrow. I’ll talk to them about how the worst moments turn into the best. Just like what Al and Fred did so many years ago.

On paper, it’s a great story: Man from the Greatest Generation is reunited with the airplane (named after his girlfriend, who he has been married to for over 60 years) that he flew over the skies of Europe. In person, well, it was nothing short of amazing — and touching. Dan Fordice, Governor Kirk Fordice’s son, recently purchased a P-51D and had it painted like Cary Salter’s plane, Charlotte’s Chariot II to honor him. Today out at Hawkins Field in Jackson, Mr. and Mrs Salter and their daughters got to relive a piece of Mr. Salter’s past.

Cary Salter sees the P-51D Mustang for the first time as it taxied in from the runway at Hawkins Field in Jackson.

Dan Fordice pulls Charlotte’s Chariot II up to the hanger after buzzing the hanger twice (he made two fast passes down the runway) It took him 12 minutes to fly from Vickburg to Jackson.

Dan Fordice and Cary Salter stand on the wing of Charlotte’s Chariot II

In the foreground is a photo of Cary Salter as a 23-year-old pilot. In the background, 88-year-old pilot recreates the moment.

Cary Salter told me he didn’t know this picture existed until 1976. A friend had died and his widow had the negative in a box.

Cary Salter checks out the cockpit. Someone yelled, “was your GPS like that one?” Note the crosses on the side of the fuselage. Salter shot down two and a half aircraft in WW2, earning him the nickname from his friends , “half ace.”

Cary Salter tells WLBT’s Bert Case all about the day. (yes, Bert Case survived an encounter with the Fordice brothers).

P-51D Mustangs were the premier fighters in Europe during World War II. Their performance and long range allowed the allies to escort bombers deep into the heart of Germany — striking a fatal blow to German industry. This particular Mustang is immaculate. The engine only had 170 hours on it (the plane’s second engine, it was found in a warehouse after 40 years and installed in the plane.) And you could eat off the floor of the interior.

Friends and family admire the aircraft.

Dan Fordice has a photo of Charlotte Salter inside of the cockpit — just like Cary Salter did 65 years ago. My son and I got to meet Mrs. Salter — and he told me, “she looks just like her picture.”

There’s nothing that spreads joy, goodwill and glee quite like a traffic jam. You just want to reach out and hug the drivers of the cars around you. Puppies and kitties. Puppies and kitties.

Screw that.

You want to kill everyone.

If you had a James Bond car, you’d be lighting up the horizon with your missiles. You can hear the seconds ticking as you know you’re going to be late to work.

Tick. Tick. Tick. Son of a….

A vein pops out of your forehead.

Then you think of puppies and kittens. You try to lower your blood pressure until suddenly that butthead in front of you slams on her brakes. You swerve to the left and drive through some tire gators that an 18-wheeler left earlier. KATHUMP.

You get back into your lane.

You’re trapped like a rat. The traffic copter flies over, mocking you as you sit motionless in the fast lane. If only you had a Stinger missile.

Time to think of puppies and kittens again. Your mind wanders, “whose brother-in-law got the contract to design a CURVE in the interstate?!?!? And he must have designed it with a crayon.”

That second cup of coffee comes back to haunt you. “I HAVE TO PEE!” But like in space, no one can hear you scream in a traffic jam.

HOOONNNKKK!!!! Some jerkwad lays on his horn. Oh THAT will make things better.

Your blood pressure spikes again. Your forehead vein begins to pulse. But there’s hope. Blue lights flicker on the horizon. Suddenly a Nissan Altima tries to get into YOUR lane. NO WAY! (Of course, its lane is blocked by a firetruck.)

Civility is dead. Someone does a Lord of the Flies and blows a conch shell. A man in a BMW convertible has a pig head on a stick.

Interstate has ground to a halt. The heart of your commute is having a heart attack.

The Waterworks Curve officially needs a plumber.

The 1985 Sprayberry Yellow Jacket football team had a slogan “You Gotta Believe.” I think I even had the T-shirt.

It was one of the most important things I learned playing football (that and G.A.T.A., but I’ll tell you what that stands for in a minute.) But I didn’t really know what it meant to believe at 17.

Today it’s a fire that burns inside of me.

Belief. You have to believe. You have to believe in your dream, yourself, your life, you faith — in something bigger than yourself.

Because sometimes others won’t.

I used to be driven by wanting others to believe in me. I wanted to “please” my bosses and other people in my life. But I found out a long time ago (the hard way) that that doesn’t always workout. You have to be driven from inside. No one can steal that from out. You have the power to prove the nonbelievers wrong.

People who believe do great things. People who believe overcome obstacles. People who believe don’t quit.

I’m, by nature, a cynical guy. But you can’t steal my dream from me. Nope. Not going to happen. And if you think you can, watch me prove you wrong.

P.S. G.A.T.A. stands for “Get After Their @sses.” And it’s how you make what you believe come true.

Most of life’s lessons are in the movie Top Gun.

Seriously, Maverick and Goose were high-flying prophets from the 1980s. They roared around in their F-14, teaching scores of lifehacks.

“And if you screw up just this much, you’ll be flying a cargo plane full of rubber dog $#^& out of Hong Kong!” Guy who looks like Mr. Clean

OK, I admit, there were cheesy parts — It was the 1980s after all. (The 80’s had more cheese than Wisconsin.) But there’s one scene that speaks to me:

*Spoiler alert*

If you haven’t seen a nearly 30-year-old movie by now, seriously, I don’t think a spoiler alert will help you. But here it goes. Goose is dead (a tragedy of the likes not seen since *Another Spoiler alert* Bambi’s mom gets turned bumped off) and Maverick is completely messed up in the head. He graduates Top Gun on points alone but the smarmy Iceman wins. Boo! Suddenly the graduates are called to the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Enterprise (because apparently they ran out of pilots.) And international incident breaks out! The commies attack with their Mig-28s (that look like F-5 fighters) and Maverick has to go save the day. But he won’t engage. One F-14 is shot down and Iceman, a thin Val Kilmer, is in peril. Oh no! America is at risk.

And Maverick still won’t engage.

“Come on, Mav, do some of that pilot $#&^” Goose (who died because Maverick did some of that pilot $#&^.)

Then Maverick, who has an epiphany, looks at the late, great Goose’s dog tags and proceeds to kick Ruskie *$$. BOOM!

“Mustang, this is Voodoo 3. Remaining MiGs are bugging out.” Merlin (who wasn’t as cool as Goose and wasn’t married to pre-plastic surgery Meg Ryan)

The point is this: He engaged and ended up on the front page of every newspaper in the english-speaking world, even though the other side denied the incident.

I’m at a point in my life where my busyness is choking out my productivity. I know what I have to do. But I’m not getting it done. I’m like Maverick zooming around in his F-14 and not taking on the bad guys.

It’s not time to get busier; it’s time to get more productive. And their is a big difference between the two. I need my moment with Goose’s dog tags.

I feel the need for speed.

Before I lose that lovin’ feeling.