Motivate Your Team! Cheer Up A Friend! Inspire Yourself!
Motivate Your Team! Cheer Up A Friend! Inspire Yourself!
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| Wooden's Wisdom - Volume 13 | Issue 763 |
| Craig Impelman Speaking | Championship Coaches | Champion's Leadership Library Login | |
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AN AMERICAN HERO YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW You may not know the name Clara Barton but you probably are familiar with the American Red Cross. Her Initiative and Intentness, two important qualities from Coach Wooden’s Pyramid of Success, are inspirational.
Clara Barton (1821–1912) was an American educator, Civil War Hero, humanitarian and social leader whose courage earned her the nickname "The Angel of the Battlefield." She later founded the American Red Cross. Long before history knew her name, however, she was simply a shy little girl from rural Massachusetts.
Clara Barton was born on Christmas Day, 1821, on her family's farm in North Oxford, Massachusetts. She was the youngest of five children and, by her own admission, painfully shy. Visitors often frightened her. She preferred animals to crowds and was happiest listening to stories told by her father, Stephen Barton, a respected farmer who had served as a soldier under General Anthony Wayne. Sitting beside the fireplace, Clara listened as he described courage, sacrifice, and the responsibilities soldiers carried for one another.
She had no idea those lessons would someday become her own.
When Clara was eleven years old, her older brother David was helping raise a barn when he fell from the rafters and was badly injured. Doctors were uncertain whether he would survive.
For the next two years, Clara rarely left his bedside.
The little girl who was afraid to speak in public learned to measure medicines, change bandages, watch for fever, and comfort her brother through long, painful nights. His treatment even included applying leeches, something few adults wanted to do, yet Clara quietly accepted the responsibility. Day after day, month after month, she cared for David until he finally recovered.
Years later she would say that those two years taught her more than any school ever could.
As Clara grew older, her family remained concerned about her shyness. At fourteen they sought advice from a respected educator, who gave unexpected counsel:
"Make her a teacher."
The suggestion seemed almost absurd. The timid girl who struggled to speak to strangers would now stand before an entire classroom.
But it worked.
At seventeen, Clara passed the examinations required to teach. She discovered that while she was uncomfortable speaking about herself, she had no trouble speaking for the benefit of others. Her classrooms were orderly, demanding, and filled with encouragement. Parents admired her. Students flourished.
Clara never stopped looking for ways to help children who had been overlooked.
While visiting Bordentown, New Jersey, she noticed that many boys and girls spent their days wandering the streets because their families could not afford tuition at the local private schools. Clara began knocking on doors, persuading parents to send their children if a free school could be started.
It worked beyond anyone's expectations.
Her one-room school quickly grew from just a handful of students to hundreds. The town was so impressed that officials approved construction of a large new public-school building.
Then came the surprise.
After Clara had built the school into a success, the town hired a man to serve as principal at nearly twice her salary and expected Clara to work under him.
She quietly resigned.
Soon afterward she accepted a position in the United States Patent Office in Washington, D.C., becoming one of the first women to hold a significant federal government job while receiving the same salary as male clerks. The equality didn't last. Political changes cost her the position, and for a time she was reduced to copying government documents by hand for only pennies a page before eventually returning to Massachusetts.
In April 1861, the Civil War erupted.
After Massachusetts soldiers were attacked during the Baltimore riot of April 19, 1861, they reached Washington wounded and were housed in a makeshift hospital inside the United States Senate chamber. Barton brought them food and supplies and cared for them there.
Many had no blankets. Some had no extra clothing. Others had gone without proper food or medical supplies. Hospitals were desperately short of bandages, lanterns, clothing, medicine, even basic drinking water.
Clara Barton began asking neighbors for supplies.
Soon there weren’t enough neighbors. She traveled from town to town collecting wagonloads of food, flour, shirts, socks, blankets, candles, bandages, and medical supplies.
Barton spent months collecting provisions, but military regulations and prevailing ideas about women initially kept her away from the front. She obtained the necessary passes in 1862 only after persistent pressure on political and military officials by her.
She was not invited onto the battlefield. She wore down the resistance until they allowed her to go. Then she climbed onto the wagons herself and drove toward the sound of cannon fire.
At The Battle of Cedar Mountain (also known as Slaughter’s Mountain), she arrived at a field hospital around midnight with a wagon of supplies. While cannon fire thundered and bullets flew, this small woman walked among the wounded, dressing injuries, carrying supplies, comforting frightened soldiers. She refused to leave.
A surgeon compared her arrival to that of an angel appearing. She became known as "Angel of the Battlefield."
In 1881, Clare Barton founded the American Red Cross.
Clara Barton was denied the opportunity to lead the successful public school she had created because local officials believed a man should be in charge. Today 25 American schools are named after her.
Over the course of her remarkable career, Clara Barton worked directly with Presidents Abraham Lincoln, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, and Theodore Roosevelt to make America better.
Clara Barton didn’t save millions of lives. She created a system that made it possible for millions of lives to be saved—again and again, every single day.
"You must never so much as think whether you like it or not, whether it is bearable or not; you must never think of anything except the need, and how to meet it." – Clara Barton
Clara Barton’s achievements are a result of her mindset:
She never waited for permission if people genuinely needed help.
Every setback became preparation for the next chapter.
She quietly accepted responsibility that others avoided.
She repeatedly walked toward problems while others walked away.
She built systems, not just solutions.
Yours in Coaching, Craig Impelman
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BALLADE OF THE GAMEFISH "Only the gamefish swims upstream." —Col. John Trotwood Moore Where the puddle is shallow, the weakfish stay ENVOY Held with the current the Fates bestow, —Grantland Rice (1880–1954)
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