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 766 |
| Craig Impelman Speaking | Championship Coaches | Champion's Leadership Library Login | |
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GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER 3 OF 3 (TONY FULLER) "THE MAN WHO LIVED THE CREED!" When our author Tony Fuller began telling me about the extraordinary life of George Washington Carver, I realized I knew only a small part of his remarkable story.
Few Americans have been more widely honored for lives of service than George Washington Carver. He would become one of the nation's most respected scientists and educators, eventually earning a national monument, a U.S. postage stamp, commemorative coins, and countless other tributes recognizing a life devoted to helping others.
Coach Fuller has written an inspiring three-part series for Wooden's Wisdom about this extraordinary American. Here is Part Three.
"99% of failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses." - George Washington Carver
"Start where you are with what you have, make something of it, never be satisfied!" - George Washington Carver
#7. On Coach Wooden’s 7-point creed is : "Pray for guidance and give thanks for your blessings everyday."
In a world that encourages secularism and instant gratification, the lives of George Washington Carver and John Wooden proved that the results of true and lasting greatness are achieved through FAITH and PATIENCE.
Dr. Carver began every day in prayer, asking God to reveal the secrets hidden in nature. Coach Wooden carried a small cross in his pocket for many years and maintained a consistent life of prayer and thanksgiving.
"Competitive Greatness" sits at the top of Coach Wooden’s Pyramid of Success. It is flanked by the words Faith (things will work out as they should) and Patience (good things take time).
Dr. Carver came to Tuskegee in 1896 and spent more than two decades encouraging farmers to rotate crops, especially with peanuts, to restore the soil. He became famous for peanuts, but it wasn't until 1921 when the boll weevil insect threatened to decimate the area's cotton crops, that his ideas were accepted and put into action. Faced with disaster, the stubborn cotton farmers finally planted peanuts and began rotating crops.
Dr. Carver had already developed over 300 practical uses for peanuts—dyes, inks, cosmetics, soaps, paper, and medicinal products, just to name a few. When farmers followed his advice, planted peanuts, they saved their livelihoods. Because of his inventions peanuts then became the new cash crop.
For more than two decades, Carver had patiently prepared the solution before the crisis arrived. In 1921, the South finally embraced the wisdom he had been teaching since 1896 and saved agriculture in the South.
Dr. Carver's reputation skyrocketed worldwide! He began receiving offers to leave Tuskegee. Thomas Edison offered him a salary of $100,000 to come and work for him at his New Jersey laboratory. Dr Carver politely turned him down.
Henry Ford offered Dr. Carver an executive position at his motor company when Ford was searching for renewable plant-based materials that could be used in automobiles and manufacturing. Dr. Carver declined Ford’s lucrative offer as well.
Yet, in 1937 Dr Carver’s exemplary life inspired Henry Ford to build a school for black students on his Ways, Georgia farm, and name it after George Washington Carver. Ford marveled at Carver’s wisdom and they became great friends.
In fact, when Henry Ford during one of his many visits to Tuskegee witnessed that an aging Dr. Carver could barely climb the stairs to his second story suite in Tuskegee’s Dorthy Hall dormitory, he placed a call and had a company come from Montgomery Alabama and build a private evaluator for him.
Coach Wooden began coaching at UCLA in 1948 and is famous for the Basketball Dynasty he built (10 National championships in 12 years), but he won his first Nation Championship in the 1963-1964 season, 15 years after he arrived at UCLA and 31 years after he began coaching. Years later while retired from coaching he would often joke as to what took him so long to win it all……. "I’m a slow learner, but when I finally learn something, I become pretty good at it!"
The world remembers Dr. Carver and Coach Wooden for Peanuts and Championships, but their example is not about Agriculture or Basketball. Both men believed that if they remained faithful and patient, good and proper results would come, and that is exactly what happened!
Their lives remind us that success often arrives long after the work begins. Faith keeps us moving forward. Patience keeps us from quitting. Together, they make greatness possible!
"Where there is no vision, there is no hope." - George Washington Carver
Coach Fuller George Washington Carver - Booker T. Washington
Commerative Half Dollar (U.S. Mint produced 1951-1954)
Yours in Coaching, Craig Impelman
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Hills I never loved your plains, Arthur Guiterman (1871-1943) "We never become truly spiritual by sitting down and wishing to become so. You must undertake something so great that you cannot accomplish it unaided." Phillips Brooks (1835 – 1893)
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