Motivate Your Team! Cheer Up A Friend! Inspire Yourself!
Motivate Your Team! Cheer Up A Friend! Inspire Yourself!
 |
|
| Wooden's Wisdom - Volume 13 | Issue 767 |
| Craig Impelman Speaking | Championship Coaches | Champion's Leadership Library Login | |
|
CLARA BARTON: "I BROKE THE SHACKLES AND WENT TO THE FIELD." You may not know the name Clara Barton, but you probably know the American Red Cross which she founded in 1881. Barton (1821–1912) was an educator, Civil War hero, humanitarian, and social leader whose courage eventually earned her the nickname "The Angel of the Battlefield" for her battlefield heroics during the Civil War. Her Initiative and Intentness—two important qualities in Coach Wooden’s Pyramid of Success—are inspirational.
For more than a year after the Civil War began, Barton collected food, blankets, medicine, lanterns, bandages, and other supplies for Union soldiers. She delivered aid to hospitals around Washington, but she wanted to go where the need was greatest: the battlefield itself.
Military leaders resisted. Many believed a woman simply did not belong near the front. They believed a woman would "just be in the way". Barton kept asking.
Finally, on August 3, 1862, the War Department granted her official authorization to transport supplies to front-line field hospitals. Armed with military travel papers, Barton loaded food, medicine, bandages, and other desperately needed provisions and headed toward northern Virginia. Six days later, Union and Confederate forces collided at Cedar Mountain.
Transportation delays kept her from the fighting itself, but when Barton reached the field hospital around midnight, hundreds of wounded men were overwhelming exhausted surgeons.
Most early female nurses were restricted to large hospital fields far behind the front lines. Barton shattered this convention by securing a special pass to ride directly onto active battlegrounds with supplies.
When Barton personally went to the front lines to treat soldiers on the battlefield, she was not even officially an enlisted military nurse.
Barton described her arrival at the Battle of Cedar Mountain this way: "I broke the shackles and went to the field."
She had brought exactly what they needed—bandages, food, medicine, and fresh supplies. Barton carried water, distributed food and dressings, comforted frightened soldiers, and worked beside the surgeons through the night.
One surgeon later described the relief of seeing her arrive: "I thought that night if Heaven ever sent out an angel, she must be one." The name would follow her: "The Angel of the Battlefield."
Cedar Mountain changed everything. The generals noticed. The surgeons noticed. Most importantly, the soldiers noticed. The woman whom officials had worried would be "in the way" had proven that she could bring desperately needed help directly to wounded men.
Cedar Mountain was only the beginning for this American hero. Three more years of service on some of the Civil War’s bloodiest battlefields would follow. And nearly twenty years later, Clara Barton would found the American Red Cross.
Years later Barton expressed the philosophy that seems to describe that journey: "You must never think of anything except the need, and how to meet it."
When John Wooden was once asked what an unhappy person might do to become happier, his answer was equally simple: "Go find somebody to help."
Clara Barton did exactly that.
Yours in Coaching, Craig Impelman
|
I Dream A World where man Langston Hughes (1901-1967)
|
|
For more information visit www.woodenswisdom.com |
|
© Copyright 2026 WoodensWisdom.com | # of Times Wooden's Wisdom Issues Opened: 8,121,062
Hosting & Design by:EverydayWebDesign.com
