Homecoming, part 7 / 8, "A Summer Rose"

He stood at the precipice of time, ancient, yet outfitted for the 21st Century.  It seemed, as the old man looked back over his life, even examined the small things he had done for others, that he could have done so much more with his time and talent.  He was a brilliant entrepreneur.  If anyone had that Midas touch, it was him.  

He was born in the inner city of Cleveland, and something inside him never forgot those frequently cold, hungry mornings when he walked to school on an empty stomach with only a bag of carmelized popcorn for lunch.  There was something beautiful, even then, in those mornings, with the fresh glaze of ice on the tree branches after the early spring ice storm swept through the city on the lake during the night. 

He and his younger brother had slept huddled together under blankets, listening to the wind bang the outside shutters of the old house in which the family of five lived.  It was exciting, fun and terrifying all at once, a quality that he would say to his granddaughter years and years later, characterized his long life. On mornings such as those, he felt like he was in another world, somehow transcending his bitter existence.

Yet, his grades in school surprised his teachers and mother.  Who would have thought this poor boy who lived with so little, could achieve so much, could challenge his teachers in science, math and English? To them, he was some wiz kid, but they knew, they all knew privately, there was no future for this boy.  Even if he was a young genius, what kind of future could he have with no money for college?  Yet, each one of them had a silent wish for the boy and each one took him under their wing as a prodigy.  He became the school's silent hero, a hero to the faculty and staff. Even the office secretary would sneak in twinkies for him from time to time to supplement his meager lunches.

Even in his old age, Eric remembered their many kindnesses.  His unspoken, unheralded academic excellence and polite manners and kindness to the other students, some as poor if not poorer that he, had earned him a reputation among the teachers, that he took with him, along with his transcripts to high school.

It was a kind of grace-filled childhood, a mix of downright poverty, the really bad, bleak kind, and the kindest, most loving, most generous people.  It was a run down ugly old inner city that turned into a magical ice castle or a white blanketed wonderland which seemed to block the noise of the sirens, police cars, traffic and neighborhood fights on an early Saturday morning.  To quote Dickens, "it was the best of times and the worst of times." 

"Ah, it was just life," he said to the reporter who interviewed him when his plan to restore the old warehouse, get the necessary funding, to provide housing for more than 250 homeless men, women and children, was being featured in The New York Times.

"How can you walk away from your people?  How can you turn a blind eye to these babies?" he asked rhetorically.

"It seems you can't," she said.  "You gave up all your own money, gathered together a board of directors of some of the smartest business men in the city, and even invited the fire chief, police chief, president of the board of education and the Catholic bishop to join you in this effort."

"Well, those folks care about the people, too.  They're saving them, protecting them, teaching and praying for them every day.  It just made sense to bring them on board," he replied.

His model became the standard business model throughout the country.  It was just that simple. "Loving your neighbor is good business," another reporter wrote in his headline in Time Magazine, another wrote "Community center comes with heart strings." 

But, that was years ago, he thought as he stood there, looking over the clear, crystal blue lake.  There were so many things he wanted to do, so much more but his daughters have grown up and taken on his causes.  His wife died a few years ago, something he never got over.  Life stopped for him then.  He always was grateful for that extra last year he had with her.

He can remember a sermon he heard when he was in college by the campus minister.  It was simple, yet clear.  In a nutshell, Rev. Pierce told the students, "If each one of you would pray for at least 15 minutes every day and then act on what you heard in your heart, you could start a wave that would sweep through this community, this country and extend throughout the world.  YOU, each one of you, can make the kind of difference that could change the world, forever."

He had decided then and there that he would try.  After college, he got a job with an architectural firm and made a lot of money when he went in on a deal to restore an old house and sell it.  That was on the west side of the city, where it was reported rats were sneaking into the old houses.  So, he and Jim spent their weekends building, painting, plumbing and papering.  His wife would come sometimes and pitch in.  The two made a lot of money selling those houses. Then, they started a foundation and that grew too.  It just seemed everything he tried to do, flourished, bloomed like a summer rose.

Others in his city began to catch the fix up the old city fever.  People who had moved into the suburbs, started coming back to the old neighborhoods where they could buy up the old houses cheaply, restore them until slowly the old neighborhoods started looking pretty darn good.  Crime even declined.  In fact, in the last five years, there hasn't been a single looting anywhere.  The new police chief, a young guy in his early 30s just shook his head when a reporter asked him what he thought was the reason for the decline in crime in the once fiesty city.

"Who knows?" he remarked, but he knew as everyone knew.  It was their secret. It was everyone's secret and yet it was anything but a secret.  The city was a business development magnet.  It was the first city to begin to attract business back into the city.  Soon, other cities were doing this and the entire state was written up in a congressional report.  Even the president came to one of the city's events to clean up an old industrial site near the lake.  The land was being remediated, trees planted, a former dirty old steel mill was now a botanical garden.

Drugs were a thing of the very ancient past in the neighborhoods.  The kids were all in on the fun.  The wave was growing, tmes were changing.  "Who would have ever thought this was possible?" he was asked by the young graduate student working on his masters in urban anthropology. 

"I did.  I always knew this was possible.  I saw it, I felt it and I wanted it and so I just started doing it.  But, let me let you in on a little secret,"  he said.

"What's that?"  the young guy said, tossing his dark hair away from his eyes.

"I didn't do any of this."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, all I did was dream it, build a team and then we just let it happen," he said, looking up at the sunshine peeking around to smile back at him.

"I mean this was so easy.  Why did it take so many years for people to figure this out.  The sheer joy of loving, of giving, of building is worth all the work involved.  It was all truly a labor of love."

Continued from:  Holy Moment
Continues tomorrow with Storms stir soulful secrets.