BURN THE SHIPS COMMITMENT

Coach Smart Burning the Fleet

I’ve always liked and used the analogy of a breakfast of bacon and eggs.  The chicken is involved but the pig is totally committed!

That example of radical commitment popped into my head as I listened to the postgame interview with Kirby Smart, the winning coach of the Number 3 Georgia Bulldogs who had just knocked off the Number 1 Alabama Crimson Tide for the 2022 College Football Playoff National Championship!  Coach Smart stated “There were people saying we weren’t conditioned enough and it pissed a lot of people off on our sideline and they went to work.  And before we came to work today, we burned the boats and we came to fight and I’m proud of these men.”  The ships were not in the harbor and nothing was left on the field at the closing whistle.

I suspect many people are familiar with the concept of burning the ships when it comes to a discussion of total focused commitment.  The legendary Alexander the Great led a fleet of ships into Asia Minor to conquer the Persian Empire in 334 BC.  He ordered his men to burn the ships when they reached shore and told them “We will either return home in Persian ships or we will die here.”  Centuries later in 1519, Hernando Cortez ordered his 600 men to burn the ships when they landed in Mexico to plunder Aztec gold even though they were outnumbered in a strange land with superior weapons.

Burning the boats is a great way to give the troops a radical vision of the commitment necessary for success, but I believe the Dawgs had the right mindset.  They didn’t just hit the field without first having a total commitment for preparation.  I’m certain they missed a lot of their favorite television shows and good times with friends.  When I think back on all the tests that I took in school which prepared me for life in the business world, I was only anxious about those where I was aware that I was not properly prepared.  I had a predictable calmness when I was tested on those occasions where I knew that I had done everything possible and sacrificed my free time to be prepared. 

A leader should also review possible alternatives and safety valves before the process is underway to change the game plan once the battle is engaged.  If possible, implementing the plan on a smaller scale first is a great way to work out the kinks. To quote Ed Harris from the movie Apollo 13, “Failure is not an option.”  Goals should be challenging but attainable.  And being prepared for life’s challenges when we leave the security of the shoreline will always serve us well as we witness the burning ships of competitors in our rearview mirror.

THE POLIO VACCINE PIONEER

Karen's Polio Test, Olathe, KS

THE POLIO VACCINE PIONEER

 I spent the afternoon sorting items from my wife Karen’s childhood including some scrapbooks that contained all manner of things that a young girl would consider important in her life at the time.  I kept a scrapbook which contained clippings of the scorecards from my illustrious bantam baseball career that were religiously published in the Emporia Gazette.  I scuttled it years ago when I realized that these faded clippings were no longer relevant to my life. 

Karen’s collection included early crayon artwork, holiday cards, scattered school photos that were passed out at year’s end, playbills from school performances (some bearing her maiden name for various roles), napkins from special dinners or vacations, etc.  It occurred to me that most of these items we kept in our youth reinforced our enthusiasm and growth towards adulthood but really didn’t have much use as we moved along in life.

And then I came across a surprising May 13, 1954 article in The Olathe Mirror newspaper that caught my attention, as the world is now in the midst of testing and inoculating everyone for the COVID-19 virus. The lead in to the front-page photos stated that “second grade children of Johnson County schools will receive this week their second inoculation of the vaccine which may open the way for the control of paralytic polio.”  In the photo Karen was documented as the first girl to receive the shot at Central school and told her classmates waiting their turn in the corridor, “Didn’t hurt a bit.”

The phrase “may open the way” caught my attention so I did a bit of researching on the web.  I found that president FDR contracted polio in 1921 which left him paralyzed.  In 1938 he helped create the March of Dimes which enlisted the star power of celebrities from Mickey Rooney to Mickey Mouse.  A neighbor boy that I played with contracted polio and was in an iron lung until he actually recovered.  So, polio got personal.  There was no vaccine to stop it. 

Polls taken in the years following WWII revealed that the only thing Americans feared more than polio was nuclear war.  The current coronavirus pandemic primarily affects older adults while the poliovirus attacks children.  It arrived each summer ultimately closing swimming pools, movie theaters, birthday parties, etc.  I remember people lining Commercial Street from block to block with dimes placed on wooden boards to finance research.

Then in 1952 a little-known scientist named Jonas Salk and his team at the University of Pittsburg developed a “killed-virus” vaccine by growing samples of the virus and then deactivating them by adding formaldehyde so that they could no longer reproduce.  This tricked the immune system into manufacturing protective antibodies.  He then tested his vaccine on thousands of monkeys, then children at two Pittsburg institutions and then his entire family. 

I found an article that stated “on April 26, 1954, six-year-old Randy Kerr was injected with the Salk vaccine at the Franklin Sherman Elementary School in McLean, Virginia. By the end of June, an unprecedented 1.8 million people, including hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren, joined him in becoming “polio pioneers.”  In April 1955, it was announced that the vaccine was effective and safe, and a nationwide inoculation campaign began.

And then it finally struck me!  My wife Karen and her second-grade schoolmates were inoculated in May 1954 in the southern Kansas City suburbs.  That was just after the first child was vaccinated and before the vaccine was approved for public use.  She was one of the initial Polio Pioneers that led to the suppression of the dreaded poliovirus pandemic!

She never mentioned it and I would have never discovered it if I hadn’t taken the time to read a faded, long-forgotten newspaper article with her second grade photo.