Learning from my Uncle Pat
When the Great Depression hit with gale-force economic winds, it swept away many visions of the future. Some of those dreams belonged to my mother and her brothers and sister.
Before the Great Depression, their father had thriving businesses. Life was good. Prospects were unlimited.
After the Great Depression hit, my grandfather’s business was gone. He went to work on the railroad, glad in that time to have any job at all.
His family adjusted, too. They needed to contribute to the family income.
My mother began selling candy at F. W. Woolworth. My Aunt Dot learned to wait tables and work as a short order cook. And my Uncle Pat decided that college would probably not be part of his future.
He had been accepted to what was then Drexel Institute. He wanted to be an engineer. But he couldn’t afford college, so he moved on to other things.
He was a drummer and he was good enough to get work with one of the travelling jazz bands of the day. No matter what else he did, Uncle Pat was a drummer until the day he died. A pair of drumsticks and a practice pad were never far away.
But the travelling life of a jazz drummer wasn’t as romantic as it might sound. Somewhere along the way, Uncle Pat got started in insurance.
It turned out that he was a great insurance salesman. Later he was a great sales manager and sales trainer. But that wasn’t what he started out to be.
Without the Great Depression, my Uncle Pat would almost surely have gone to Drexel and very likely become an engineer. I bet that he would have been a good one. He was smart and methodical and had a good practical sense.
Those traits served him well in insurance. But so did his easy way with stories and friendly, outgoing personality.
I don’t know if he was a better salesman than he would have been an engineer. It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that whatever life lays down in front of you has an opportunity in it. You can choose. You can concentrate on what you’ve lost. Or you can concentrate on the opportunity.
