BEHIND THE MIKE

The Silver Spoon Club

When you have clocked as many decades as I have, one reflects on his epitaph. For years, I have advised insurance clients of mine to write their own eulogy. What would you have them say about you?

I suspect the majority of us have never given any kind of thought to what our legacy might be. We do not all start with the same advantages in life. I have no idea what a silver spoon club is, but I’m sure our family was not a member.

In the tiny town of Lexington where I was born and raised, we never knew anyone who was part of that exclusive club. We were poor folks who lived in a poor community. I have often written, “We were poor but we did not know it… though there were times when we suspected it!”

Our parents would never let us think that way. It turns out that what they never taught us was the greatest lesson we ever learned. We learned simple truths… there is always another way to get there. Never allow yourself to be a victim.

They taught us that there is honor in all kinds of work. We have family members who were laborers, others attorneys. Some were in the media business with CNN. Another was a practicing family counselor.

Three owned or operated restaurants. All of us worked in Aun’s Feed Stable over the years. The restaurant business is the hardest kind of business you could imagine. All my siblings have had their individual talents that made them unique.

I never started out to be a speaker or an author. I opened my own real estate business and insurance practice, mainly because no one would hire me.

My sister Mary became a nun right out of high school, but her path has changed directions over the years. My brother George was probably the one family member who was true to his beginnings, entering the military, and he is still active in the National Guard.

Another brother Charlie was a music man along with sister Lorraine. They had a successful band, TLC (Tender Loving Care). Charlie later joined the Air Force band before retiring with a disability.

Fred, George and John all worked the restaurant business over the years. John continues with his own very successful Eggs Up franchise in Lexington.

Theresa and Frances did a tour of duty with CNN and continue to work in the media business today, working with the likes of George Takei and Anderson Cooper.

Baby brother Andy is the barrister among us, with several law offices across South Carolina. Sister Lorraine has worked for the University of South Carolina while little sister Jeannine is in banking.

None of us were born with anything special in our background. “Mama Alice” had an 11th grade education, but in those days that’s as high as it went. There was no 12th grade. She was a homemaker and mother who was pregnant most of my life.

Our dad “Michael A” was an artist by trade. He would attend movies, watch and sketch a scene and then paint the marquee on the exterior of the building. When the offset press was invented in the forties, he lost 29 contracts he had with theaters all over Paterson, NJ.

Uncle Sam grabbed him and shipped him off to Africa to serve as General Ike Eisenhower’s Arabic interpreter. He earned multiple Purple Hearts and a Silver Star during his tenure in the US Army before returning to South Carolina to build a construction business and a family of 11 children. I helped him in that business up until his retirement.

My mother lost her first three children to diseases that could easily be addressed today but then she and my dad had 11 in a row. He was later quoted as saying “When we found out what was causing it, we put a stop to it.”

There, in a nutshell, was what our silver spoon club looked like.