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Guideposts Classics: Maureen O’Sullivan on Loneliness

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Maureen O'Sullivan

In 1963 my husband John Farrow died. We had been married 26 years and were the parents of seven children. I was very fortunate, I believe, in having a career which I could resume, an acting career. Aside from financial necessity and the fact that I do enjoy acting, it was good to be busy. That’s the advice everyone gives a new widow: “Stay busy.”

In this case, “everyone” is right. It is wise to be very busy. But a full schedule does not stop you from thinking back and it does not prevent that underlying sense of sadness from gnawing at you. Like wind in a rustic cabin, it comes through the chinks of living, at unexpected moments and places.

It’s generally some tiny thing that triggers the melancholy—something you want to share and suddenly you are surprised that he’s no longer there. Certain things force you to remember because you no longer know how to accomplish them; how to order plane tickets, for instance. John always did that for me.

And there’s that painful moment when you go into a restaurant alone and ask for a table. I’m convinced that the rule for a restaurant is the same as that for the Ark: you appear only in pairs.

These things, however, are mere scratches. They come nowhere near the depths of that great yearning thing, that “shuffling of memory and desire,” that ageless hunger we call loneliness. I have been lonely many times during my lifetime—who has not been?—but it is only in the last several years that I have been able to determine the many shapes of loneliness. There are a number of them.

Certainly Christmas Day my first year in Hollywood represented one shape. I was 18, fresh from Ireland, waiting to do my first (of five) Tarzan pictures (no matter my other roles, I seem to be remembered as “Tarzan’s Jane.”) I was alone that Christmas, and feeling the early tinges of self-pity.

I thought of my mother far away in Ireland. As a widow, her own advice about loneliness had always been “contact someone.” She meant really contact, to learn as much as possible about that person, to understand, to help. “Stretch a hand to one unfriended and thy loneliness is ended.”

But my mother was outgoing; I was not, nor was I quick to make friends. What worked for her, and well, would not necessarily work for me.

As it turned out, that Christmas Day was a most successful one because I used my aloneness for a purpose.

Years later, in reading Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s Gift From The Sea, I was reminded of that purpose:

“For it is not physical solitude that actually separates one from other men,” Mrs. Lindbergh wrote, “not physical isolation, but spiritual isolation. It is not the desert island nor the stony wilderness that cuts you from the people you love. It’s the wilderness in the mind, the desert wastes in the heart through which one wanders lost and a stranger. When one is estranged to oneself, then one is estranged from others, too. If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others.”

That day I began to look at myself. I made certain that my goals were worthy ones and natural to me. And I drew confidence from confirming the fact that the career that lay in challenge was something I could and should undertake. So it happened that, as I made the effort to get in touch with myself, my loneliness dissolved. But that was only one kind of loneliness. There were others.

There was The War. John was away in the Navy. Everyone was doing something helpful. I was volunteering at St. John’s Hospital in Los Angeles and being mother and temporary father to the children. The days were full and often frantic, but after nine o’clock in the evening, with the children tucked into bed and the house silent, I’d face the night hours and shiver.

It is true that children, with their lives to be fashioned and their problems to be solved, can absorb you. Children can fill a home to the tiptop, but John’s absence could not be camouflaged by activity. Night after night I’d find myself restlessly roaming the house. Is this, I wondered, what being a widow is like? I didn’t know until later that true widowhood is a loneliness of a different texture.

In wartime, one lives closer to God. And for a while I thought that my restlessness would become easier through prayer. Instead, it seemed to grow more acute. Perhaps prayers for myself are wrong, I thought, though I knew at heart that any communion with God must be in some way beneficial. Yet, I also knew that the answer to my problem would come eventually from a realization within myself. It did, in an oblique way.

A friend of mine’s baby was stillborn. Later, she and I talked about the tragedy and its meaning and, at one point, she said to me, “If I had known ahead of time that my baby were to be born dead, I believe the physical pain of birth would have been unendurable. It’s odd about pain, isn’t it? If there’s good reason for it, you endure it—sometimes gladly.”

The curious thing was that I took my friend’s thought about pain and applied it to my own problem. A philosopher once wrote, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” Aware that I did indeed have a “why”—John’s return —I now knew that I could and would endure the “how”—loneliness.

This loneliness, I said, is my own special, personal, private participation in the war. I was able to put my loneliness in perspective when I was able to say, “I will endure it. John will come home.” And he did.

There came a time, though, when I no longer had that perspective. The ache I felt was different from the previous aches. It was deeper, emptier. My husband was dead; the “why” gone. This was the texture of true widowhood—emptiness.

The children were older now and, for the most part, busy with their own projects and careers from which I was excluded. That was as it should have been.

It seemed wrong to be lonely. My career went well. I was starred in a Broadway play called Never Too Late, and it was a great hit. I went out often. I knew that the life of an actress, a celebrity-type, had an advantage over the widow who lived within a small circle in a quiet town. Yes, of course it had, except that when I returned home, the contrast was shattering.

That is when I began to reevaluate loneliness, to review its previous forms, to bring logic and heart and faith to bear. I drew some conclusions which I hold now. Perhaps those conclusions are not the ones that people suffering from loneliness want to hear, but I believe they are basic and true.

Most of us, I fear, do not wish to face the fact that human beings are lonely creatures. We have been lonely always; we will be always. I am not being flippant when I say that the one area in which we are not alone is our loneliness.

Everywhere I go I find people who are lonely and for whom there seems to be no relief or answer. Certainly as a woman I recognize that there is a restlessness in me that is not satisfied by human contact or by a full schedule.

It has been said that loneliness is a searching for God. Centuries ago, St. Augustine wrote, “Thou hast made us for Thyself, and restless are our hearts until they rest in Thee.”

Yes, we are born searching and restless and only when we can admit the hard fact that we are lonely and will remain so is there hope for some tranquility and receptivity to life. It is then that we can begin to appreciate the world that God created for us to accept and use, not deny.

In the play The Chalk Gardens by Enid Bagnold there is a governess who has had a particularly ill-starred life. When yet another misfortune befalls her which seems to close off her future, she is asked what she plans to do. Her answer, “I shall continue to explore the astonishment of living.”

Life is astonishing. Not just in its vastness, but in the microscopic, too, in its infinite, intriguing detail and in what many of us condemn as routine and day-to-day. But to be aware of today, to know that it is different from yesterday and to welcome the adventure of tomorrow is to accept life. To accept life is to remove the pain from loneliness.

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Guideposts Classics: Mary Martin on Choosing Life

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Mary Martin

Four of us were in a taxi headed for a restaurant in San Francisco’s Chinatown when the crash occurred. It’s the last thing I remember about that September day 19 months ago.

When I came to in a hospital bed, my daughter Heller and my son Larry were looking down at me anxiously. I was trying to ask them, “What happened? Where are my friends?” But I couldn’t. The pain was too great.

Only later did I learn that a van had smashed broadside into our cab and that my friend and close business associate, Ben Washer, had been killed instantly. Janet Gaynor, my dearest friend, caught the impact of both my body and Ben’s and was smashed-up inside and fighting for her life.

Her husband, Paul Gregory, had a serious whiplash, broken ribs and a bruised kidney. The driver of the van was charged with running a red light, drunken driving and manslaughter.

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I had a pelvis broken in three places, a punctured lung, fractured ribs and pain—from head to toe. At the age of 68 I wondered if life had not dealt me a bitter final blow. Would I ever be able to walk again? Was my career over—again?

How ironic it seemed. Up until the moment of the accident, my life had begun to brighten once more. For a long time after the death of my husband, Richard Halliday, in March 1973, I had been in a dark night of grief.

We had been married for 34 years; in my despair I left work: my singing voice gave out completely. But slowly, through the help of my family, and friends like Janet Gaynor—yes, Janet especially—I found my way out of that darkness.

My new home, too, had played a part in my recovery. On a visit to San Francisco I fell in love with that city all over again and made up my mind that I wanted to live there. “That’s not very practical,” Ben Washer had said. “You already have two homes? But I said a little prayer anyway, that if it was all right with the Lord, I’d really like to be in San Francisco.

A few days later I was asked to join Jim Hartz as co-host of a TV program. And from what city was that show being telecast? San Francisco.

“Thank You, Lord,” I said, “but I really didn’t mean to press You all that quickly.”

’Now, a year later, lying in a hospital bed, I was thinking about that show. Called Over Easy, it was designed to interest and help older people—people over 40. We were supposed to tell our audience how to get more out of living in their later years. Talk about irony! Here I was, approaching 70, in pain, wondering if life held anything more for me. So what help could I bring to a television audience now? It all seemed so bleak.

Or was it? The more I thought about it, the less bleak it became. I did have something to say. And I learned it in that hospital bed.

My cue came from Janet, who was somewhere in the same hospital. Over and over I asked people how she was doing. “She’s fighting for her life,” they’d tell me. Another time I’d hear, “That little gal has great courage. If she keeps on fighting that way, she’ll make it.”

Fighting, that’s what Janet was doing, fighting hard to live. And why? Because every spark of life that God has breathed into us is precious. Janet knew that; so did I.

Now I wanted to do some fighting of my own, and the first thing I had to do was to take on my most immediate adversary: pain. In the next days, the pain didn’t go away, but I came to terms with it. I even turned it into a kind of blessing. When you feel pain, you know that you’re alive; and where there’s life, there’s hope; and where there’s hope, you can start doing something with your life!

“I’ve got to get out of this bed,” was the next thing I told myself. “I’ve got to get out of this bed and go see Janet.”

I started by raising myself to a sitting position in bed. It took a while before I could get to the point that they would let me put my feet on the floor. And then I was unable to straighten up. I was given a walker and taught how to push it ahead of me, then shuffle my feet after it.

It took a week to learn how to push my way six inches at a time, but little by little—push, shuffle; push, shuffle—I began to get somewhere. And then one day I shuffled all the way to Janet’s room!

The moment Janet saw me, her face broke into a big, broad smile. She had 11 broken ribs, a broken collarbone, a ruptured bladder, a bleeding kidney. And she was smiling. I shook my head in sheer wonder.

“No matter how battered,” Janet said, still smiling, “it’s amazing what the human body is capable of.”

“You can say that again!” I said, breaking into a big, broad smile of my own.

Every chance I got, I hobbled my way to Janet’s room. When I managed to push the walker 12 inches at a time, I asked the doctor, “How long will I have to use this thing?”

“Twelve weeks or so,” he said.

“Twelve weeks!” I shot back. “No way!”

Alter several weeks in the hospital. I was allowed to go home. I made the 15 feet from the exit to a waiting car with the walker, but this time I was straightened up. Just as I reached the car door, I heard a lot of noise behind me. I turned to see doctors, nurses, aides leaning out the windows, cheering and applauding—and crowing, “We believe.”

It made me glow.

My home is one of those wonderful San Francisco houses on one of those wonderful San Francisco hills. When I arrived there with my nurse Bee Kilgore, I had to figure out how to climb four flights of stairs to my bedroom. I did it by sitting down backward on the first step with the walker in front of me, and sliding up backward, one stair at a time, resting at each landing, then resuming the backward slide upward.

The next day I was eager to get outside. But how to get down those four flights of stairs? “Don’t!” Bee Kilgore ordered. “You’re sure to fall down.”

“Well, how did I get up here? Sliding up backward one stair at a time. I can slide down forward one stair at a time.” And so I did.

About a week later I left the hospital I went back to work on Over Easy I was wearing a brace and pushing my walker as the cameras followed me onto the set and to my seat. After the show. Jules Power, the producer, hurried over to me. “Mary,” he said, “you don’t have to be on camera going through all that struggle with the walker. We can start the cameras going after you get to your seat.”

“Oh, no,” I said quickly. “What’s this show all about anyway? I want people to see how us old folks can get where we’re going no matter what we have to do to get there.”

In time, with Bee at my side, I took my first walk without the walker. And it was six, not 12, weeks after the accident!

One day, I even walked a whole block. Only then did it hit me. “Hey, you’ll have to walk back,” I said to myself. “That means another block.” But I made it. And one day I was able to tell Bee, “Please, don’t come with me.” I walked alone. Five blocks. Pretty soon I was walking a mile.

It still hurts when I overdo. So I wear a sacroiliac belt. But the difficulties don’t stop me. Every morning I’m up at 5:30, and, after prayers, I take a walk or swim and then go to work. I’ll never stop working. When I can, and I try to be with them often, I’m enjoying my children, my grandchildren and my friends.

In May last year I made a special trip to New York to see a special friend, Ethel Merman, who had been operated on for a brain tumor. I never thought I’d ever see her flat out on her back. To me, Merman, then in her mid-70s, was like the Statue of Liberty. Indestructible.

But there she was in a hospital bed, unable to walk or talk. I wasn’t even sure she could hear me. I sat there holding her hand, trying to tell her with my eyes that I was praying for her, willing her strength.

“Look at me, Merman,” I finally said aloud. “Promise me you will get up out of this bed and walk and talk again.”

The garbled sounds that came from her were saying, I will. I promise. I will.

When I got back to San Francisco there was a letter from her son Bob. “Mother is home!” The words rang happily from the page. “Home!” Shortly after that I picked up the ringing phone and there on the other end of the line was Merman. She was always a fighter!

I doubt that there is anybody, really, who doesn’t know that all life is a fight, and that sometimes life itself is what we have to fight for. I’ve never forgotten something that one of our San Francisco columnists, Charles McCabe, once wrote: “The only real sin in the world is not to fight, not to realize the fullness of your own nature.”

I think that’s what the Lord means when He tells us in Deuteronomy (30:19), “…I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life…”

After six operations and 10 months in and out of hospitals (mostly in), Janet Gaynor is walking and talking. She still has a long way to go. “But I have come a long, long way,” she says.

We both have. We know that nothing is ever going to be quite the same with our bodies. We were in a terrible accident. We’re getting older. The only thing to do is accept that, move on, and try to help other people. Indeed, whenever I see older people who say, “It’s all over. I’m finished,” I want to shout at them: Don’t ever settle for that. Your body is tougher than you think—and your spirit is invincible. Choose life! Fight back!

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Guideposts Classics: Lillian Gish on God’s Healing Light

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Lillian Gish

Ours was a small, close-knit family. Just we three girls—Mother, my sister Dorothy and me. Our world was that of the stage, and then later the movies, silent movies. Our friends were pioneers of the new medium—Mary Pickford, Anita Loos, Charlie Chaplin—monumental figures who helped shape the history of film.

Our mentor was David Wark Griffith, the genius of early film-making who created the form, meaning and grammar for telling stories on film. But most of all, there was Mother.

Our father left us when we were young, but Mother supplied the bolstering strength and the affection and warmth of two parents. She was a delicate woman, small, almost frail, yet a woman of strong courage. She kept us together, traveled everywhere with us, read the Bible during long train rides to the next town and the next performance, taught us to pray, and to have faith. We needed that faith.

As I look back on it, life was a constant challenge. In the beginning we were poor, and there were times when food was in short supply. I remember existing on a diet of oatmeal and milk, one portion for breakfast and two for dinner. I took my first stage job at age five in the play Convict’s Stripes and went on the road. Dorothy’s career began at age four when she played in East Lynne.

As youngsters, we learned that our profession was considered a social disgrace, and we were warned, “Don’t tell anyone you’re in the theater because children won’t be allowed to play with you.”

When we started making movies—in New York, before Hollywood became movieland—it was just a job to do while waiting for our next hoped-for role on the stage. We worked late into the night, sometimes on empty stomachs, and were expected back at the studio before dawn.

There were no doubles or stuntmen. We played every scene, whether it was outdoors in the winter riding river currents on an actual ice floe until Mr. Griffith was satisfied with the scene, or playing the victim of a brutal beating and ending up with welts and bruises. Total dedication was expected; we were driven to perform perfectly, totally—for five dollars a day.

In late 1916—while World War I was raging in France—Mr. Griffith went to London to show two of his films at the famous Drury Lane Theatre, which had never before shown a motion picture in its long history.

While there, he was invited to 10 Downing Street by the Prime Minister, Lloyd George. England and France wanted Mr. Griffith to produce a war film that would help the Allies’ cause.

As a result, Mr. Griffith sent for Dorothy, actor Bobby Harron, cameraman Billy Bitzer and me. After seven months in England and France, we came back with 86,000 feet of film, which became five movies including Hearts of the World. Mother, of course, would not let us go without her.

The film was shot in range of long-distance guns, and shells and shrapnel fell close by. We were working where even nurses were not allowed to go. We shot scenes in complete secrecy and tried to block out the horror around us—exploding shells, men wounded and lying in mud.

Mother drove with us to the location each day, passing burned-out homes, scorched fields and destroyed orchards, it was a frightening experience for all of us, and it took its toll.

In the ensuing months Mother, Dorothy and I became highly nervous and lost weight. My sister and I recovered from the ordeal, being too young to comprehend the horror we had witnessed. But Mother did not. She suffered from shell shock the same as many soldiers did. Her hands shook so that she could not hold a cup of tea.

And this, in turn, led to other ailments. We did not fully realize how serious the effects were until eight years later when Dorothy summoned me to England where she was working: “Mother has had a serious stroke,” read the cablegram. “Please come quickly.”

Still in costume and wearing makeup, I left the MGM Hollywood set of The Scarlet Letter and caught a train for New York. News of Mother’s illness preceded me, and hundreds of sympathetic fans stood on station platforms along the way to express their sympathy and tell me of their prayers for Mother’s recovery.

Mother was not expected to live, and I felt horribly alone, but the warmth and love of the people waiting on those platforms lifted my spirits and gave me hope.

When I arrived in London, I found Dorothy badly shaken and Mother deep in coma, but shortly after, she began to improve. Within three weeks she was able to make it clear that she wanted me to take her home. A doctor and nurse accompanied us on the crossing by ship to New York, then after a two-week rest, we had a private car attached to a fast westbound mail train.

I had to return to California to work, and I brought Mother—still unable to speak or even lift her head—on a roaring, swaying train in the heat of July. No air-conditioning then, of course. To keep the car cool, we positioned tubs of ice with fans blowing on them. And as the train steamed across the plains, I held Mother’s thin hand and read aloud from her Bible of Christ’s promises of eternal life and His unfailing love.

I read to Mother from I Corinthians, from Colossians, Psalms and Isaiah, and with each passage I silently prayed that God would spare her, that He would give us more years together.

One night, reading aloud from the 58th chapter of Isaiah, I could not help but feel the promise in the words that ran: “Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the Lord shall be thy rearward.” (58:8)

As I read them, it seemed to me that those words held the key to Mother’s life.

When we arrived in Los Angeles, Mother’s condition deteriorated. We took her to a beach house, which we had rented from Mary Pickford’s mother. Mary, whom we’d known as Gladys Smith, had been one of our closest friends since childhood days when our two families had shared an apartment in New York City in order to save money.

However, even the sound of the ocean seemed to disturb Mother. So we had to rent a house on top of the Palisades.

Mother was carried to a pretty room on the second floor that had large windows flooding the chamber with light. It was cheery and warm, and an ocean breeze billowed the lace curtains. I liked it immediately and felt that it would cheer Mother. But the doctor pulled down the shades. He wanted her to have total quiet. Not even the sunlight should distract her.

Weeks passed, and as I sat in that darkened room listening to Mother’s labored breathing, I felt a dread, a sense of hopelessness. There was no more strength left in this pale, sickly form. This was my mother who had given me love, who had given me life, and I sat there helpless.

On the eve of Mother’s 49th birthday, September 16, after the doctor had paid his daily, gloomy visit, I stepped out into the garden. The sun shone brightly as I sat in a wicker chair and buried my head in my hands. I pictured the still, pale woman in that second-floor room, too weak to respond even to the touch of my hand on hers. It was as though she were already dead, shut off from friends, from life, from light …

Light!

At that moment the words from Isaiah came back to me: Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shah spring forth speedily… The very words that had so filled me with hope as the train had roared through the night gave me hope again. Still another passage rushed back into my mind, the words of Jesus: I am the light of the world: he that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. (John 8:12)

I ran upstairs. One after the other I raised the shades in Mother’s room, then pushed open the windows. California sunshine flooded in and bathed Mother in its warmth. She smiled slightly. I knew then, I really knew, that the light touching her face was life-giving. I knew our prayers would be answered. God would sustain us.

That afternoon I went downstairs and telephoned a number of our good friends. “Tomorrow is Mother’s birthday,” I said. “Could you stop by to see her, just for a moment?”

The next day the windows were wide open. Mother’s room was filled with roses, and little by little our friends arrived and tiptoed to Mother’s bed and told her how much she was loved. From then on, Mother grew stronger.

Our journalist friend, H. L. Mencken, helped us find a specialist who took over Mother’s case, and soon we were able to carry her down to that same garden where I had been inspired to open her windows to the light.

Mother’s health did spring forth, and she lived for 22 years after that—22 happy, creative years.

In the beginning there were just the three of us, Mother, Dorothy and me. Now there is just me alone. Yet not really alone, for I feel our little family’s closeness still.

By my bed I keep my mother’s Bible, its pages heavily marked and underlined with favorite passages, passages of strength and hope—and light. Often I think back to the time that His light restored my mother’s life, reaffirming my belief—instilled years before by Mother—that God’s power is boundless, that it can come to us silently, lovingly, pushing the darkness aside.

This story has been slightly altered from its original published form.

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Guideposts Classics: John Wayne on True Courage

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by John Wayne

Long before I ever made the movie True Grit, people would talk about my screen characters in terms of courage, firmness, stamina–true grit. But what about the man who played those characters?

Certainly I have never thought of myself as a timid type. Even as a child I know I had a certain brashness. I remember two incidents in particular when I was a little boy and my family was homesteading in the Mojave Desert.

The four of us–my mother, father, younger brother and I–had come from a little town in Iowa where dad had been a pharmacist, but because of his health the doctors had told him he should move west.

At first he had thought about going to Montana, but my grandfather wrote and said, “Why not come to California and starve?” We did both.

Dad found some isolated land in Antelope Valley, not close to anything, yet not too far from Lancaster. He built a house for us which was hardly more than a shack and he tried to grow corn on the land as though we were back in Iowa, which clearly we were not.

We had a pretty desperate time of it. I was hardly aware of it, because I was happy–especially, I recall, because I had my own horse which I took care of and rode back and forth to school. Her name was Jenny, and I loved her.

One Halloween night out there in the desert, my brother Bob and I had just come to the table when my mom brought out a bowl full of weenies, a special treat since we didn’t have meat very often. Just at that moment we all heard an eerie sound.

“Who-o-o-o. Who-o-o-o-o.”

It was my dad standing outside the screen door with a sheet over his head, but I thought it was the bogey man. I grabbed the bowl of weenies and flung it at the apparition. It broke up dad’s performance.

As I look back, hurling that bowl of weenies at the bogey man came as natural to me as a knee jerk. Not too long after that, though, I was asked to do something that required a different kind of courage.

My horse Jenny began to get so thin that people in town accused me of not feeding her. Finally the vet told us that for her own good we should destroy her–which was like destroying me. I didn’t want to do it, but it had to be done. So it was done.

Those things were way back in my childhood, but years later, in the fall of 1964, I came face to face with a different kind of demand: the Big C.

In October I’d gone down to the Scripps Clinic in La Jolla for my very belated yearly checkup. I knew I’d been coughing a lot more, but I wasn’t in any kind of pain.

The doctors kept taking X-rays, and I was getting impatient. When they sent me back for the fourth set of pictures, I said to the X-ray doctor, “What’s the deal?”

“Well, it’s positive, of course, but beyond–”

“Wait a minute. Positive? What are you telling me?”

“I’m sorry,” the doctor said, “didn’t you know?”

When I left the clinic that day, I realized I must have a lung operation as fast as possible and that there were a lot of arrangements to make, but for the moment I was dazed.

I’d promised Senator Goldwater, who was running for President then, that I would appear at a rally in San Diego, and I headed there. I sat in the back of the audience instead of on the dais. I don’t know why. I wasn’t trying to escape attention; I think I just wanted to be close to people.

Before the end of the rally, they had hauled me up on the stage and the crowd cheered and I remember thinking how odd it would be if they knew what was happening in my head, that I was standing there a bewildered man in the first flush of fear.

I’m a big man physically and I was lucky to have been born with an unusual amount of strength and stamina. All my life I’ve been grateful for those physical gifts. They shaped my career.

They made it possible for me to play football for the Southern Cal Trojans, which led directly to my getting a summer job as a prop man with a movie studio; and a bit of muscle wasn’t exactly a hindrance for the rest of my career in pictures either.

But any dim-witted thug knows that physical strength is not the same as courage. And that night in San Diego, I needed courage.

Obviously there was no bludgeoning one’s way out of this one; there was nothing to hurl at the bogey man. My very helplessness gave me awful twinges of fear.

Mark Twain wasn’t being humorous when he wrote that, “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear–not absence of fear.” If I was going to do battle with cancer bravely, I knew what it was that I had to conquer first.

In this struggle I had a lot of allies–my family and friends, of course. And prayer. I did a lot of praying in those few shaky days before the operation, and this I know: There is a Man Upstairs holding all this world together, including you and me.

You cannot believe this, and believe it firmly, without drawing the strength, the courage, to master your fears.

The operation was successful, thank God. They cut away a lung, but they left me alive and grateful, and ready to learn something more about adversity.

Overcoming trouble can be like skidding in a car on a slippery road. There’s the first skid which, if you can control it, you feel pretty relieved about. But there is an after-skid waiting to surprise you from the other direction. My after-skid was getting back in harness again.

With all that vaunted energy of mine, I was surprised at how much the operation had slowed me up. I began to think about it, and worry.

My conscience hurt me because I had been scheduled to make a picture with Dean Martin called The Sons of Katie Elder. Everybody had been most considerate about the postponement, but now time was wasting, careers were being interfered with, money was going down the drain.

Finally I made up my mind to do the picture but I had misgivings about myself, about my strength. Those reservations were taken care of by that tremendous old director, Henry Hathaway.

Hathaway had directed me in a number of films, and luckily he had the assignment on Katie Elder. It was he, really, who got me going again, though not with tender loving care. That man was merciless.

The film was shot on location in Durango, Mexico, which is 8000 feet above sea level, not the best place for breathing even with two lungs. It didn’t take me long to figure out what Hathaway was up to. He was being deliberately tough on me.

He had me getting soaked in the river, jumping out of rigs handcuffed, always testing me. I was determined not to let him get the best of me.

One evening we had a night shot in which I was supposed to come riding down a street on a horse carrying a rocking chair in one hand, a Bible in the other and a basket over one arm. I was supposed to stop, dismount and walk into a girl’s domicile.

The horse I was riding had never worked at night before and he was fractious and hard to handle. I kept doing the scene over and over, mounting, dismounting and mounting again with all those encumbrances.

Hathaway watched me carefully, but no more carefully than I was watching myself, for I was getting tired. At last when he finally called out, “Print it! Let’s go to bed,” I knew for sure that not only had I beaten Hathaway at his game, but that I had also won my fight with cancer.

Why had Hathaway chosen to take such a rough tack with me? Why did I let him? Because more than ten years before, he had undergone an operation for cancer far worse than mine.

He knew me well. He knew just how far he could push me and he used the courage he had shown in his own recovery to help bring about mine. Nowadays it’s one of the rewards for me that I am able to tell people that simply because they have cancer doesn’t mean they’re at the end of the road.

It is good and it is helpful to have physical strength; but looking back, I am certain that the truest part of true grit is not physical–it’s moral.

It’s something really tough, something we all fail at from time to time. It’s making a decision and standing firm in it, whether it’s submitting to an operation or putting an ailing pet to sleep. It’s doing what must be done.

After all, if you think about it, that’s the root of all morality, for no moral man can have peace of mind if he leaves undone what he knows he should have done.

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Guideposts Classics: Johnny Cash on Overcoming Addiction

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Johnny Cash

The old man asked, “Are you feeling better now, Johnny?” I’d been lying there a long time, staring at the ceiling and fighting off the sickness. Now I looked at the old man. He looked like he was behind bars. But I knew that I was the one behind the bars, only I didn’t know where the jail was or how I got there.

The old man said, “Let me know when you’re ready.”

I forced myself to sit up. “I’m ready now.”

Ready for what? I wasn’t sure why I’d been arrested. I figured it had something to do with the pills. Once before the pills had put me behind bars, but that time I was lucky.

That was in 1965. I had gone into Mexico to get a supply of the pills I felt I needed to stay alive. As I was re-entering at El Paso, the customs inspector found the pills.

That time I spent a day in jail. Because it was my first arrest, the judge let me off with a year’s suspended sentence. There was a newspaper reporter in the courtroom; his story went out on the wires, and that’s how people found out I was an addict.

A lot of people already knew. By then, I had been on pills five years. I took pep pills to turn me on enough to do a show. Then I took depressants to calm down enough to get some sleep.

That, at least, was what my friends said. They said I was working too hard and traveling too much and trying to squeeze too much out of every day. They said maybe I should take some time off.

I knew better. I tried pep pills the first time because they happened to be available one day when I was in the mood for a new kick. The high they gave me was beautiful. I felt I owned the world, and the world was perfect during those lofty moments.

I couldn’t believe that a couple of little pills could contain so much beauty and joy. I stayed on pills because they made me feel great. If people wanted to give excuses for my habit, I let them.

Then I began to realize that the highs were getting lower. The few pills I was on every day weren’t enough anymore. I had to go from a few to several, then to dozens. Still that old feeling wasn’t there. I was always nervous and tense and irritable. I didn’t want to eat. I couldn’t sleep. I started losing weight.

So I went on depressants, looking for lows, looking for peace. When I found peace, I couldn’t trust it because I knew it was a fleeting peace. Soon I would crave to get high, and the highs would not come to me.

After the El Paso mess, I took an apartment with a friend who was also on pills. One day when my supply ran out, I remembered that he had some in his car. He was asleep and I couldn’t find his keys, so I went out and broke into the car.

When he later accused me of this, I denied it violently and we almost fought. He knew I was lying, and I knew he did. Next day, I admitted it, and he said he understood. We were like two cowardly kids forgiving each other for being afraid of the dark.

In time, I became afraid of everything. I would be a nervous wreck before a show; I was never sure of myself during a performance; I didn’t believe people when they said things had gone all right.

Sometimes I was too sick to work. Sometimes I didn’t even show up. It didn’t take booking agents long to stop risking their money on me. Even though I knew this meant a loss of income to others in the show, people who were good friends, I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything.

I knew I was killing myself. I had seen drugs kill others. Whatever drug an addict is hooked on, he has to keep increasing his daily dosage to feel anywhere near normal. This is the nature of addiction. The day comes when he takes the overdose that kills him.

Knowing this, I accepted early death as the inescapable fate of addicts: There was just no other way out. Even when I thought of all the things I had to be thankful for, I could find no hope for myself, no chance for change.

I was 12, I remembered, when electricity came to the small Arkansas farm where I was raised. Dad bought a radio, and I’ll never forget the first Saturday night I heard the exciting country music from the Grand Ole Opry, in Nashville. That moment, I discovered my future.

Right away, I started writing my own country songs, and I told everybody I was going to become an entertainer. I guess only my mother believed me. We were poor, and so she took in laundry to pay for a few voice lessons.

At 17, I earned my first money at performing: the $15 first prize in an amateur contest. Then I learned to play the guitar.

In 1954, I attended a radio-announcing school, hoping that becoming a disc jockey might open doors to performing. To earn a living, I sold houseware door-to-door.

I got to know guitarist Luther Perkins and bassist Marshall Grant. We put together an act; we rehearsed a lot; we worked whenever we could, whether or not we got paid. After a year, we agreed that the only way we could find out if we were ready for the Big Time was to audition for somebody big.

We auditioned for Sun Records, which led to our first recording. This led to a two-year contract at the Grand Ole Opry.

We made more recordings. We went on the road. We became known. By 1960 we had advanced enough to put together a show of our own. Then I moved on to the high of pills.

By 1967, I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and I knew it. I was usually on a hundred pills a day, but I got no pleasure from them, no peace. I couldn’t stand my life, but I couldn’t find my way out of it.

One day my friends talked to me about entering a mental institution, and the thought of that completely shattered me. I got into my car, well supplied with pills, and headed south. I remember crossing the Georgia border. Next thing I knew, I was staring at a ceiling and an elderly jailer was asking me if I felt better.

I got up. He unlocked the door. I asked, “How did I get here?”

He said, “One of the night men found you stumbling around the streets. He brought you in so you wouldn’t hurt yourself.”

I followed him down a corridor and into his office, and I asked, “How much time do you think I’ll get for this?”

He shook his head. “You’re doing time right now, Johnny, the worst kind.” He handed me an envelope. “Here are your things.” As I was putting things into my pockets, he said, “I’m a fan of yours, Johnny. I’ve always admired you. It’s a shame to see you ruining yourself. I didn’t know you were this bad off.”

I’d heard that sad song before, from concerned friends. I said, “Yeah. Sure.”

He said, “I don’t know where you think you got your talent from, Johnny, but if you think it came from God, then you’re sure wrecking the body He put it in.”

I said, “Yeah. Sure. Thanks. Can I go now?” He nodded.

That morning, as I stepped into the warm sunshine, I took a quick but deep look at my life over the past seven years, and I knew that I was a better man than that.

Maybe it was the reference to God that suddenly cleared my mind. I had been raised by religious parents; faith had always meant a lot to me; I have tried to express it in some of my songs. But until that morning it hadn’t occurred to me to turn to God for help in kicking my habit.

I remembered this: “Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?” (I Corinthians 6:19). This helped convince me that I must try to break my habit. But how?

And I remembered this: God had given me a free will, and I had freely used it in deciding to experiment with the drugs which had now robbed me of it. I realized that to be free again I would need all the will power I could acquire and I knew this power could come only from God, Who had created me free.

I asked Him to go to work on me, then and there.

Back in Nashville, I went to June Carter and Marshall Grant, and I told them, “I’m kicking pills, as of now. I don’t expect it to be easy, so I’ll need your help. See to it that I eat regular meals. See to it that I keep regular hours. If I can’t sleep, sit and talk to me. If we run out of talk, then let’s pray.”

We prayed a lot. I am a free man now, as I have been since that morning when I discovered that I could be once again.

Because of the kind of work I do, it is difficult to sweep past mistakes under the rug. Every once in a while, I meet some youngster who knows I used to be an addict, as he is now, and he asks me what he can do to kick his habit. I tell him what I learned, “Give God’s temple back to Him. The alternative is death.”

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Guideposts Classics: Jim Nabors on Putting God First

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Jim Nabors

When I went home to the little country town of Sylacauga, Alabama, after my dad’s death, I found myself wondering all over again how kids can ever repay all their parents have done for them.

What, for instance, can you pay for being given the love of a town? After Dad’s funeral a Negro woman came up to me. “Son,” she said, “I just got to tell you how much your daddy meant to our family. He kept my two boys out of jail.” Then she burst into tears.

Dad was an officer on Sylacauga’s police force and there wasn’t a more loved man anywhere. He would make about $12 a week, and he was always giving away some of that.

Dad couldn’t stand to see a man sitting in jail on Sunday. He was forever opening the doors and giving some vagrant his freedom and a couple of dollars to help him on his way.

And how can you repay sacrifice? With Dad giving away his money we never had much cash around the house. Mother didn’t complain–she just went to work. She got a job as a waitress in Sylacauga’s truck-stop diner serving coffee and eggs 14 hours a day, seven days a week.

But Mother was glad to do it because she had a dream. “Your daddy and I want you young ones to make something out of yourselves,” she’d say to me and to my two sisters. Our parents saw us through high school and they saw us through college too.

So when I graduated I had a debt to pay. I was starting out with love and sacrifice behind me. To make it all worth their while, I was determined to accomplish great things.

It didn’t work out that way.

I had hoped for a job in advertising. So I packed a suitcase, borrowed a few dollars and moved to New York to start my career on Madison Avenue. I never once got past the receptionist’s desk.

I tried everything I could think of to be less bashful and country. I bought myself some clothes like the gray flannel uniform I saw everywhere. I had my hair cut city-style. I even worked at perfecting an eastern accent. But it didn’t do any good. I ended up with a job as a typist.

I also ended up with a bad case of asthma from the New York weather. So I wrote home that all my education was getting me in New York was the wheezes and that I was moving on.

I’d heard that California was a good place for asthma. Four years after I left New York I was hustling crates around a warehouse in Los Angeles. Four more years passed. I was almost 30 and I’d achieved exactly zero. It was the low point of my life, as far as self-confidence went.

And yet, strangely enough, that time was a high point too. For from another direction life suddenly took on meaning. I’d taken to slipping into the back of St. Paul’s Roman Catholic Church in Hollywood, just to listen to the Mass.

I didn’t understand much of what I saw and less of what I heard, but I sensed somehow that it represented the only thing on earth that really mattered.

Slowly as I went through weeks of instruction, I learned to put a name on a feeling I’d struggled with so many years. It was guilt–guilt because I had not repaid my parents’ investment in me.

And more slowly still God’s answer came forward: We repay our parents not by “succeeding,” but by becoming the completed persons He intends us to be. The day I put Him in the center of my life was the day I took that first step toward becoming a whole person.

And you know, a funny thing happened. When I stopped trying so hard to win success, I relaxed and became plain Jim Nabors from a little country town in Alabama.

I dropped the last pretense of an eastern accent. I dressed the way I wanted. I began doing some of the crazy things I’d always wanted to do, like going to an amateur show nights after work and putting on a little skit.

Hometown folks used to say I had a good singing voice so in my skit I had this country boy with the heavy hillbilly accent suddenly sing an aria from Grand Opera. The audience had as much fun as I did and I was asked to come back.

And then one night Andy Griffith was sitting out front. After the show he asked me to read for a part on his TV program, and I have been in show business ever since.

The person least impressed at this change of affairs is Mother. She comes out to California, off and on, to cook me blackeyed peas and cornbread. She’s glad I’m steadily employed, of course, but she still puts the money I send her in a special bank account in my name, “just in case.”

It’s a good precaution. In Hollywood they say you’ve arrived when they name a sandwich after you. Sure enough, there’s a Jim Nabors’ Special for sale at the studio commissary now: pastrami with tomato.

But I notice that my name on the menu-board is pasted over the name of another actor who “arrived” just a few years ago, and I’m sure someday someone else’s name will be pasted over mine.

That’s why I give thanks every morning of my life that when I found the real Center of things, it was the One Who cannot change.

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Guideposts Classics: James Earl Jones on the Importance of Mentoring

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by James Earl Jones

Today I am known for my voice as much as for my acting. It has been my good fortune to receive jobs such as the speaking role of Darth Vader in George Lucas’s Star Wars trilogy and the voice-over announcer for CNN cable television. I also narrated Aaron Copland’s Lincoln portrait on a compact disc I recorded with the Seattle Symphony. Perhaps my greatest honor came when I was asked to read the New Testament on tape.

But it took a long time to believe such good things could happen to me. When I was a youngster I stuttered so badly I was completely unable to speak in public.

Since I was eight I’d had trouble speaking. It was so bad that whenever I stood up in class to read, the other kids snickered and laughed. I always sat down, my face burning with shame.

I’m not sure what caused my stuttering. Perhaps it was an emotional problem. I was born in Arkabutla, Mississippi, and when I was about five, I moved to live with my grandparents on their farm near Dublin in northern Michigan. It was traumatic moving from the warm, easy ways of catfish country to the harsh climate of the north, where people seemed so different.

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Fortunately, my granddaddy was a gentle man, a farmer who taught me to love the land. He was short and he had a prodigious amount of energy. He even built a church to please Grandmother, a fervent worshiper of the Lord. All sorts of people were invited to our little church; white, black and American Indian came together in a nondenominational fellowship. Granddad’s Irish heritage came out in his love for language; during the week he used “everyday talk,” but on Sunday he spoke only the finest English.

As much as I admired his fluency, I couldn’t come close to it. I finally quit Sunday school and church, not wanting to be humiliated anymore. All through my grade school years, the only way the teacher could assess my progress was for me to write down everything I had learned.

Oh, I could talk, all right. Our farm animals knew that. I found it easy to call the pigs, tell the dogs to round up the cows, and vent my feelings to Fanny, the horse whose big brown eyes and lifted ears seemed to express interest in all I said. But when visitors came and I was asked to say hello, I could only stand, pound my feet, and grit my teeth. That awful feeling of my voice being trapped got worse as I grew older.

Then, when I was 14, Professor Donald Crouch came to our school. He was a retired college professor who had settled in nearby Brethren, a Mennonite community. When he heard that our agricultural high school was teaching Chaucer, Shakespeare and other classics, he couldn’t stand not being a part of our school. So he left his retreat to teach us English, history and Latin.

Donald Crouch was a tall, lean man with gray hair; English was his favorite subject, poetry his deepest love. He’d been an associate of Robert Frost. He held a book of poems as if it were a diamond necklace, turning pages as if uncovering treasures. He memorized a poem every day, explaining that if he ever lost his eyesight he would still be able to savor all that beauty.

When he learned that I not only loved poetry but was writing it, we found a kinship. There was, however, one difficulty between us. Professor Crouch (we always called him that) could not stand the fact I refused to read my poems to the class.

“Jim, poetry is meant to be read aloud, just like sermons,” he pressed. “You should be able to speak those beautiful words.”

I shook my head and turned away.

Then he tricked me. I labored long and hard on a poem, and after handing it in I waited expectantly for his critique. It didn’t come. Instead, one day as the students assembled, he challenged me. “Jim, I don’t think you wrote this.”

I stared at him in disbelief. “Why,” I started, anger flooding me, “’course I did!”

“Well, then,” he said, “you’ve got to prove it by getting up and reciting it from memory.”

By then the other students had settled at their desks. He looked at me meaningfully and nodded. With knees shaking, I walked up before my peers.

“Jim will recite his latest poem,” announced Professor Crouch.

For a moment I stood breathless. I could see smirks and wry smiles on some faces. Then I began. And kept going. I recited my poem all the way through—without hesitation or fault! I stood amazed and floated back to my desk in a daze, amid wild applause.

Afterward, Professor Crouch congratulated me. “Aha,” he said. “Now we have something here. Not only will you have to write more poetry and read it aloud to know how good it feels, but I’m sure that you will want to read other writers’ poetry before the class.”

I was dubious about that, but said I’d try.

Soon I began to discover something other stutterers know. Most have no problem singing because the lyrics’ rhythmic pattern flows by itself. I found the same cadences in poetry, and before long my fellow students actually looked forward to hearing me recite. I loved the rolling beat of The Song of Hiawatha, especially since I had Indian blood in my veins. “By the shores of Gitche Gummee,” I recited. “By the shining Big-Sea-Waters…”

I discovered I did have a voice, a strong one. Under Professor Crouch’s tutelage, I entered oratorical contests and debates. He never pushed anything at me again; he just wanted all his students to wake up. He never even pressed us with religion but figured if we did wake up we would find God, find our calling and, in so doing, find life.

As my stuttering disappeared, I began dreaming of becoming an actor, like my father, who was then performing in New York City. No one in my family had ever gone to college. But encouraged by Professor Crouch, I took exams and won a scholarship to the University of Michigan.

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There I entered the drama department and after graduation fulfilled my ROTC responsibility by serving with the Army’s Cold Weather Training Command on mountain maneuvers in Colorado. It was in the Army that a Jesuit chaplain helped me understand who God really was and opened the door to which Professor Crouch had led me.

Later, on the GI Bill, I signed up with the American Theatre Wing in New York and supported myself between roles by sweeping floors of off-Broadway stages. In 1962 I earned an Obie for my role in an off-Broadway production of Othello, and have been an actor ever since.

Meanwhile, I always kept in touch with my old professor, by letter and telephone. Every time we talked it was always, “Hi, Jim. Read any good poetry lately?” He was losing his sight and I remembered his early explanation of why he had memorized poetry. In later years when I was doing Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens at the Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, I phoned him. “Can I fly you in from Michigan to see it?”

“Jim,” he sighed, “I’m blind now. I’d hate not to be able to see you acting. It would hurt too much.”

“I understand, Professor,” I said, helped in part by the realization that though my mentor could no longer see, he was still living in a world vibrant with all of the beautiful treasures he had stored.

About two years later I learned Donald Crouch had passed on. I thanked God for all the professor’s help and friendship.

And so, when I was asked to record the New Testament, I really did it for a tall, lean man with gray hair who had not only helped to guide me to the author of the Scriptures, but as the father of my resurrected voice, had also helped me find abundant life.

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Guideposts Classics: Harold Russell on a Soldier’s Faith

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Harold Russell

It sometimes takes cold, black disaster to inspire one to achieve the heights of success.

But for my accident I would now be back at my pre-war job as butcher. Instead, I have been in motion pictures, on the radio, subject of magazine articles—but best of all, I have had a chance to show other disabled veterans like myself that it is possible to bounce back from utter despair to undreamed-of success and happiness.

On that black June day in 1944 when I lay on a hospital bed, looking down at two big bandages where my hands used to be, I frankly thought it meant the end of useful living for me. What can I do now, I asked myself bitterly? Probably just live out my years on an Army pension.

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This self-pity and despair didn’t last very long though. There is something in most people that won’t let them take defeat lying down. Call it anything you like, but to me it is faith—faith in God and in myself, faith that I can always rise from every setback. A man is licked without this.

At Walter Reed Hospital there was no funeral atmosphere. Nobody pitied himself or anyone else. A guy with both legs gone was called “Shorty;” a man with but one leg, “Limpy;” and a soldier with only one arm, “Paperhanger.” As for me—I was “Hooks.” This may sound grim, but we had to develop a sense of humor, and this was the best way to do it.

My first reaction to the hooks, which were to serve as my hands, was one of dismay. The first day I tried them on, it was worse—it was torture. Unable to make them do anything, I was ready to give up. But the next day I tried again —and kept on trying until I made them work.

My first experiences out of the hospital were also trying ones. Those I met with a sense of humor were most helpful. Take the little old lady to whom I sold meat before the war. When she saw me, she broke out with: “Oh, you poor boy.”

Then, realizing that this was the wrong approach, she stopped and chuckled, “No wonder you lost your hands. Goodness knows you sold them to me often enough weighing my meat. They didn’t belong to you anyway; I bought them many a time with my potroasts.”

I liked that reaction—frank and sassy.

The two chaplains in our hospital were two of the finest representatives of God I have ever known. They realized that it wasn’t enough to simply tell us to have faith; we had to be shown how to apply faith in overcoming our handicap.

In their talks with us these chaplains had many a sharp, realistic question fired at them. They never tried to duck the “hot ones.” With patience and understanding they answered everything as best they could—and their best was of real comfort to me and to the others.

There were Protestants, Catholics and Jews in our ward, but no one was concerned as to who belonged to what church. There may have been atheists there, but I doubt it. Certainly there were some who had grave doubts as to God’s justice in view of their own calamity. I know I never gave up on God, and I don’t believe anyone else did either—really.

I have found that you can’t tell how religious a man is by what he says, or does.

Before my accident I recall during our combat training that religion never showed much on the surface, but was very much there under the surface. All of us put up a tough front. We belonged to the school of realism. War was rough, so our actions and talk had to be rough—we figured. And the paratroops, I can safely say, were the toughest bunch of all.

One man in our company, Big Joe, was the most awesome physical specimen I have ever known. Huge in stature, a calloused hulk of muscle, Big Joe swore furiously, drank mightily and was ready to fight at the drop of a hat. He might have been Satan himself as far as the others were concerned, but I knew different.

On our practice jumps I sat next to Big Joe in the plane and jumped right behind him. As the tense moment arrived just before we were to go spilling out into space, I could see Big Joe’s face relax. It grew gentle, serene, and his lips moved in a quiet prayer. At this moment I think he felt very close to God. But once on the ground, he was a man of fierce action again, ferocious, grim, the Devil himself.

Not all soldiers concealed their religion with such camouflage. I know of one soldier—we’ll call him Steve—who did just the opposite. He was friendly, brimming with good humor, a thorough extrovert in every sense. To appreciate this story, you must get the picture of the inside of an Army barracks. Bunks are lined up on either side, sometimes as many as thirty on one floor. Privacy simply doesn’t exist.

In the evening just before lights went out, there was always a terrific hubbub … men coming in from pass, loud arguing, singing and constant traffic back and forth to the shower. Steve was always right in the middle of the loudest argument or the noisiest singing—until he saw time running short. Then he would break away and hustle out of his clothes.

But just before he climbed into bed, he always knelt quietly with folded hands at the side of his bunk … and prayed.

The noise, the bright lights, the confusion never bothered him. No one ever made fun of him or kidded him for it. In fact, underneath, these hard-bitten men admired and respected him for his open faith. To them it represented real courage in the face of possible ridicule. But I actually believe that Steve never felt that he was being conspicious. To him it was the right and natural thing to do.

The first occasions when he kneeled by his bunk there was no let-up in the noise about him. The men simply took a quick, surprised glance at Steve, then looked away. But after several nights there was a noticeable lull while he prayed. Voices died down, horseplay subsided until he had finished. It simply didn’t seem right to be kidding around during those few moments.

I mention these few experiences because I have heard so many people say that the youth of today are turning away from religion. Nothing can be farther from the truth. What many people consider irreverence on the part of youth is merely impatience—impatience with churchmen who won’t take more initiative in working out some of the post-war problems.

Young Americans—especially veterans of the past war—want to see the men of God roll up their sleeves and tackle such problems like these same ex-servicemen tackled the problem, say, of demolishing an enemy pillbox. Just talk isn’t enough. They want action!

My chance to act the part of Homer Parrish in The Best Years of Our Lives was one of the finest things that will ever happen to me. Not because it made me a Hollywood celebrity, but because it gave me a chance to show thousands of other disabled people that a handicap can give them the necessary impetus to achieve more than if their calamity had never happened.

I know this to be true with many others beside myself. A close friend of mine was a great athlete before he lost both legs. This blow changed the course of his life, and now he is a brilliant lawyer with a great future before him. He admits that but for this accident his present achievements would never have been realized.

There are hundreds, thousands of similar cases. And they were all able to rise from the depths, I feel sure, not only because they had courage, but because they also had a great source of inner power—religious faith.

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Guideposts Classics: Fred Rogers on a Grandfather’s Love

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Fred Rogers

The rain beat relentlessly against the windshield as we sped down the highway to Mercer. Pennsylvania. Mother sat next to me in the front seat. Since leaving from Pittsburgh nearly an hour ago, we had barely said a word.

It was 1952, and Ding-Dong was dying.

Ding-Dong was my grandfather, Fred Brooks McFeely, my mother’s father—and one of my best friends for as long as I could remember.

He earned his nickname years ago one sunny afternoon when he plunked me down on his sturdy lap to teach me the old nursery rhyme. “Ding Dong Dell.” The name stuck.

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I was grown up now, two years out of college and working in New York for NBC television. Just yesterday Mother had telephoned me at work with the news of Ding-Dong’s illness. Well into his 80s, he’d been in a nursing home for several years. In recent months. however, his condition had worsened.

“The doctors say it’s just plain old age,” Mother had explained to me quietly. “They say he’s fading fast.” There was a long pause. “Do you think you could come home, Fred? I think we should visit him as soon as possible.”

I made plans to fly from New York to Pittsburgh that evening.

In one sense, it was good to get out of the city. Lately it seemed that nothing had been going right. When I first graduated from college and arrived at NBC, I was a starry-eyed idealist—bursting with enthusiasm for the potential I felt that television held not only for entertaining, but for helping people.

I was particularly interested in children’s programming. But these were the early days of television and there didn’t seem to be much interest in such things.

So my goals seemed to be shifting—and this bothered me. I really didn’t know where I was going, or why. My self-confidence had sunk to near-zero. And never had I felt so far away from God.

I’d taken to stopping by St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue for morning prayer before going to work. Mostly, I prayed for guidance. But I was still uncertain and confused…

“Fred,” my mother interrupted my thoughts as our car continued on the wet highway. “He might not know you.”

“What?” I asked.

“Your grandfather,” she answered. “He’s all mixed-up. He doesn’t know what day it is. Sometimes he doesn’t even know where he is.”

I felt my throat tighten. Poor Ding-Dong.

“But he is happy,” Mother went on. “And he loves to watch television.”

“He does?”

“Yes, he loves to watch TV—especially The Kate Smith Hour. He knows that’s one of the shows you work on. And from what I gather, he’s forever telling everyone in the home about his grandson in New York City. He’s so proud of you, Fred. You’re special to him. You always have been, you know.”

I nodded silently.

READ MORE: BOB KEESHAN ON SHARING

Listening to the rhythmic sound of the windshield wipers, I let my thoughts travel back to childhood …

As a youngster, there was nothing I liked better than Sunday afternoons at Ding-Dong’s rambling farm in western Pennsylvania. Surrounded by miles of winding stone walls, the rustic house and red brick barn provided endless hours of fun and discovery for a city kid like myself.

I was used to neat-as-a-pin parlors with porcelain figures that seemed to whisper, “Not to be touched!”—to clean, starched shirts and neatly combed hair warning, “Not to be mussed!”—and to the inevitable wagging of an adult’s “Don’t do that, you might hurt yourself!” finger.

I could still remember vividly one afternoon when I was eight years old. Since my very first visit to the farm, I’d wanted more than anything to be allowed to climb the network of stone walls surrounding the property.

My parents would never approve. The walls were old; some stones were missing, others loose and crumbling.

Still, my yearning to scramble across those walls the way I’d watched other boys do grew so strong that finally, one spring afternoon, I summoned all my courage and entered the drawing room where the adults had gathered after Sunday dinner.

All were chatting softly, sipping cups of tea and coffee. I cleared my throat. No one seemed to notice me.

“Hey,” I said hesitantly.

Everyone noticed me.

“I, uh—I wanna climb the stone walls,” I said. “Can I climb the stone walls?”

Instantly a chorus went up from the women in the room.

“Heavens, no!” they cried in dismay. “You’ll hurt yourself!”

I wasn’t really disappointed. The response was just as I’d expected. But before I could leave the room, I was stopped by Ding-Dong’s booming voice.

“Now hold on just a minute,” I heard him say. “So the boy wants to climb the stone walls? Then let the boy climb the walls! He has to learn to do things for himself.

“Now scoot on out of here,” he said to me with a wink. “And come see me when you get back.”

“Yes, sir.” I stammered, my heart pounding with excitement.

For the next two and a half hours I climbed those old walls—skinned my knee, tore my pants, and had the time of my life. Later, when I met with Ding-Dong to tell him about my adventures, I never forgot what he said.

“Fred,” he grinned, “you made this day a special day, just by being yourself. Always remember, there’s just one person in this whole world like you—and I like you just the way you are.”

I wondered now if he ever knew how important that day—and his words—had been to me. I wondered if there was any way I could ever repay him…

The rain was letting up as we drove in the main drive to the neat clapboard cottage where Ding-Dong stayed. A white-uniformed nurse answered the door. “Mr. McFeely’s had a nice day,” she said as she let us in. “He’s watching TV now. Kate Smith’s show is on. It’s his favorite program.”

“Ding-Dong?” I said, peering into the dimly lit room. He was sitting in a chair next to the bed.

“Ding-Dong?” I hardly recognized him. He was so tiny, so frail and bent. He lifted his head.

“Hello,” he said, extending a feeble hand. “Hello, young man. Have a seat.” He motioned to a nearby chair.

“Have a seat,” he repeated, “and watch this show with me. This is Kate Smith. This is a fine show.”

I sat in the chair and watched the program. When the commercial came on, Ding-Dong said, “You know, young man, this television’s a mighty great invention, I’ve got a grandson in New York, and he told me all about it. He’s something, that boy. And he’s going to do great things in television. Yes, he is.”

Ding-Dong was smiling, his blue eyes twinkling ever so faintly.

“Yes,” he went on, “I’ve got quite a grandson. Would you like to meet him?”

It was obvious Ding-Dong didn’t recognize me. But that was all right with me. Wherever in time or place Ding-Dong was in his weary old mind, t just wanted to let him be. All I could hear were his own words echoing in my head:

There’s just one person in the whole world like you. And I like you just the way you are.

“That’s some grandson you’ve got,” I said. “You know, I believe he is going to try to do good things in television. He sure cares a lot about you. You’ve helped him understand some of the most important things in life.”

Ding-Dong smiled and nodded. He seemed very happy, but he was tired. He asked to be put to bed. The nurse helped him up from his chair. Mother and I tucked him in. We chatted a bit more and then sat quietly until he fell asleep.

On the way home, we were silent. But I felt strangely happy inside—somehow peaceful. Something very special had happened that afternoon. In a very personal way, God had answered my prayers.

I was beginning to understand what it was He wanted me to do with my television career: He wanted me to offer children the same kind of reassurance, encouragement and sense of self-worth that Ding-Dong had given me.

I didn’t know exactly how or when the right opportunities would arise, but I felt confident now that I would be ready to meet them.

A few weeks later, I received an invitation to leave New York and join a small educational television station in Pittsburgh that was looking for a person to develop new programming.

I jumped at the chance. And it was from those small beginnings—hand-built sets, props and puppets—that the themes and characters that now populate Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood evolved.

That was 26 years ago. Today, through the wonder of television, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood is visited each day by millions of children throughout America and other lands.

There have been changes over the years; characters and special guests to the Neighborhood come and go. But one thing—my message to the children at the close of every show—remains the same.

“There’s just one person in the whole world like you,” the kids can count on hearing me say. “And people can like you just the way you are.”

Ding-Dong, I know, would agree.

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Guideposts Classics: Douglas MacArthur’s Favorite Thanksgiving Story

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by General Douglas MacArthur

In 1908 Hachiro Yuasa, a 17-year-old Japanese boy, said goodbye to his parents and sailed for the United States. Raised in an earnest Japanese Christian family, Hachiro had long dreamed of coming to America to live the simple, Christian life of an American farmer and, later, to get his university education.

On ship, thin, young Hachiro composed an imaginary letter telling of his long-awaited arrival in California. He pictured his father at dinner, holding the letter, as he bowed his head for grace:

“Our Heavenly Father, we come together again, as a family. Yet one of us is away. May Hachiro’s presence be with us through the warm letter he has written. In Christ’s name…”

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But Hachiro didn’t write that letter—not for eleven years. His words about America always seemed to come out bitter. He did not find the Christianity he expected. In the restaurants no one said grace. Once, at a YMCA, he laid his pocket change on a dresser in the men’s dorm before going out to look for a job. When he returned, the “Y” secretary gave him a stern lecture about the care of money.

“But why?” Hachiro wanted to know. “Isn’t this the Young Men’s Christian Association?”

And where was this respect for individuals? California in 1908 was not an easy place for a Japanese person to live. Prejudice ran high. In time, Hachiro did find work picking cherries in the fruit fields near San Jose; but his hours were from sunup to sundown and, at irrigation time, far into the night.

Evenings, when he wasn’t working in the fruit fields, he would wash dishes in the farm kitchen. There, he attacked the pots and greasy water that were to become such a part of his life.

Standing over the sink full of dirty dishes and some of his own tears, he again composed in his mind a letter about America. But again he did not write it, because it would be bitter:

“I am not a brother to Americans. Our working crew is Japanese. Only the foreman is American. He spoke to me once. He said: ‘See? Them too green. No pick ‘em.’

“But I feel better now. I have formed a layer of ice around my heart which protects me.”

After two years of farm labor during the day and dirty dishes at night, Hachiro realized he was not making the headway in English he would need to enroll in an American university. So, in 1910, still thin and frail, Hachiro Yuasa moved to Oakland and went for a few months each to grade school, then high school.

He supported himself by house cleaning, window washing, and lawn mowing, at 25¢ an hour. He was a silent young man, moving solemnly about his chores. Hachiro liked the mechanical work—he didn’t have to talk to anyone and it gave him a chance to practice his verbs:

“I am cutting the lawn, you are cutting the lawn…I mow, you mow, he mows. We mow the lawn…”

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At the end of four years in this country, Hachiro, thinner than ever, had put aside seven $10 gold pieces and learned enough English to be accepted as a freshman at Kansas State. He had reached his goal, but he wasn’t ready, even yet, to let the ice melt from his heart.

For one thing, the only work he could find was washing dishes again and cleaning floors.

Each morning Hachiro swept out laboratories in the school’s Department of Entomology. Through sheer loneliness, he went over each bit of floor three times to wipe up every speck of dust.

In time, he was given work, grinding up bones for laboratory examination. But he grasped at the opportunity, instantly buried himself in his science, still making no friends and, now, wanting none. Cut off from the human life around him, memories of the old dream about an individual’s dignity were stuffed into a forgotten corner of his mind.

What letters Hachiro’s family had from their son were brief and contained little about America.

Eleven years passed.

While Yuasa was doing graduate work in Urbana, Illinois, the Reverend and Mrs. Roger Augustine of that town decided to share their Thanksgiving with a foreign student. Hachiro was invited.

Hiding behind a shell of scholarly and scientific reserve, Hachiro arrived at the modest home. But at the door he was greeted by a real smile, and Mr. Augustine took Hachiro’s hand in both of his.

Hachiro smiled back reluctantly, on his guard.

Dinner was ready. He sat down at the table with the family of four: mother, father, and two children. Behind a set smile, Hachiro was watching closely for the first sign that they might be fooling…Perhaps they really wanted him to do the dishes.

Then, carving knife in hand, the father bowed his head.

“Our Father: We have come together strangers. Let us part forever friends.”

They meant him! Struggle as he might against it, memories came flooding back of Hachiro’s own family. Grace before meals. The warm, close-knit family circle.

He looked at the faces around him. There could be no doubt about it: these people liked him, wanted to know him, thought of him not as Japanese, but as a person. An individual.

That night Hachiro wrote to his mother the letter about America he had put off for so many years.

“I was wrong when I looked for a whole government or a job or a school to respect me as an individual,” he wrote. “This is not where to find Christianity. Love and kindliness are things that happen inside each separate man. The individual, the person-to-person relationship—that is the important thing.”

Hachiro soon began to find friends. He told one of his instructors about a research problem that had been bothering him. The professor said, “Drop up to my house tonight, and we’ll go over it. I’m glad you asked me. I’ve been interested in your work.”

He told a fellow graduate student he hadn’t made many friends. “We’d like to have you in our science fraternity,” said the young man. “But you always seemed so busy.”

When Hachiro completed his work at the university, he had a new goal firmly rooted in his mind: show Japan the importance of the individual human being.

Hachiro returned to Japan in 1924 and took a post as professor of entomology at Kyoto Imperial University, the center of Japan’s scholastic life. But while his reputation as scientist and teacher quickly soared, his own dissatisfaction with the kind of education offered at Kyoto grew, too.

The formal, stereotyped schools in Japan offered no chance for the personal relationships that Yuasa had found all-important. There was no discussion, no questioning of what was spoken from the lectern. Student and teacher were separated by an impassable gulf of formality.

Finally, Yuasa could stand it no longer. He spoke out against god-shelves in school rooms, the bowing to Imperial Portraits. He took a stand for Christian principles. Young students, feverish over Japan’s successes in China, reported him to their military instructors. Hachiro began to see his name chalked on the walls:

“Down with the traitor Yuasa!”

Forced to resign, Yuasa left Japan for America. Many of his friends think it was just in time. During the years of World War II that followed, it seemed to Dr. Yuasa that his life was a failure…

Five months after the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Dr. John MacLean, minister of a large church in Virginia, got up and made a suggestion that the United States, by some act of love, show the world a Christianity more powerful than war.

His idea spread, and the “act of love” soon focused on a new kind of university for Japan, the International Christian University. Plans were drawn up.

The school would be for students of all faiths, an experiment in stressing the importance of the individual in contrast to the dictatorship teachings of pre-war Japan. Living-rooms in faculty apartments, for instance, would be over-sized to encourage informal discussion groups right in the professors’ homes.

On school property was planned a cooperative farm. Allowing professors to pitch in and work with their hands beside the students would develop a new kind of relation to authority.

On-campus dormitories would teach students to make friends more easily in a democratic situation.

Before long the proposed university had the backing of more American churches than had ever before cooperated on a single project. Help came, too, from labor and from management; from pacifist Quakers and from military men; from liberals and from conservatives.

In Japan, meanwhile, the response to the idea of this new school has been amazing. Out of a crippled economy, Japanese people in 1949 raised over 160 million yen (about $450,000) for the building fund, 95% of the money coming from non-Christians. This interest by Japanese of all religious faiths is very significant.

Ironically enough, the site chosen for the school was where an aircraft factory turned out fighters during the war, a few miles from Tokyo. There, last April, the entire Orient watched as International Christian University was formally opened amidst much fanfare.

But for one man the real christening of the University is taking place this month. On campus and in his home he is celebrating Thanksgiving dinner. And into his home he is inviting students to share the close personal companionship.

It will be a new experience for these young students to be personally sought out by such an important man, a man who learned about individual freedom at the grass roots level of America, the man who was unanimously chosen President of this great university experiment…Hachiro Yuasa

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Guideposts Classics: Don Murray on Standing Up for His Beliefs

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Don Murray

Six years ago I discovered that the test of my convictions was how much I would be willing to sacrifice for them—even if it meant jail.

While registering for the draft in 1952, I said that I would serve in any capacity that was not part of the military.

When called up, I restated my convictions. But I had a great deal of difficulty in establishing my points because I was so healthy, and I was an actor. They fingerprinted me, photographed me, and booked me on a charge of violating the draft act. I faced a $10,000 fine and five years in prison.

Though I had no money, a lawyer agreed to represent me for a nominal fee because he believed me. During the next 30 days, until my trial came up, I was thoroughly investigated by the FBI, and faced a grueling cross-examination by a suspicious and hostile prosecutor.

During that day of interrogation the prosecutor tried hard to talk me into avoiding all the trouble by accepting induction; I told him I couldn’t because of my beliefs.

“What are your beliefs?” he demanded.

“One way of putting them,” I answered, “is that the teachings of Christ, and my own human experience, convince me that nothing is gained by violence and killing except more violence and killing.”

“Don’t you think you could be wrong?” he asked.

“It’s true I could be wrong,” I said, “but it’s absolutely what I believe to be right. And if I didn’t have the faith and the courage to stand by what I believe to be right, then I’d betray the heart of my own character and my own human soul. And I’d betray all those in my country who have taken a stand on conscience and have suffered, and even died for it, but persevered.”

He said nothing, and left.

When my case came up, the prosecutor refused to prosecute. He told the court he was convinced I was telling the truth, and there would be no point in sending me to jail.

I first sensed an abhorrence for violence when I was a kid in high school, a feeling that grew steadily stronger in the years after. Somehow I learned early in life that there are simpler, more satisfying ways of settling conflicts than resorting to physical strife.

For instance, my father is a Catholic and my mother a Congregationalist; both are active in their own churches. Yet each of my parents has held strongly to his or her religious belief in a spirit of real understanding, one for the other, with that deep love which is the beginning of all understanding. This was a lesson for me to learn and profit from in my own home.

After my experience with the draft board, I found there were ways I could serve my country other than by fighting. I volunteered with the Church of the Brethren for overseas duty. In their training sessions, the Brethren impressed me tremendously as people who freely give a portion of their lives to make themselves useful to others.

And when Bob Richards, Olympic pole vaulting champion and a minister of this church, talked during our training periods, I made a commitment to try to lead my life that way. Later I, myself, joined the Church of the Brethren.

I was assigned as a laborer in German refugee camps for one year, and then I spent 18 months in Italy, first among the homeless and often lawless street orphans, and finally in the refugee camps around Naples.

These refugees were of all faiths: Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Mohammedan, and even Buddhist. All of them had run from tyranny of Nazism or Communism and ended up behind barbed wire. They had been in the camps from eight to ten years and, not allowed to hold jobs outside, had led idle, almost vegetable existences.

My main tasks were to teach them English, and to organize other activities. But I soon realized that primarily I had to give them a reason for getting out of bed in the morning. Refugee camp life had destroyed them as normal human beings, for spiritually, they were dead.

It took six months before I even could start to dispel their apathy. The first advance came when trips were organized outside the barbed wire. Then, when I learned that they could make objects with their hands, beautiful things of wood, leather, and metal, this was encouraged.

But their handicraft had to be appreciated by others, too. Where could we get these items sold? A plan was worked out with the Navy wives who put on a bazaar to sell the wares, and the refugees entertained at the bazaar too. It was amazing. The camps came alive.

At Christmas I suggested we put on a show, just the story of Jesus in English, with a few carols. The permanent staff had a few doubts about the idea, but let me go ahead. About 1,200 of the refugees came streaming in, some of them in protest. I held up my hand and shouted above the din—in Italian. They quieted down, I think, just to see if I could speak Italian.

My little speech concerned respect for the story of Jesus regardless of their own different faiths. Maybe they listened because they knew I could have gone home before Christmas, but had volunteered to stay among them six months more. Afterwards, however, they listened intently to the little play.

Oh, there were victories like this, but the whole thing was a humbling experience because I felt so terribly inadequate. Maybe the greatest thing that happened to me was that I did feel so useless. Sometimes I thought I reached some of them. Other times I doubted it.

One person who made me doubt that I had reached any of them was a brilliant fellow, of about my age. He had good looks and an Olympian physique, but one of his legs was badly crippled from polio. He was bitter and belligerent.

After 18 months in the camps it was clear to me that the only thing that could help the refugees was a sensible plan for immigration. Just before I left, I took a census so I could tell their stories and help them in some way when I got back home.

While interviewing this young, crippled fellow, I asked him the usual questions: how he came to the camp, how he existed there, what he thought of his future. That last question put still greater bitterness in his bitter smile. He started to leave, then turned and said:

“I don’t understand you. You are an American. You come from the land of big cars and refrigerators. But you walk around camp in one shabby suit of clothes, eat what we eat, and have nothing more than we have, though you probably could have much more. Yet you seem to be happier than the American officials and tourists who have all the things we do not have.

“I am afraid for you. I am afraid that the things I’ve lived through, and the things you have taken it upon yourself to live through, might destroy you and your happiness as it destroyed me. Why did you ask for this? Why did you come here?”

I knew at this moment, that for my own soul at least, everything I had tried to do in the camps hinged on my answer. Yet I could only answer what I felt and knew:

“I am an American, yes, but there is more in America than big cars and refrigerators. There is a faith, too. There are Americans who remember that they are children of God. And maybe in different ways, you and I are trying to be among those children.

“I came here because I am a Christian and believe in the power of non-violence. And as a Christian I should serve wherever there is despair and suffering. As a Christian, I also believe despair and suffering can be ended without violence through the power of Christ’s love for us. That has kept me in these camps although I have often wanted to run from here.”

The bitter smile left his face. He became very intense. “The cynical part of me knows you are naive,” he said, “and one day you will die the kind of death that destroys all innocence. Yet, there is still a spark of the idealist in me, and with that spark I pray that your hopes and dreams will escape that kind of death.” And he walked out.

“And with that spark I pray…”

The words echoed and swelled in my heart. I had reached him, and I knew that what I had tried to do was not without purpose.

There is always heartache in an unpopular stand though you know it is right. But there can be triumph too, when you do not compromise that right.

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Guideposts Classics: Diane Sawyer on Aiming High

Posted on March 11, 2026April 10, 2026 by Diane Sawyer

Many of us, I think, can look back and recall certain specific moments in our lives that take on greater importance the longer we live.

“The past has a different pattern,” T.S. Eliot wrote, when viewed from each of our changing perspectives.

For me, one of those moments occurred when I was 17 years old. I was a high school senior in Louisville, Kentucky, representing my state in the 1963 America’s Junior Miss competition in Mobile, Alabama.

Along with the other young contestants, I was doing my best to hold up under the grueling week-long schedule of interviews, agonies over hair that curled or wouldn’t, photo sessions, nervous jitters and rehearsals.

In the midst of it all, there was one person who stood at the center—at least my psychological center—someone I viewed as an island in an ocean of anxiety.

She was one of the judges. A well-known writer. A woman whose sea-gray eyes fixed on you with laser penetration, whose words were always deliberate. She felt the right words could make all the difference. Her name was Catherine Marshall.

From the first moment I met Catherine Marshall, I was aware that she was holding me—indeed all of us—to a more exacting standard.

While other pageant judges asked questions about favorite hobbies and social pitfalls, she sought to challenge. She felt even 17-year-old girls—perhaps especially 17-year-old girls—should be made to examine their ambitions and relate them to their values.

During the rehearsal on the last day of the pageant, the afternoon before it would all end, several of us were waiting backstage when a pageant official said Catherine Marshall wanted to speak with us.

We gathered around. Most of us were expecting a last-minute pep talk or the ritual good luck wish. Or at most an exhortation to be good citizens, but we were surprised.

She fixed her eyes upon us. “You have set goals for yourselves. I have heard some of them. But I don’t think you have set them high enough. You have talent and intelligence and a chance.

“I think you should take those goals and expand them. Think of the most you could do with your lives. Make what you do matter. Above all, dream big.”

It was not so much an instruction as a dare. I felt stunned, like a small animal fixed on bright lights. This woman I admired so much was disappointed in us—not by what we were but by how little we aspired to be.

I won the America’s Junior Miss contest that year. In the fall I entered Wellesley College, where my sister, Linda, was beginning her junior year. I graduated in 1967 with a B.A. degree in English and a complete lack of inspiration about what I should do with it.

I went to my father, a lawyer and later a judge in Louisville’s Jefferson County Court. “But what is it that you enjoy doing most?” he asked.

“Writing,” I replied slowly. “I like the power of the word. And working with people. And being in touch with what’s happening in the world.”

He thought for a moment. “Did you ever consider television?”

I hadn’t.

At that time there were few if any women journalists on television in our part of the country. The idea of being a pioneer in the field sounded like dreaming big.

So that’s how I came to get up my nerve, put on my very best Mary Tyler Moore girl journalist outfit, and go out to convince the news director at Louisville’s WLKY-TV to let me have a chance.

He gave it to me—and for the next two and a half years, I worked as a combination weather and news reporter.

Eventually, though, I began to feel restless. I’d lie awake at night feeling that something wasn’t right. I’d wait for the revelation, the sign pointing in the direction of the Big Dream.

What I didn’t realize is what Catherine Marshall undoubtedly knew all along—that the dream is not the destination but the journey.

I was still working at WLKY when, in 1969, my father was killed in an auto crash. His death—coupled with my urge to make a change—spurred me in the search for a different job and also seemed to kindle my interest in the world of government, law and politics.

I racked my brain. I put out feelers. And then one of my father’s associates said, “What about Washington?”

Several months later, in the autumn of 1970, I said goodbye to my mother and Linda and to the good folks at WLKY, and boarded a plane for Washington, D.C.

Now, I know this may sound incredibly naive, but when the plane landed at National Airport, I got off with a very firm idea of where I wanted to work. At the White House.

True, in the eyes of official Washington I might be right off the equivalent of the turnip truck, but working in the White House was exactly what I had in mind!

Thanks to a few kind words of recommendation from a friend of my father’s, I was able to obtain an interview with Ron Ziegler, the White House press secretary, and I was hired.

Those were heady days. The Press Office, located in the West Wing of the White House, was the hub for information flowing between the White House and the media. I worked hard and I worked long and loved every part of it.

Then came Watergate.

In the summer of 1974 the President resigned. Immediately I was appointed to his transition team in San Clemente, California.

My assignment on the West Coast was supposed to last only six months. But a few days after my arrival the President made a request that I was totally unprepared for.

He asked me to consider staying on in San Clemente—along with several other writers and aides—to assist him in researching and writing his memoirs. I had to make a choice, and a choice that I knew would have consequences.

“Career suicide.” mumbled some of my friends.

But I had worked for this man and he had been good to me. Now he was asking me for something that I was in a position to give. I have never regretted the decision. I stayed.

One day in the long exile, Catherine Marshall and her husband, Leonard LeSourd, called to say they were nearby. They came for a visit, and once again I felt the searching gaze and, implicit in it, the words. “What is next?”

Again I came to appreciate the immense power of someone who is unafraid to hold other people to a standard. And again I realized the way a single uncompromising question can force reexamination of a life.

Today, after three years as co-anchor on the CBS Morning News, I’m co-editor of CBS’s 60 Minutes television newsmagazine. We work at a breakneck pace with long hours and constant travel thrown in.

I keep a suitcase packed at all times so that I can be ready to fly out on assignment at a moment’s notice.

My New York apartment, which I see far too little of these days, has become my refuge, the place where I’m free to pad about in jeans and a sweatshirt—no makeup, no contact lenses, no hairspray.

Sometimes I unwind by playing the piano. Or I relax by doing something simple but satisfying—baking a pan of muffins or cleaning out an old junk drawer. These are the times of silent reassessment.

When I go out into the world again—and who knows where I’ll be flying next?—I can almost hear a wonderful woman prodding me with her fiery challenge to stretch further and, no matter how big the dream, to dream a little bigger still.

God, she seems to be saying, can forgive failure, but not failing to try.

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