Page 40 - Salesianum - Distinguished Gentleman - Summer 2020

FEATURE
honor to be a part of the running program, where I was a member of six state championship teams. I do not remember many of the races and I have since forgotten many of my times
in the races, but I could never forget my team.
I also remember every victorious bus ride heading back to school after each of the state championships. They all shared one thing: The song we sang on the way home. As we all held onto the shining new hardware we wore and knew we were about to bring another banner for the gymnasium, we sang “Oh, When the Sals Go Marching In.” Taking from my father’s sentiment, when each of us comes to the end, may we each be in that number when the saints go marching in.
A Million-to-One Shot
A short while ago, I was standing with my father as he was training six of my nieces and nephews in our back field. A group of them come to the house and train with him twice a week, and his philosophies have not changed over the years. He was still just sticking to the basics. “There is a price to be paid for success and that price MUST be paid in advance,” he shouted to them in between their 200-meter intervals. “You only live once. But if you do it right, once is enough.” My nieces and nephews hung on his every word as they prepared for their next interval. It was like having Yogi Berra, Jim Valvano, Tony Robbins and Vince Lombardi all wrapped up in one.
“Your talent is God’s gift to you. What you
do with it is your gift to God,” he said as they jogged to the line for their next interval. It was
a beautiful spring day with chirping birds, skies of blue and clouds of white. “If this isn’t Heaven, it’s at least in the same ZIP code,” he added just before he blew the whistle to send them off into the field. This was one of his favorites. It was
a reminder that Heaven was always near, no matter where we stood.
As we watched my nieces and nephews glide through the field, he turned to me and asked, “Hey, whatever happened to that book we talked about writing? The world needs some of that hope we talked about when I was making my comeback.” It had been almost seven years since we had walked the fields during his recovery.
At the time, I was both cautiously excited and extremely anxious about my answer, which was that I had kept my end of the bargain and had been steadily chipping away at it for years. I was also terrified because writing has never been my “thing.” Back at Salesianum, I was happy if I could pull off a B in English class with the great Chuck Selvaggio.
Yet it turned out I was right where I was meant to be after all. And so was my father.
Little did I know when I handed him a printed proof in August of last year that he would be the one to bring this manuscript across the finish line. I told him that I only had one more page to write and that was the dedication page.
Looking down at the almost published Seven,
38 DISTINGUISHED GENTLEMAN | Summer 2020