The stories that keep us going

Tonight I had the opportunity to meet Joe Nicoletti, one of our candidates for mayor. I was able to meet him because Cindy Seymour, co-owner of Laci’s Burger Joint & Cafe, made it possible. She invited Joe to come talk to women at the cafe and, despite the downpour, a good number of women made it. (There will be another opportunity to do this as the meeting was officially canceled but not everyone learned about that and came anyway.)

All the candidates will have a chance to write an article for Walkable Eastwood, so I’m not going to repeat what I heard. But I will tell you that I was impressed with much of what he had to say. Toward the end, he was asked an excellent question: Why do you want to be mayor? He gave us two answers: one was the 6-word answer – “To make Syracuse a better place” and the other was the 2-minute answer… stories from his childhood. They were quite moving. And I’ll let him tell those, too.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what motivates people to doggedly pursue a vision, despite opposition, despite conventional wisdom, against great odds. And I think it gets back to key moments when we were young. So here goes… a few stories that keep me going. I hope you will tell yours, too.

My mom is probably the one who taught me to keep a sense of humor and look for the best in others, no matter what they’re doing. She had four very different daughters, and not once did any one of us ever feel that Mom was favoring one over another. And her sense of humor is legendary in our family. She appears to be this sweet little old lady, but she knows some of the naughtiest jokes I have ever heard. When one of my sons tells me an off-color joke, he says he get it from her.

Dad is the designer in the family. Some real old-timers around here might remember the radio show, and then the TV show, that Peter Mudge had on interior decorating. He saw the world in terms of beautiful design that had a practical purpose. And that extended to the village of Manlius, where we lived, for he served for years on the Village Board and helped to keep Manlius the quaint, walkable town it still is.

When I was in my early teens, Dad bought a store in another upstate town. He invested the family savings in the store. He didn’t know that he was buying from the wrong kind of people. He didn’t know the books had been cooked. And when he discovered that they had been, he tried to get his money back. That’s when the death threats started. He was forced to sell the store back to the original owners at a nearly 100% loss. The money that would have sent my sister and me to college was gone. I will never forget that injustice. People who had money to play with took advantage of someone inexperienced in the ways of certain business people.

When Dad retired, he flew to Mexico to check out a few places that he’d read were great for retirees on a limited income. The first town that he landed in was San Miguel de Allende, in the heart of the country and long a center for art and culture. Within four hours he’d put a deposit down on a house and he’s been there ever since and never regretted the move. One of the things he most loves about San Miguel is that it is eminently walkable. Being able to walk to everything he needs, including world-class cultural events, has meant that he still is walking, well into his eighth decade.

He almost didn’t make it. The immigration office was terribly corrupt, and it didn’t matter if you were Mexican or American, rich or poor, you were treated to extremely long delays and equally extreme costs to resolve simple immigration issues. You could wait a year for something that should take a week, and you could pay three thousand dollars for something that should have cost thirty.

He finally got fed up, for he could see that this injustice was affecting many of his Mexican friends and other American ex-pats, sometimes in tragic ways. So he wrote a letter to the President of Mexico! He was phoned some time later and warned that if he was lying about any of it, he would be sent directly to jail. That didn’t deter him, and he went to Mexico City as instructed. There he spent half a day with some high-level functionaries, got the corroboration he needed from others who had suffered at the hands of the immigration officials, and went back to San Miguel to wait for the outcome.

Within three weeks most of the staff of that office was fired. When he told me this, I honestly feared for his life. But soon he was very well known in town. The office was staffed with new people and suddenly everything was going more smoothly, much more quickly, and at a cost that people could afford. There was an article written about him in the local paper and strangers thanked him. I still wondered when the families of the fired staffers would get their revenge. Fortunately, nothing of any serious consequence ever happened.

But the earliest story I ever recall, and one that inspires me to this day, is very short. Great-grandma Caroline Anthony told my mother that we were descended from the uncle of Susan B. Anthony. I have yet to do enough research to trace the line all the way, but in a way that doesn’t matter. “Aunt Susan” has been a member of our family in any case, and in a family of four girls, her example has always meant a lot. She never gave up, and she died before women got the right to vote. Yet her life was not lived in vain and I’m sure she knew that.

Do you have an inspirational person in your family? Do you have a story that nourishes your soul when you just feel like giving up? Please tell it in the comments section. We could use a little inspiration.