You would think that arrogance and insecurity would be mutually exclusive - at least I always did. What I learned seven years ago, and learned the hard way, is that they are in fact two sides of the same coin.
But this story really begins twenty-one years ago, when I first entered the world of local politics.
When I was 25 years old, I began a four year, often miserable term on the Fort Scott City Commission. Now, while I say it was miserable (and it often was), don't take that to mean I regret it - I don't, as I learned a lot of valuable lessons and met a lot of amazing people during those four tumultuous years.
One of those lessons was this: money can't buy happiness, but it can solve problems. One of the first problems we as a commission encountered after I was sworn in was the Miller Building.
The Miller Building was a historic building that was located where the Lowell Milken Center now stands in downtown Fort Scott. After the downtown fire in the spring of 2005, all that remained of it was the outside facade, which the other commissioners had voted to preserve in hopes an investor or developer would come along and save it.
A few months later, the second annual Gordon Parks Celebration rolled into town, and one of the guests of honor was legendary journalist and Kansas native Bill Kurtis. Kurtis had purchased and restored the historic Cook's Hotel building in his hometown of Independence, and hoping for a repeat, city officials made sure he got a look at what remained of the Miller Building.
From what I was told, Mr. Kurtis was very gracious to the likely not particularly subtle pitch from my late friend Donnie Russell, but it was not to be. It did cause me to come up with a hypothesis, though:
"What if there was someone who had enormous resources, and was willing to pour those resources into saving and restoring his historic rural downtown with no expectation of a return on investment?"
Such a person seemed unlikely to exist anywhere, much less Kansas, but I thought maybe somewhere out there a unicorn like that existed. As I visualized this mythical person, a thought kept going through my mind.
"Money can't buy happiness, but it can solve problems...."
Frequently the commission would be approached by non-profit organizations who genuinely helped the community, but often needed financial support.
Sometimes we could provide it, and sometimes there was none to give.
"Money can't buy happiness, but it can solve problems...."
2005 was also the first year I started my IT career proper, starting with a long-term temp job through Manpower at Great West Healthcare. Prior to that, I had attempted to run my own business, Graham's Computer Service, but I had lacked both the maturity and the work ethic to pull it off.
In December of 2007, I was offered my first proper full-time IT job at Atkinson Industries in Pittsburg, and I loved it. In 2009, after I finished up my commission term, I moved my wife, our two-year-old daughter and I to Frontenac, and I thought I would be there the rest of my life.
I was wrong. By January of 2011, I was bored out of my mind. I wasn't even sure why, I just knew I wanted to do something else, be somewhere else. So, I put out my resume, and within a couple of days had an interview with a bank in Neosho, MO, an interview which went amazingly.
Within 24 hours, I had a job offer, which I quickly accepted, not really contemplating that 60 minutes each way to Neosho was not such a great commute. It didn't matter, they wanted me, and I was going to find the contentment there that I had no longer been able to find at Atkinson.
I was wrong. It turned out to be the most political, backstabbing place I’d ever worked—and I’d actually worked in real politics. Around day 80, I was summoned to my boss’s office and told, simply, “It just wasn’t going to work out.”
I had never been fired before, from any job. I bawled like a baby the entire drive home.
As luck would have it, the office manager at Manpower who had connected me with Great West landed me an IT job at the bacon plant in Frontenac. On my third day, I had the last of three massive panic attacks. Convinced I was going to be fired, I tearfully told my boss I had to leave.
In time, with the help of my therapist, I got back on my feet. For a few months I worked at Best Buy in Joplin, fixing computers in back as part of the Geek Squad and regaining the confidence that the bank ordeal had obliterated.
Eventually I was called for an interview at a place in Humboldt that made trailer hitches. I had never heard of them, nor had I been to Humboldt since the days my mom and Aunt Elaine would occasionally drive me out there to a beloved (and now long closed) Mexican restaurant.
After a couple of interviews (and I'm pretty sure the first pick for the job accepting it but then changing his mind), I was hired. When I arrived at B&W Trailer Hitches on my first day, I was shown a video about the history of B&W, and of its President and Co-Founder, a former local farmer named Joe Works.
They showed a video from NBC about how during the Great Recession, instead of laying off a single person, Joe had put his employees to work doing projects around the community. But that was far from the only thing Joe was doing.
Building by building, bit by bit, Joe was restoring historic downtown Humboldt.
My hypothesis was real, he only lived an hour from Fort Scott, and instead of a McMansion, he lived in a house not much bigger than the ones I had grown up in!
My life was about to change immeasurably for the better.....but not until I made it a whole lot worse first.
Part 2 publishes Thursday.
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