My Message Is …

     A MESSAGE FROM RONNIE is quite clear. It’s about a person who had everything, but did not prepare himself for real life after the days of flash bulbs and media attention were no more. My presentation stresses the importance of the word PREPARE, simply because a large percent of our youth seem to live only for today.

     RONNIE is the story of an athlete who first succumbed to doubts of his self-worth, then to the pangs and suffering of ALCOHOL ABUSE. He was a very kind, gracious and decent human being that eventually lost his life because of the horrible choices he made. I want every young person who aspires to excel in life to know the pit falls that in the end caused the death of this once proud athlete.

     MY MESSAGE IS: Motivational, Instructional, Inspiring and of strong Human Interest. I take the audience into the failures and horrible decisions and choices that RONNIE made that eventually led to his demise. I speak of his early days in high school and college then into his young adulthood. I use his troubled choices to impress on today’s youth that there is a much better opportunity to be successful in their personal and business life, provided they are not chained to ALCOHOL, as was RONNIE.

     MY MESSAGE IS: To make preparations for life while you’re traveling through it, not wait until it’s over. Perhaps Dr. Norman Vincent Peale may have said it best, “The tragedy of life is not that it ends too soon, it’s that we wait too long to begin it”.

     MY MESSAGE IS: Get your education – finish school, earn your degree and prepare for real, every day life and life in the hereafter.

     MY MESSAGE IS: Live your own life – be your own person. RONNIE, perhaps without even knowing it, came to idolize Elvis Presley and Hank Williams but did so within the confines of his own mind, behind closed doors, never opening up to anyone. Today, everywhere we look, in every venue, our young people are idolizing entertainers and more often than not, to the extreme. They lose all perception of life because they so much depend on the character of others to make them happy and to fill the void within their own life with what they deem to be “an impossible dream”.

     MY MESSAGE IS: Don’t quit. Don’t stop believing in yourself. Never, ever give up. Some wise person once noted, “Many a failure turns about, when he might have won, had he stuck it out”.

And from my very
Personal point of view
MY MESSAGE IS…

     You may have heard it said, “When a senior citizen passes, you lose an entire library”. This I sincerely believe. I have four grown children who have blessed me with nine wonderful grandkids. Currently, there are three in college, three in high school and three in kindergarten. From this broad age range it’s certainly not hard to imagine that I have just about covered the waterfront. There is not much that could go on in life that I haven’t, in some way, been involved personally or from the sidelines.

     I have an unshakable desire to pass on my personal experiences to my children and grandchildren and to every young person who shares with me their desire to excel in life. If RONNIE could speak from the grave he would whisper in their ear, “Don’t do as I did. I made way to many horrendous and grievous mistakes”. My job is to tell his story to all who will listen!

     During my presentation I am strong on motivating our young people to find the best path for their personal and professional life. This is ultra important. They need to understand that Life is tough and many of them will fail several times during their journey here on earth. But they should always remember that failure is never fatal and success is never final. To fail is a necessary step in order to be able to get up again. The most unspeakable disaster of the highest magnitude is to fail and not pick your self up.

     Yes, times will be tough, our world is no place for timid souls. The lesson I learned from the book of JOB teaches, “You won’t understand but you must endure until you prevail”. Every high school and college student has the ability to become more successful than what they have already planned for themselves. There is a grand opportunity ahead for each one who understands that there is no power on God’s green earth that can keep a first class person down or pick a fourth class person up.

     Surely, there will be obstacles along the way. There is a snake behind every rock, but success is measured by how high you bounce when you hit bottom and, for the most part, success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.

     This world we live in needs leaders, real leaders, and our young people must stand up to the challenge. The greatest success stories are born from those who defied the tendency to just run with the crowd and you can be assured these young men and women have their eyes trained on a goal that no one can take away from them. On the other hand, some of our college students feel they are lost and have no idea of what they want from life. I got news for them. You can’t be lost if you don’t know where your going!

     Today, our society seeks strong men and women who want to lead, not follow. There are so many students who are accustomed to doing nothing more than “sloughing-off”, therefore, those who are serious about their studies and who truly want to make something of their life, will find Infinite opportunities because many classmates simply will not measure up.

     The future couldn’t be brighter for students who truly seek to capitalize on their God given talents, young men and women who never, ever give up on life. This game of life is tough and everyone, independent of everyone else, has to choose his or her own future and be the master of their own house.

     I’m a firm believer that our world is a stage and everyone is destined to play a significant part no matter their life style or station in life. Our time on earth is not a practice session, it’s for real and we need to make the best of it while we’re here.

     Each person was placed here for a very specific reason and purpose and we should not give up the search until we find and are assured of that purpose. Still, there are countless numbers of young people who are in search of something without having the foggiest idea of what they are looking for. Recently, a young man remarked, “Some days it’s just not worth chewing through the straight jacket”. I’m afraid this tormented attitude may be the same miserable circumstances that surrounds and captures the state of mind, essence and soul of others his age.

     It’s all about choices & decisions, results & consequences. It should never be about clinging to events of the past. That bell has been rung and there is absolutely nothing that can be done to change what has happened. The past is prologue so there is no use looking back. You can’t do anything again. When it’s done, it’s done. It’s over. You can, however, do something similar and by so doing you must improve on your mistakes of the past.

     It would be well for us to realize that perhaps some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers because our personal experiences has taught us that our life is shaped by opportunities we missed as much as by those we seize. Life is a game and every one of us are assigned a purpose and are destined to play a part, so when someone bails out of life it leaves the balance of civilization in a real pickle.

     If our younger generation would only understand that happiness is an inside job and convince others of the same, it would go a long way in strengthening their personal outlook on life. In the past, I, perhaps like some others, have often believed that some special person could make me happy. This, indeed, was a hard lesson to learn, but thank God I did. I was hallucinating through an absolute vacuum, a completely false premise that would never come about, never happen. Happiness is your job and your job alone. No one can make you happy.

     Some of our young people often feel their life is out of order but they never stop long enough to understand that it can’t be out of order because it is they who created the order in the first place.

     Much of life is all about having a satisfied mind, kinda like your cruse control, when set; it keeps you out of trouble with the law without much effort on your part.

     You have to learn to bend so you want break. Take life with a grain of salt and realize that everything is not always going to be perfect. There will always be peaks and valleys. During his speech when President Nixon resigned he noted, “You cannot visualize the wonder and beauty of the highest peak unless you’ve been at the bottom of the deepest of valley”.

     It appears to me that a lot of our youth, especially some of the ladies, often feel intimidated or inferior. And age-old adage reminds us that no one can make you feel inferior without your consent. This could not be truer than in the time frame in which we now live. Life indeed may be short, but it’s wide and we should take advantage of every moment and do so completely free of any substance that would incapacitate or debilitate our mentality.

     It has been noted in song, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose”, but don’t you dare forget that freedom is what made and is making our country great. We, our kids and grandkids, are growing up in a world where we enjoy the fruits of labor of countless numbers of our ancestors who dug, hoed and clawed this country out of the wilderness. Strong men and women who asked nothing for nothing. No handouts. No payments for not working. Just brawny, tough men and women who dreamed and prayed for a better life, a better existence for their children.

     They were brave people who dared to be un-equal. People like the framers of our constitution and other Americans such as Abe Lincoln, George Washington Carver, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford, people who worked their way to the top without government subsidies or handouts. They chose to rise above the common place and if not for the greatness of these and thousands of other special men and women, those of strong character, there would be no land of the free.

     You may have heard someone say, “He is from privilege”. This, of course, means his family had money and the wherewithal to afford anything they want. But don’t feel left out because every American is from privilege and for this we must be thankful every day of our life.

     This was rather long, so thanks for letting me express my personal feelings. I sincerely want every young person to understand there are tremendous opportunities ahead, that is, provided they don’t screw it up by throwing their life away on the anguish and suffering of alcohol and drugs.

     I’ll close by noting, without God there is nothing when you reach the top. You are never alone, when you need a friend to talk to, HE is only inches away, the length between your knees and the carpet.