Leader FOCUS June 5, 2000 - Jack Kemp and Green Fescue

Jack Kemp made me proud of my conference nametag this week.

(People often ask if I am related to him. I don’t know for a fact, but I usually say, “I’ve met his son, Jeff. I’ve heard Jack speak several times, but we have not compared family trees. I like to think we are… somewhere down the line.”)

He’s still the quarterback. When he speaks, he tends to lean forward, as though his hands should be on his knees. He barks out sentences in short phrases. Straightforward. Comprehensible. It feels like you are in the huddle with him. His voice is raspy from shouting over the noise of the stadium crowd. And when he’s done, you feel like shouting “ready, BREAK!”

Jack Kemp played football at Occidental College. Then he went on to play professionally for eighteen years – first for the San Diego Chargers (where he earned $11,000 a year) and then for the Buffalo Bills. In ’64 and ’65, he led the Bills to the American Football Conference Championships and would have played in the Super Bowl – if there were one. (The first Super Bowl, matching up AFC with NFC was in 1967 when Green Bay (Vince Lombardi) played Kansas City.)

Seems like Jack Kemp has spent a lifetime overcoming the stereotype of a football player – all brawn, no brains. Too many blows to the head. Too many gimmie grades from teachers and professors who were also fans. Too many freebie jobs from companies who want the name association more than the skills (assuming there are any.)

So Jack Kemp became a philosopher politician (sounds like an oxymoron – but it fits here). He’s a smart guy. He reads voraciously. His speeches are a combination economics theory and war stories. His battlefields have been the gridiron and the political arena. He talks about Adam Smith and A. Lincoln and T. J. (Thomas Jefferson) and Athens and Rome and zeitgeist and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Some critics believe that he lost his bid first for the presidency (1988) and the vice presidency (1996) because he was too bookish. Too pedantic. Obscure. That’s nonsense.

He read three books last week, he told us. Books about the Golden Age of Greece (he just returned from a tour of Greece and Israel). And the history of Judaism. He traced the steps of St. Paul, he said.

He reminded us that in the two hundred twenty four years that have passed since the signing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia, the United States of America is the only nation to retain it’s political and economic system to this day. In 1776, around the globe, emperors and monarchs and palaces and governments stood in place, believing they were invincible. Today they are all gone. Borders and alliances and capital cities and armies and kings and shoguns and czars and prime ministers and houses of government have stood and then fallen. Only our system of representative democracy remains intact. It has not only survived, but stands as a model copied by nations all over the world. The USA is an international template. We have set the standard, says Jack Kemp, and the world still comes to us to see how it’s done.

The Internet (which merely provides a connection) does not fuel the global economy. Instead, free markets in the context of representative democracy fuel it.

Helen Keller was asked, “is there anything worse than losing your eyesight?”

“Yes,” she replied. “Losing your vision.”

Jack Kemp is on a mission these days. Ronald Reagan is his inspiration. He’s on a mission to keep the vision of America alive.

So he formed an organization along with several high-powered friends in Washington (William Bennett and Jeane Kirkpatrick) to foster growth, economic well-being, freedom and individual responsibility. He’s identified the four essential ingredients to the stunning economic expansion bringing us to this point in our history – opportunity, competition, ownership and freedom.

Keep them alive, he says.

The irrepressible quarterback, Jack Kemp, is still on a roll.

* * * * * * * *

Tiny thin blades of green grass poked through the topper on Thursday.

I had no idea. Planting a lawn is a lot of work.

The first task is breaking up the decomposing granite. Hard and dense, baked solid by a relentless California sun. Then grinding in soil amendment – in my case, mushroom compost. Two dump truckloads (I rented the truck myself; the best part was the dumping. “Stand back!” I shouted from the driver’s seat, and pulled back the lever.) Then digging ditches for the irrigation. Rainbirds. PVC pipe. Glue. Valves attached to the timing device. I only broke four pipes under pressure as I wrestled the Ditch Witch around the yard. “Coulda been worse,” I told Carolyn as she surveyed the accidental flooding.

There’s a patch next to the vegetable garden that needed lawn. Until now, it was a place for weeds. It’s our third summer, so I’m learning the seasonal sequence of those weeds. They come in waves. Some with stalks so fibrous and thick, not even a heavy-duty weed-wacker can take ‘em down. So we go after ‘em with Round Up – a chemical weeder that knocks ‘em out. Dead. In fact, it works so well, it’s gotta be politically incorrect.

I’ve been telling people about my plans for a volleyball court. Some of them I’ve told twice but forgot. “Yeah, I know, Ken. You already told me.” So the plan’s been on the list a little too long. Finally, this last Friday night, the seed went down.

The Rainbirds work. I filled in the ditches. Installed a three-inch drainpipe right down the lowest line of the lawn. The sprinklers give good coverage. The timer is operational. We raked, and smoothed. Raked and smoothed. Knocked down the high spots. Filled in the low spots. Then we spread the seed.

The seed in the bag looks like tiny, inert wood chips. I reached in and took a handful, then opened my hand and let the seeds fall back into the bag through my fingers. And I wondered, how in the world do these little seeds transform themselves into a thick green lawn?

I remembered somewhere studying about germination. And how under the proper conditions, water causes a seed to swell. The seed coat breaks, and tiny root hairs reach out into the moist soil and draw in nutrients. The seed settles in, and sprouts an embryonic stem, which reaches upward, breaking through the surface in search of sunlight. I knew something about photosynthesis – that the green chlorophyll absorbs the sun’s light and converts it to life-giving energy. The cells split and multiply. A genetic code programs the rest.

But the more I know, the more I appreciate the element of miracle.

So after all the backbreaking labor - the digging, the tilling, the raking… the planting, I stood on the sidewalk, and looked at those seeds spread all over soil and I had this empty, scary feeling that must be common among landscapers and farmers and growers of all sorts.

So I prayed a prayer that went something like this –

“Lord of the heavens and earth, I’ve worked really hard on this. My back hurts. The soil is fertile. And damp. The sun is shining. It’s all there. But I’m looking at these little seeds, these tiny wood chips, and for the life of me, I don’t understand how it works. What if nothing happens. What if, a week from now, two weeks from now, I come out here and those seeds are still there. Seeds. Laying there dormant. Nothing else. No grass. No green blades. What then? All this work. All this effort. Nothing. What’s the point? What’s the use?”

My prayer went on. “I’ve done my part, Lord. But now, I’ve got nowhere else to go. Those seeds are in your hands. All that stuff they taught me in science class, they called it botany, it was all good. But I still call it a miracle. Do your thing, Lord. I need you now. Turn those wood chips to grass. And when it comes up, I’m gunna thank you. And you know what, Lord?” This part came to me like a revelation. “We will have done it together. You and me. Partners.” The thought made me smile.

“Amen,” I said. And I felt a little better.

So Thursday this week, six days after the prayer, still nothing. We watered three times a day. I rented a roller with a grate spreader tumbler and brought in a little more fertile topper. We spread it around. And as I made my turn, I saw it. Right in the center of the patch. Tiny green shoots poking through the compost. Hundreds of them. It looked like the hair on the back of an elephant, but it was green.

When a farmer works his fields, he must feel the same. Every year. He’s got a history of watching his crops come in. But I wonder if he ever tires of seeing that first sign of life. Yep, here comes the fruit again, the grain again, the corn again. And it must make him smile inside. All the physical labor. All the planning. All the watering and nurturing and pruning and thinning, keeping those machines running and tuned and fueled, the blades sharp. And then I can guess - farmers pray, too. When the shoots sprout through, and reach for the sky and then bear fruit, well, that must be the thing that keeps that farmer going, year after year.

So I was rolling out a little more topper, and I saw it. I stopped dead in my tracks and stared. No mistaking it.

I was looking at bright green fescue.

* * * * * * * *

I need to remember all of this a couple months from now every time I see the kids playing volleyball out there.

I’ll remember what that patch looked like when it was weeds. I’ll remember the dump truck and the tiller and the Ditch Witch and the broken pipes shooting water like Old Faithful and sprinting for the valve. I’ll remember the spreader and the tiny wood chips. And I’ll remember standing on the sidewalk, and praying a prayer.

And I’ll look at that lawn, and listen to the kids laughing and playing, and I’ll know that my prayer was answered.

You are a leader. You spend your days spreading seed. Today it may be digging ditches. Or feeding. Or watering. Or pruning. Sometimes, you look down and those seeds look like dead wood chips. You wonder if they will ever spring to life. Much less, produce.

Jack Kemp reminds us that we live in the best of times. The system is tried and true. People of character, people like you, can keep the vision alive. And you will be rewarded. Opportunity abounds. Competition is good. Ownership is for real. And freedom paves the way to independence.

Today, on this Monday morning, all of this is yours.

If you’re wondering if the green will ever sprout, take a moment to pray a prayer. Make it simple. Make it yours. Make it one from the heart.

Take it from Jack and me. It works.

Special Thanks to my good friend David Belcher, owner of Rhino Media Group and creator of WisdomGram