Insight: A Matter of Character

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

If you close your eyes and think about it, I am confident that you can come up with at least several influential people who contributed in a significant and positive way in your life through their guidance or example.

Giles Hobin taught music at
Rush-Henrietta High School
for many years and was an
inspiration for many students.
COURTESY PHOTO 

Whether it’s a parent, a teacher, a coach or a mentor, we all have experienced a person who we can turn to for advice in making decisions and point out the differences between right and wrong when we are young. These situations leave an indelible imprint upon us which can become our moral compass when we eventually become adults.

This is called character, and that word comes from a Greek term meaning “I engrave.” Our own character is something that is “etched into” us by the experiences that we go through in our lives. Character development continues throughout our lifetime and in my opinion, each day opportunities arise to do something to further build our character into something that others can try to emulate.

Here are three influential people who helped shape my life in a positive way.

I first met Giles Hobin when I was a sophomore in high school. He was a music teacher at the school I attended in Henrietta, New York and was unusual to me for a distinct reason. On the first day of chorus class, he didn’t come across as authoritarian, rather, he made jokes and made his students feel comfortable and accepted. At the age of 14, Giles Hobin treated me unlike any adult had ever done before. He didn’t talk down to me, was always upbeat and his love for music was contagious.

His class met three times during the week, and I eagerly looked forward to each session. There was always a great exchange of ideas and viewpoints in his classroom, and I was astounded to learn that although he was 50 years old, he liked to listen to the same music I did. Most of all, I came to value his positive outlook on life, and the fact that in every interaction I had with him, he treated me as an adult and not just another hopeless teen searching for a future.

Some 56 years later, I am still friends with other many students in that class and I’m confident that all of them will tell you the exact same thing – that Giles Hobin was the best teacher they ever had and a major positive influence upon their life.

Tech Sergeant Bill Crosland was an imposing authority figure for me when I served in the U.S. Air Force. He had served in the Air Force during wars in Korea and Vietnam and was now in charge of the department I had been assigned to in 1977. He was a strict and no-nonsense supervisor who had grown up on a farm in Georgia and had a pronounced Southern drawl when speaking.

Being rather headstrong and new to the military, I ended up in his office many times for being overheard complaining about certain jobs I was given, such as sweeping and mopping floors or picking up litter on our unit’s grounds. To my genuine surprise, instead of yelling at me or admonishing me for my comments, Crosland took the time as a supervisor to explain to me why each of those unsavory tasks were important and fit into our unit’s overall mission.

Later when I became a supervisor myself, I came to appreciate Crosland’s approach and have used the same technique myself when I’ve had to counsel employees. He always treated people with respect and took the time to make sure that I knew that nothing I was sitting in his office for was personal. He also fiercely defended the people he supervised, and in my case, that meant a lot to have someone in a position of authority in my corner responding to the unit’s First Sergeant or commanding officer.

Dr. Harry Lancaster was my first journalism teacher in college in 1971 and had started writing for newspapers in the 1930s. He offered me strong advice about what readers expected from newspaper articles, suggesting that anything beyond the “5 Ws” – Who, What, When, Where, Why – was non-objective. He offered strong criticism of my writing and day by day in his Journalism 101 class, I could see my own improvement in storytelling.

But what placed Lancaster on my list here was his dogged insistence to me that journalists are chroniclers of life and must remain impartial always. He detested grandstanding journalists tooting their own horn or marketing themselves. He disliked journalists who inserted themselves into stories or who offered opinions supporting one side or the other about stories they covered.

Lancaster believed great articles reported truthfully about the human condition and a situation’s lasting implications for the future. He considered it to be a privilege to tell the stories of others. I often recalled him telling me that when I was covering a sporting event during my career and thinking I would have paid the newspaper I was working for to watch that game and then write about what happened.

Each of these individuals helped make me who I am today, and the world sorely needs more of them. <

Andy Young: The Making of a Soccer Coach

By Andy Young

Several decades ago, the athletic director at my alma mater was so desperate for assistant coaches for the high school’s fall sports teams that he recruited me to be one of them.

I was probably viewed as a viable candidate because I had previously coached boys’ freshman basketball there without abusing any referees, inappropriately interacting with students, or offending any hyper-competitive parents. I also had extensive baseball coaching experience. However, most importantly I was between jobs at the time, meaning I was available immediately.

I loved (and excelled at) basketball, but my qualifications for coaching either soccer or football were virtually nil. However, that didn’t appear to bother either sport’s head coach, each of whom seemed unusually eager to have me join his staff.

The football mentor made his pitch first, and even though I confessed I hadn’t played the game since a knee to my helmetless head had rendered me unconscious in a backyard game several years earlier, his ardor for me was palpable. “You’ll be great!” he said, assuring me he’d teach me everything necessary to coach the wide receivers and defensive backs.

While my football knowledge was limited, it was vast compared to what I knew about soccer. The only game I’d ever seen was one my father had taken me to before I was old enough to object. It was boring, bitterly cold, and as I could best recall every player on both teams (the Bridgeport Portuguese and the Bridgeport Puerto Ricans) was under 5-feet-6 and didn’t speak English.

The soccer coach, a notoriously straight shooter and former goalkeeper for the Bridgeport Italians, wasn’t deterred by my obvious inexperience. “Number one, you know enough for JV,” he said. “Number two, whatever you don’t know, I’ll teach you. Number three, you’ll be done October 15th.” Then he added, “By the way: football season goes until Thanksgiving. But hey, if you’d rather freeze every afternoon for the next six weeks after the JV soccer season’s over, go right ahead.”

What he didn’t say, presumably because he was confident, I already knew it, was the soccer team was likely to contend for the league title and state championship, while the undermanned footballers would probably lose more games that September than his soccer squad would in the next two or three seasons combined. He closed the sale by declaring, “Oh, and I don’t have anyone else, so I’ll see you tomorrow.”

The rest is history. The JV soccer team won close to 90 percent of their games over my six seasons as their coach, while the varsity took home a pair of state titles during that same period. Even better, I began actually playing the game, both outdoors in the summer and indoors in the winter, and to my delight found being the biggest and fastest person on the field was nearly enough to compensate for an utter lack of basic foot skills.

Even better, after just a few years on the job people in the community, basing their judgment entirely on the JV team’s stellar record every fall, began assuming I was a brilliant mentor for their boys.

There was one downside, however. One late autumn evening at a local grocery store I overheard two parents in the next aisle who, apparently unaware of my presence, were critiquing my coaching performance during the just-completed season.

“He really did a great job with the kids!” the first one exulted. “Yeah,” responded his friend. “But he should stick to what he knows. Sure, the guy can coach soccer, but it’s obvious he doesn’t know the first thing about baseball or basketball!” <