HOW TO MEASURE GREATNESS

I'm 68 years old and I have seen a lot in my life. I have seen literally thousands of good things and thousands of bad things in that long lifetime. I heard a very rich man say on TV not so awful long ago that you have to be wealthy to be great. That has been getting under my skin for the last several months and I have to say that man is dead wrong. You do not have to be wealthy to be great. Greatness is measured by what someone does, how they threat other people, what they have accomplished in their life.

I am not a highly educated man and I do not pretend that I am. I graduated high school as an average student. I could have done better, I just didn't apply myself as much as I should have. Two years after I graduated I enlisted in the United States Air Force. I served my country and I did it proudly. To those people that think you have to be wealthy to be great I say, I served my country for four years and I am great.

I got married at the young age of 22. Now my wife and I who I met in the Philippines have been married for 46 years. That is a great accomplishment. I love my wife as much today as the day I first met her in the Airmen's Club on Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines. We have a son who served for 20 years as a U.S. Marine. We are so proud of him. We have a daughter that went to college and studied art. She is an artist/graphic designer. We are so proud of her. What she can do in her line of work makes us so proud. She designed the cover for three novels I have written. Our son and our daughter are great.

I spent 30 years working in manufacturing. I started as an engraver and worked my way to be a machinist. It was at times stressful but often rewarding. I worked on hoists for shrimp boats, engraved small gold drums that in the 1960s went into the guidance systems of missiles, I worked on valves for sewer and water lines, I worked on panels for computers, parts for aircraft, parts for the space shuttle. Sure they were minor parts but all important parts to accomplish a mission. My greatest achievement when working in manufacturing was a tiny but necessary part for a company. For 30 years the engineers at this company tried unsuccessfully to rivet a contact into a part only about an inch long. That part went into security and fire detection systems for large buildings. I worked on that part on and off in my free time. It took my a long time but finally I developed a process to rivet that part in that thin piece of beryllium copper. After, I was a technical adviser to  a company that built an automatic machine to rivet that part. The machine allowed us to make 1,000 parts an hour. It made $750,000 dollars a year for the company. I received the MVP award for that accomplishment. I got a watch and a dinner along with other people that did similar successes. That was my greatest accomplishment in manufacturing and yes I am great.

As I neared retirement, I got an overwhelming desire to write. I started by writing short stories. Some of those were published in Our USA Magazine. It gave me the encouragement to keep writing. I wondered if I could write a novel. The more I thought about it I came to the conclusion that each chapter in a book is a short story. That first novel was published in 2011, one year after I retired. The title was, Golden Haze, the story of a four legged angel and demons. Everyone that has read that novel have told me how much they enjoyed it. To that rich man who says, you have to be wealthy to be great, I say you are wrong again. When that novel brought joy to my readers, that is greatness.

I have written three other fiction novels. All have received good reviews on amazon and I feel proud when someone tells me they couldn't put the book down, they had to keep reading to see what was going to happen next. If someone can give that feeling to someone else, that is greatness. I will continue to write, because I enjoy it.

My point to this article is that you don't have to be wealthy to be great. I consider myself great for what I have accomplished in my lifetime. No, I am not rich, I am great. I am a patriotic American that served my country. Worked hard all my life and decided to not sit back and do nothing when I retired. To the millions of hard working Americans out there that go to work everyday to provide for themselves and their families, YOU ARE GREAT. Remember if it wasn't for you, that rich man could not brag about how wealthy he is. I am proud of how I have lived my life, by hard work, respect for others, and being a decent man. GOD BLESS AMERICA!!


Copyright  Larry W. Fish   2017