12524 EXTENSIONS OF REMARKS, Vol. 157, Pt. 9 July 29, 2011 the obvious choice to speak at a prayer there was one place in town that paid cash My first job was in Nashville at a theme breakfast. When I was directing ‘‘We Were for labor, and that was the plant where they park, managing a live show that featured Soldiers’’ at Fort Benning, Georgia, I found froze huge blocks of ice, and men would pick barnyard animals playing musical instru- time one weekend to drive over to visit them up with tongs and sling them up onto ments. I’m not making this up. I had a piano former President Carter’s Sunday lesson at wagons so they could sell them to farmers playing pig, named Pigarace. I had a duck his home church in Plains. I asked a friend whose homes had no electricity. My grand- that played the drum named Bert who knew the Carters to save me a seat, and father was the only white man who did that Bachquack. You can imagine how proud my when I arrived, I found the seat was right job; all the rest were what they then called parents were. next to Rosalyn Carter. Apparently, Mrs. ‘‘colored’’ men. I had my embarrassments and my set- Carter, gracious Southern lady that she is, So his first day on the job, the supervisor, backs, but I kept writing. I moved to Los An- had wanted to be sure I felt at home. I sat another white man, approached my grand- geles. I got an opportunity in television. I down and Mr. Carter asked the congregation father and told him, ‘‘Listen, I just want you married. We had two beautiful sons. I had to open their pew Bibles to a passage that to know, all I got on this crew besides you is purpose in my life, and I worked like I’d seen was the subject of his lesson. Now I grew up a bunch of . Colored men, and I cuss at my father work, with pride and with passion. in Baptist churches, and I was familiar with ‘em to make ‘em work. So if I forget myself I’d won a multi-year contract with a thriv- the passage he was about to read. So I took and I call you an S.O.B., don’t pay me no ing company. I bought an old home and re- the chance to open the hymn book to check mind, I don’t mean nothin’ by it, that’s just modeled it; I was promoted to producer. Ex- on the lyrics of a hymn I was thinking of the way I am.’’ And my grandfather looked cept for an occasional mishap with my tie, using in our film. And as I was thumbing at the supervisor and said, ‘‘I understand life was sweet. through the hymn book, Mrs. Carter touched completely. And I just want you to know Then the Writer’s Guild went out on my arm and handed me her Bible, opened to that if you do forget yourself, and you call strike, which caused the company I worked the right passage. And I realized in that mo- me an S.O.B., and I hit you in the face with for to void its contract with me. The strike ment that Mrs. Carter had logically assumed a claw hammer, don’t pay me no mind, I went on forever, and when it was over the that since I was a Hollywood director I don’t mean nothin’ by it, that’s just the way company was barely there anymore. I was didn’t know the difference between a hymn I am.’’ out of work, my savings were gone. No one book and a Bible. And I have to admit, it did And in that one story I understood exactly would return my phone calls—I’m sure that’s strike me that I had the perfect chance to who my grandfather was, and exactly who I never happened where you work. steal Mrs. Carter’s Bible. If anyone stopped wanted to be. And I understood the power of I kept trying, of course. I was always good me, I’d just say, ‘‘She gave it to me.’’ It was a story. at trying. But one day I was sitting at my worn with use, marked with joy and tears. My father, and mother, worked extremely desk and I was staring at nothing, my stom- Imagine what it would bring on e-bay. hard so that I could go to school. He was a ach in a knot, my hands trembling, and I re- To prepare myself, I’ve studied the speech- salesman who loved his customers, and he alized I was breaking down, as my father es of those who have preceded me in this po- rose in his company, with promotion after had. I feared I had failed my father, and my sition in past years. The causes they’ve ad- promotion . until one day the family- mother and my grandmother. And my great- vocated from this podium are vital, and I owned company he had worked for twenty est fear was that I would fail my sons. I was have no way to compete with their accom- years was sold to a professional investment afraid they would see me come apart, as I plishments or their eloquence. So this morn- group who knew nothing about the business had seen my father come apart, and it would ing I’d like to do something that as nearly as itself but who believed it would prosper if be something they could never forget. I can tell is unprecedented for a keynote ad- they fired all the old guys and hired cheaper I got down on my knees; I had nowhere else dress at the National Prayer Breakfast. I’d younger guys. My father was one of the old to go. And I prayed a simple prayer. I said like to speak about . prayer. I’m not a guys. He was 38. I’ve always wondered if my ‘‘Lord, all I care about right now are those philosopher. I’m not a preacher. I’m a story- father lived his life hungry for the father boys. And maybe they don’t need to grow up teller. Like Jesus. As nearly as I can tell, he’d never had; his own father had died be- in a house with a tennis court and a swim- that is my only similarity to Him. Actually fore he was born—the grandfather he’d told ming pool. Maybe they need a little house there is one other: I too have cried out, ‘‘My me about was my mother’s father, not his. with one bathroom, or no bathrooms at all. God, why have you forsaken me.’’ He had never been fired from anything. The Maybe they need to see what a man does I’ve lived a life of tremendous privilege. I strongest and best man I ever knew, and he when he gets knocked down, the way my fa- grew up just down the road from here, in had a complete breakdown. ther showed me. But I pray, if I go down, let Lynchburg, Virginia. Virginians are a right- While he was in the hospital, my sister and me go down not on my knees, but with my eous and sober people, too proud to tell a lie. I were farmed out to relatives. For awhile, flag flying.’’ And I got up and I began to write the words But I was born in Tennessee. My father was we lived in a house that had no indoor that led to ‘‘Braveheart.’’ born in Lizard Lick, Tennessee. The men in plumbing. When I told my father about that he said, ‘‘Well . rich people have a canopy Great writers like Robert Frost and Jane my father’s family are Alton, Elton, Dalton, Austin have said that an ending that does Lymon, Gleaman, Herman, Thurman and over their beds—and we’ve got a can of pee under ours.’’ And that’s when I knew my not surprise the writer won’t surprise the Clyde. They called Clyde, Pete. Nobody knew reader. When I wrote about William Wallace why. daddy would be all right. The last sale he had made for his old com- standing on a battle field ready to die for When I was a child I suffered from attacks pany was for 90,000 dollars—in 1961. The first what he believed, I felt it and when I came to of asthma so severe that I couldn’t breathe sale he made when he started his next job the end I wept. at all, and I had the real sense that if I pan- was for 90 cents. Working one hundred hours Was that moment of prayer the single de- icked I would die. Grandmother would hold a week, he clawed his way back to success. termining factor in the arc of my whole life? me in her lap all night long, and she would God Bless America. And God bless my Of course not. My teacher and mentor in col- sing to me, and tell me stories from her Daddy. He told me that I could go to college lege, the great Thomas Langford, of Duke childhood, and from the Bible. And she would anywhere—something he and my mother had University, once told us in class that no de- look into my eyes, and she would smile.