Bye Bye Blue Eyes, Paul Newman We’ll Miss You!
On my desk is a little plaque I got from the nuns at Heartbeats. It has been one of my guiding lights for a decade. On it, Sister Margaret Cessna wrote,
“Ultimately, what really matters is a courageous spirit and a generous heart.”
Paul Newman embodied that. He was a courageous man, and a generous one. His long marriage to Joanne Woodward, in a community where marriage is tossed out as easily as last year’s cell phone, was a testament to love and to his spirit.
He created a company to distribute healthy foods – Newman’s Own. I bought them all the time, even though they were a tad more expensive, because 100% of the profits were donated to charity. Recent reports indicate that by December 2007, they had distributed more than $175 million from those profits.
Women loved him for those blue blue blue eyes. Even in his 80′s he still could stop hearts with them. But the men loved him, too. He was THAT GUY. The one they wanted to be. The strong, take-no-prisoners, No BS kind of guy who still had a twinkle in his eye and a sense of little boy mischief about him. There are a few like him around, but he stood out.
I love that in his last few weeks he is reported to have said, ‘It’s been a privilege to be here.’
Isn’t that sense of gratitude, and a healthy sense of humor, the most important armor you can have in troubled times like this? Isn’t that, after all, what it’s all about?
The measure of a man, though, is how his closest friends and family feel about him at the end of the day. They know him without the press releases, without the make up, without air brushing and spin. And this says it all – his daughters released a statement a few hours ago that began:
“Dad was a rare symbol of selfless humility, the last to acknowledge what he was doing was special. Intensely private, he quietly succeeded beyond measure in impacting the lives of so many with his generosity. Always and to the end, Dad was incredibly grateful for his good fortune. In his own words: ‘It’s been a privilege to be here.’ He will be profoundly missed by those whose lives he touched, but he leaves us with extraordinary inspiration to draw upon.”
My father died 21 years ago this week. He had piercing gray eyes that stopped rooms in his day. He was a huge inspiration to me. I feel their pain. I wish them well. And Paul, we’re gonna miss those ol’ blue eyes. Enjoy this next leg of your journey.
Beth
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© 2008 Beth Terry Seminars, Inc.
