RAGS TO RICHES

There are many great stories of people going from rags to riches and this subject has been a very popular theme with many great writers, both fictional and nonfiction.

Stories such as Cinderella or The Prince and the Pauper or The Man in the Iron Mask, as well as heart-warming stories of early American pioneers such as Laura Ingalls Wilder and Samuel Clements and the young Abraham Lincoln, have been a part of our great American heritage for many generations.

Even in this modern age we learn of how the desperately poor have overcome all obstacles to become rich and famous. The lives of such people as Loretta Lynn or Elvis Presley or Dolly Parton and many others, captivates our imagination and instills within us the simple fact that we too can become rich. All it takes is faith, hard work, a lot of hope, some luck, and an abundance of tenacity.

I know this is part of the great American dream because I have lived that dream, I have gone from rags to riches. I have experienced an abundance of life that many of my counterparts to this day can only dream of.

Born the poorest of the poor in a tenement crowded with the unemployed, the uneducated, and those with little hope and no zest for the future, I managed to crawl from beneath those chains of apathy and antipathy to enjoy a rich and abundant life.

My mother was a grade school dropout and a mother of two by the time she was sixteen, my father just a passing memory. I was handed off to so many poor struggling relatives I never knew what a real parent was.

By the time I was into my early teens I had lived in over two dozen towns and attended at least ten schools, often two different ones in the same year.

At age sixteen I was alone on the streets of Chicago, running wild with a street gang called the Scorpions. My future consisted of no hope, no help, and probably a short-lived career of penny-ante crime leading up to eventual prison.

The miracle of change began when I learned the value of education. I may have stayed on the streets, but I lived in the museums and the libraries. I read and studied everything I could get my hands on.
Given the choice of military service or prison, I fortuitously selected the Army.

From that point on, education became my guiding light, my hope, and the fulfillment of all my dreams. I had a wonderful military career and took advantage of all the education the Army offered me.

As noted, today I can look back on having done things and gone places that most people only dream of. I am a successful editor, author, artist, lecturer, and have a substantial background in industrial management, all of which would have been impossible without the desire to learn.

The second most important thing that I have stressed and demanded from my children is the value of education. Without it, you can only meet life half way and live life in small doses.

The most important thing I can pass on to my children is something I learned late in life, but something I should have and wish I had learned in my very early years.

That most important of all things is belief, trust, and full acceptance of a man called Jesus Christ, for His is the ultimate - rags to riches story.

Had I learned of Him from the beginning who knows how much more fulfilling my life could have been? Perhaps He will teach me to help others fulfill their lives as He has fulfilled mine.

I may not be rich in worldly goods and treasures, but I am becoming rich because I have opened a savings account in heaven where my fortune is now being built up and I can enjoy it for eternity.