How Does One Encourage the Discouraged?

I'd heard it all before -- many times -- but for some reason, on that day, I listened. Really listened. Maybe because he seemed so hurt. Maybe because I knew what I had done was horribly wrong. So this time I stood and I listened. I apologized, and promised to make sure that none of the other kids ever walked on his lawn or messed with his flowerbed.

The war ended.

After that, Mr. Gordon and I would stand in front of his house and talk. We talked about hard work. We talked about education. He told me about his life, growing up poor in the Jim Crow South and moving to Los Angeles for a better life. He and his wife lived quietly in their house. He never had children. I never asked why, but I could tell he really wanted them.

I went away to college. When I came back during summers and holidays, I'd see Mr. Gordon watering his lawn. I'd walk up to him and we would talk. For the next several years, as I went from college to law school to working as a lawyer, we talked -- always standing in front of his house.

Mr. Gordon told me how much he liked and admired me, and that he took pleasure in my "growth as a man." The last time we talked, I looked into his graying eyes, and for some reason I knew I would never see him again. Several months later, my mother phoned me and said, "Remember the man who lived up the street?" She never knew his name, and didn't know about our conversations. "He died."

So what do you say to bad actors, delinquents, those indifferent toward education, miscreants? Sometimes it takes a suggestion from the right person at the right time, but it also takes a willingness to be receptive to that message. What does it take for an alcoholic or a gang-banger to get them to see the light, if they ever do? I wish I could offer a five-step formula. But I still don't know.

I do know this. The answer is not to quit. For a word, a gesture, a pat on the back, a well-timed admonition may cause someone to rethink. Remember the old line -- when the student is ready, the teacher will come.

Mr. Gordon never stopped trying, and became a teacher.