The Poem Remains The Same (But Who’s The Author?)

A number of factors and influences came together recently with the end result being to get me to write more often and on more topics (generally) and to write this blog (specifically). The primary force was the growing urge / need / compulsion to write and allow myself a creative outlet. Other influence came from the urging of certain friends, the blog created by The Younger Daughter to document her time abroad, a dog’s encounter with a skunk, and the serendipitous discovery of a most wonderful blog and website by a favorite writer.

As someone who has read “Flying” magazine off and on for decades, and has read it religiously since starting my own flying lessons about two years ago, I’ve found a number of really wonderful writers working for that publication. If you like flying and would love to read some great stories and articles about all aspects of aviation, particularly general aviation, I urge you to read “Flying” either in print or online.

Lane Wallace’s “Flying Lessons” column in the July, 2009 issue really caught my eye. We’re all in a time of transition and turbulence with the loops that the last year’s economy has thrown us. On top of that, some of us are finding ways to deliberately shake it up by doing things like getting an MBA, taking flying lessons after age 50, and starting to write a blog. So I really enjoyed the “Uncertain Storms” column that Lane wrote and her points on what we can learn about life from being a pilot really rang true with me.

After harassing a number of people I know and insisting that they read it immediately, I went back a month or so later to re-read it and to send out the article’s online link (http://www.flyingmag.com/flyinglessons/1630/uncertain-storms.html) to a list of family and friends. And I noticed something I had missed the first time, a comment in the afterward about a website to visit and a free e-book to which this article was related. That started a whole new round of referrals and proselytizing as I’ve been telling everyone who will listen about this fascinating, thoughtful, and inspiring website that Ms. Wallace founded.

It was like another light bulb had gone on after a long time in darkness. I started to wonder about the snowballing avalanche of signs and portents that were being thrown at me. Had they been there all the time and I had suddenly stopped being blind to them, or had I made some sort of transition to a better path so that they were available to me now when they hadn’t been before? I don’t know, I need some more thought on that. But the fact is that I was finding a lot to think about, some great new resources, and I was looking forward to every new post.

And then Ms. Wallace wrote this interesting review for her August 25th post (http://www.nomapnoguidenolimits.com/2009/08/25/leading-from-within) and another pile of puzzle pieces clicked together. Go read the article. It’s OK. I’ll wait here for you…

(Insert soft, patient, off-key humming of The MomDude while he waits for you to get back. Probably “Defying Gravity” from “Wicked”...)

You see what I mean about that site? Great stuff! And when I read that particular article, my brain went back to high school in a flash. The Idiot Subconscious took over and it was like watching a movie on the freakin’ huge screen at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood, sitting in the front row with five stories of Cinamascope glory searing your eyeballs.

On the wall in the locker room used by our football and basketball teams was a poem to which I can still remember the first lines:

“How do you act when the pressure’s on?
When the chance for victory is almost gone…”

That poem had not only seen me through high school, but it had been a great help to me in some dark days when I was at Annapolis and wondering what I had gotten myself into. It had helped me get up off of the proverbial mat more than a few times, both mentally and physically.

A couple of years later, no longer at Annapolis but now busting my ass at UC Irvine as a physics major while also working full time (and then some) and trying to keep my sanity and my GPA afloat, I again remembered that poem from the locker room. Not remembering the whole thing, at one point I took a shot in the dark and wrote a letter back to my old high school basketball coach, asking him if it was still on that wall, and if so, could I get a copy? It was and I did. Thanks, Coach! It really did help.

But that was long ago and the copy was long lost as life moved on, things got different, marriage and kids came along, and so on. The poem was remembered but pushed back into the hazy past. Until Ms. Wallace’s column whacked me square between the eyes.

Now I need to find that poem again. Coach has long ago retired. I have no idea who would be in charge at that high school now, not that I couldn’t track someone down if necessary. But of course it’s not at all necessary - a quick Google search produced the following, just as I remembered it:

          How do you act when the pressure's on,
          When the chance for victory is almost gone.
          When Fortune's star has refused to shine,
          When the ball is on your five yard line?

          How do you act when the going's rough,
          Does your spirit lag when the breaks are tough?
          Or, is there in you a flame that glows
          Brighter as fiercer the battle grows?


          How hard, how long will you fight the foe?
          That's what the world would like to know!
          Cowards can fight when they're out ahead.
          The uphill grind shows a thoroughbred!


          You wish for success? Then tell me son,
          How do you act when the pressure's on?

So it’s not Shakespeare. Or Kipling. Or maybe it is. While I’m happy as a clam to have “found” my “lost” treasure, and found it on several websites (including, not surprisingly, on a few current high school football schedules and calendars), only one of those websites gives a credit for it, and they list it as being from “The Winner’s Manual” by Jim Tressel, head football coach at Ohio State University.

While I don’t doubt that the poem will be in Coach Tressel’s book (I’ve got a copy on order), I doubt that he wrote it. For one thing, he’s only three years older than I am, so as good as he might be, I don’t think he was writing inspirational poetry as a young man of 17 in Ohio and getting it posted on locker room walls in Vermont. Call me crazy, but I think the odds are against it.

“No Map…” is a great website, an instant front page bookmark for me. I get to read even more of Ms. Wallace’s writing than “Flying” brings me each month. The fondly remembered and cherished inspirational poem of my youth is back for me to post somewhere where it can once again help me up off of my mental face when I’ve been slam-danced into the turf by a bad day. I’m writing my blog to share all of this with you. The pieces are falling together, almost like bliss.

But who wrote the poem?