Pass It On: It's What the Best People Have Always Done
The way today’s news and current events are reported, it’s easy to forget that there are still more good people out there than bad. I was reminded of that this past weekend when I met with an old friend I hadn’t seen in years and met a new one I had never heard of.
The first was Josh Lamb, certainly one of the toughest ever kids to
wrestle for the Charles Page Sandites, and the other was an older gentleman,
Barry Quackenbush, with a heart for others as big as Josh’s own.
I knew Josh when he graduated from Page back in 1990. I never had Josh
in class, but had taught many of his relatives, a stalwart bunch, all. In that
time and place, everybody seemingly knew Josh, his reputation as a two-time
state qualifier on the mat and knew him as well to be as friendly off the mat
as he was ferocious on it, all of that while getting around on two bad knees
you wouldn’t have handed off to your worst enemy.
Josh was never a complainer, smiled all the time (off the mat), and
was tough, tough, tough on the mat. He took that toughness and skill and turned
it into an engineering degree from the Colorado School of Mines, a tough,
tough, school from which to graduate, no place for math dummies, and turned
that degree into a successful land and survey company he now operates out of
Tulsa where he lives not far from his old high school wrestling coach, Alan
Karstetter.
Ten years ago, Josh met Quackenbush, an oilman in the drilling
business, at a School of Mines Tulsa area alumni get together, and as new
friends do, the two recognized similar traits and qualities in one another and
more or less fell into liking one another for no particular reason.
One day Barry invited Josh and his family down to his then new ranch
in Okmulgee County for a day long barbecue get together for his employees and
friends. “Bring your kids”, Quackenbush said, “I’ve got a pond full of fish,
and my wife Beckye and I like to see kids have fun.”
Barry and Beckye provided the place, food, and even fishing tackle for
those that didn’t have their own. The event that began on a whim twenty years
ago and was held on the statewide Kids Fishing Day, has come down to an event
that literally thrilled hundreds of total kids over the years, and their
parents. Prizes, trophies, and special treats were awarded to all comers
regardless of the catch size or total number. No losers allowed. Everybody won,
including Barry and Beckye.
With an eye towards managing his pond’s quality bass stock, all bass
under fourteen inches long were kept and filleted to be eaten at a later
monster fish fry on the ranch. As a result of that management tool, Barry and
Beckye’s seven-acre pond is full of bass over five pounds, with more to come.
Last Saturday, I watched Josh clean over a hundred eating size bass
for that future fry. Josh, covered in fish slime, and several other willing
adults kept up a weigh-in at lakeside where kids were encouraged to bring their
fish, perch and catfish as well as bass, to be weighed and registered
immediately so that keepers could be cleaned on the spot, and trophy-sized fish
released alive to both prosper and propagate.
Josh showed up at the ranch the night before, as he does every year,
along with several others to set up tables and supplies, and that whole crew
remained on grounds until five o’clock the following night to clean up the
considerable mess entailed every year following the event, long after the happy
swarm of kids had gone home to bed.
What’s an event like this worth? One never publicized or touted?
Something from the heart? No payment or recognition sought or needed. What
price tag can you put on it?
Hours and hours of adult promotion; honest, dirty work provided by
unnamed adults, unknown to everybody outside their circle, on their day off who
had experienced some success in their own lives and wanted to give some of it
back to a swarm of kids for one brief respite from a world filled with grief
and woe.
In a conversation with Beckye under the event’s weigh-in pavilion
where happy, grinning kids holding fish were lined up, she told me that this
event, the twentieth annual they have hosted, was likely the last. Life’s
physical burdens and issues come to all of us at varying time and to varying
degrees.
We carry the torch for a time while we are strong runners, and then we
pass it on. It’s what the best people have always done.
You only keep that which you give away.
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