A Reason to Believe (23 page)

On one occasion, a young woman who had been visiting her family from out of town had been shot and killed near the Holland School. Shortly after that, an eleven-year-old boy found a .44-caliber pistol in the neighborhood and brought it to school. The community was
understandably in an uproar about the violence, so Boston’s mayor, Tom Menino, and I went out to the school to meet with the adults, listen to their ideas, and share some of our own.

The meeting was held at the end of the school day. As the children were leaving, heading to their buses or walking home, the parents, neighborhood activists, clergy, and other adults converged on the cafeteria. The contrast was striking. Here were the adults, serious and grim, worry and frustration etched on their faces, trudging toward the school, looking for answers. And here were the kids, playful and curious, sensing from the TV vans with their satellite dishes and extended antennae that something newsworthy was happening.

Before the meeting, I had a minute or two alone in the principal’s office to look over my notes and collect my thoughts. I glanced around the walls covered with student art and posters urging academic achievement or healthy choices. After a minute or two, I realized I was being watched. When I looked up, outside the window were a dozen or more little black boys and girls wearing backpacks, beaming and waving excitedly.

It was a touching scene, a reminder, on one level, of how far I’ve come in my own journey and of how far our nation has come. At their age, growing up in Chicago, I’m not sure I would have recognized the governor of my state, beyond perhaps knowing that he did not have my skin
color. But those children, with all their joyful energy and unbridled dreams, reminded me that my work today must be about them, not me. Not the history I am making, but the history they have yet to make.

We each have a responsibility to the next generation. Everyone I have ever known was taught by his or her grandparents that our highest calling is to leave the world better than we found it. Meeting our generational responsibility may involve the grand gesture or a private act of grace or kindness, the historic accomplishment or some more personal form of service to the greater good. But it must be met. And it relies entirely on American idealism.

When I worked in Washington, I noticed that the city is crowded in the spring with tourists, especially schoolchildren on class trips. Seeing them in their T-shirts and sagging pants, speaking their own special slang, asking passersby about the nearest McDonald’s, one might wonder where to find the next generation of leaders. But I know they are there. They embrace the lingo and mannerisms of their generation just as each of us has in our own. But some of these children linger for a moment over the inscriptions in the Capitol rotunda or the Lincoln Memorial. Some become quiet when they gaze out across the Mall from the spot where the inaugural address has been delivered for generations. And in that moment of reflection, in that instant of inspiration, lies a seed of idealism waiting to grow.

As long as we do our job, as long as we bear our generational responsibility, those young boys and girls in Dorchester, the students I saw visiting Washington, and young people everywhere will carry with them the very ideals that have shaped the best of this country. And then someday they will lift up their own communities, make their own history, and give the next generation of Americans a reason to believe.

This is not a history book or even a “kiss and tell.” It will disappoint those who expected it to be about the rogues and rascals I have met in public or corporate life or who, for the last few years, kept asking if they would be mentioned in it. This instead is a book about the kinds of mostly anonymous, quiet encounters that I have had (and expect we all do) that leave not just a lasting impression, but enduring inspiration. I have more miles ahead in my journey. But for every positive, hopeful, or otherwise useful lesson I have learned, I first thank the people mentioned in this text who have bothered or happened to teach me those lessons.

I met Todd Shuster, my agent, after a lecture I gave at Northeastern University in Boston in the late 1990s. He came backstage afterward to introduce himself and to suggest we get together to discuss writing a book. I did not
warm to the idea at first, but I did to him and through many conversations over many years we became friends. He was tireless in his effort to persuade me that I had a story or two worth telling to a broader audience. I am glad he did. More than anyone else, he deserves the credit for collecting some of those stories into this book.

Christine Pride was not the first editor to be assigned this project at Broadway Books, but she was the perfect one. I am humbled beyond measure by the enthusiasm for this project from all the folks at Broadway and throughout Random House, beginning with Steve Rubin and Stacy Creamer. But Christine’s personal empathy for the values expressed in this book made the work seem less like work and helped edge me along. And her understanding that my first priority was my “day job” as governor made a huge difference. With her help and fine touch, we finished something worthwhile.

I thank Jim Hirsch, an accomplished and successful author, for talking me through the discipline of writing, for coaxing lots of anecdotes out of me and the friends and family with whom he met, and for giving the text better shape. Todd lent a hand with interviews, too, and Michele Mansilla, my executive assistant and friend of nearly two decades, was indispensably generous in transcribing the interviews in her off time. I thank them all.

So many of the loved ones I write about in this book have passed away. It was thus perhaps a little easier to tell some of the intimate details about their lives and challenges.
My wife, Diane, so central to my life and some of the lessons in this book, is to be specially thanked for her willingness to let me tell her story now, while she is still much in the public eye. For that additional reason, she is a remarkable example of strength and courage.

Our daughters, Sarah and Katherine, have had to endure the burden of all children of having their parents tell silly and sometimes embarrassing stories about them to others. However, most children do not have to bear having those stories published in a book. Fortunately, Sarah and Katherine are composed, confident, good-humored young women, and I know they can handle it. My pride in and love for them is boundless. I thank them for their support, consistent honesty, and love.

For those who read this book, I hope above all that they will reflect on and acknowledge the people who have shaped their own best values and given them a reason to believe. Knowingly or not, those are the people who help repair the world.