Fortuitous Misfortunes

By Thomas A. Viviano Ph.D.

Do you believe your childhood adversities prevented you from getting the education you deserved? Are you bitter about what you had gone through and wished things could have been different? Do you believe your window of opportunity for an education is closed? Fortuitous Misfortunes offers solutions to these questions and takes you through a boy’s life into adulthood who had limited resources and a background rich in educational disadvantages.

Many books speak to someone who has gone through a devastating childhood or a life filled with debilitating disease, extreme poverty, or a war-torn existence, but this book is about you and me and about the subtle adversities and misfortunes that may have led us just to the falling edge of realizing your educational dream. It helps us to realize that education is lifelong, even well beyond the formal education years.

This book will take you on a journey of one young boy’s adversities and setbacks and offer solutions and advice on the shoulders of great modern-day philosophers. This book will help you look your misfortunes in the eye and help you navigate through them by using the story of one man’s example.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Oct 23, 2014
• ISBN: 9781452597485

Thomas A. Viviano Ph.D.

Dr. Thomas A. Viviano received his Ph.D.  from Pennsylvania State University in Workforce Education, his Master’s from Chestnut Hill College in Applied Educational Technology, and his Bachelor’s degree from Temple University in education. He has authored and co-authored many educational articles on career and technical education and works as an executive director in a career and technical center. Dr. Viviano’s life story exemplifies an educational rags-to-riches story, as he came from a predominantly educationally disadvantaged environment. Dr. Viviano resides in Lehighton, Pennsylvania, and is a father of three wonderful adult children.

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Copyright © 2014 Thomas A. Viviano, Ph.D.

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ISBN: 978-1-4525-9747-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-9748-5 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date: 08/10/2021

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1     Growing up White in Black America

Chapter 2     My Father

Chapter 3     My Mother

Chapter 4     My Sisters

Chapter 5     Me

Chapter 6     My Early Adult Years

Chapter 7     Adversity

Chapter 8     Uncoupling

Chapter 9     Conflict Resolution

Chapter 10   Education

Chapter 11   A Word from My Parents

Chapter 12   A Word about Love

References

Acknowledgments

I ’d like to thank all the people with whom I’ve shaken hands who, while unbeknownst to them, became a mentor, a father, a mother, a friend, or a counselor.

Introduction

I was writing this introduction in my mind while on a hike with my best friend’s dog Cookie, a two-year-old rescue that is part Chihuahua and part Jack Russell terrier. We were traversing a path at the Lehigh Gorge State Park near Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, and it was a slightly overcast day and cool for this time of August. Cookie looks at everything in awe and soaks in all of the new smells, sights, and experiences like a newborn baby. It is enviable and fun to look at things through her eyes. I am frequently outdoors, as I find places like these make me feel safe and unafraid. I imagine I spent most of my life grappling with some type of fear about something I had no control of. I always felt that nothing could hurt me out here in the bosom of nature, among God’s most beautiful creations. I spent most of my life feeling alone, even though I was always surrounded by people who cared for me and loved me.

I spent a lifetime creating this concept of myself based on thoughts and emotions passing before me or based on what people told me I should do or who I should be. Michael Singer in his book The Untethered Soul asks, Who are you that is lost and trying to build a concept of yourself in order to be found? He goes on to say, You will never find yourself in what you have built to define yourself. (Singer, 2007, p. 130) I had built this façade, this false persona, in order to have more control over my decision making and actions. I was not myself, but a collage of personalities, thoughts, emotions, and visions of what one should be like to be accepted, loved, valued, and successful, and fearless. The Course in Miracles states that if you knew who walked beside you all of the time, you would never be scared. I was never enough, and until recently, was never really true to myself. I believe we all do have guardian angels, and in looking back over my life as presented in this book, it is a miracle that I am still here. Someone had to be looking out for me, and I imagine it was always someone from another dimension working though people here on earth.

When I wrote this book, it was with the intent of telling a few short stories and adding some comments about what I have learned through my own feelings and with reference to many modern psychologists, doctors, authors, and public renowned speakers in the field of self-help and life coaching. I’ve lived the last ten years of my life reading and studying Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, Gary Zukav, Eckhard Tolle, Michael Singer, Cheryl Richardson, Louise Hay, and many others who have helped me make sense of my life and all of the good and bad that enveloped it. It seems that the more I learn and think I know, the more questions I have about everything. I am convinced that our development and learning don’t stop here in this world with a physical experience, but continue in the nonphysical spiritual universe. There is an expression in education that learning should be a lifelong endeavor, but that saying should be taken further and reflect a learning that is infinite in nature. It is a type of learning that transcends the physical life. I believe we were given a physical component as one of many ways in which to grow. We needed to understand the power of the physical touch, smell, taste, and hearing in order to continue our growth in the next layer of existence, and use the essence of these senses to continue to construct what our spiritual self should represent.

I hope you enjoy reading about my life’s journey to this point. As I look back, I have no regrets. Every stumbling block, every hurdle, every wonderful thing that has ever happened to me and every experience of adversity helped make me who I am today. You have a story too. Maybe it is somewhat like mine—or maybe completely different, but it’s all worth telling and listening to. Tell your story so that others can learn from it and gain a better understanding of who you are.

Chapter 1

Growing up White

in Black America

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"I am America. I am the part you won’t recognize…get used to me…

my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own…"

— Muhammad Ali

T he nicest people I have ever met were my black neighbors and friends on Sylvan Avenue in a little town called Hazelwood, PA. The most I know about its origin is that in 1758, a large tract of woodland was purchased for about $10,000 under the Stanwix Treaty made with the Native-Americans. This area would include Hazelwood and Greenfield. Hazelwood takes its name from the hazelnut trees which once flourished along the Monongahela river. In the industrial age, and throughout the 1950’s when I grew up there, it was surrounded by heavy industry like the coke, railroad, and the steel industries. Our home sat up on top a steep hill that overlooked the city, the steel mills, and the railroads. Of course, this produced a lot of smog, but environmental concerns were of little importance in those days. In my research I have found that initially Hazelwood was comprised of large Hungarian , Italian , Slovak , Carpatho-Rusyn , Polish , and Irish populations, but later on the community attracted young black Americans because of work in the area, particularly during the construction of the civic arena. The neighborhood, except for a few of us who remained, became predominantly black, and that’s how I came to grow up with this population. It may be, and this is a guess on my part, that there was a black scare that drove off most of the white population. I imagine sometimes that this was precipitated by real estate companies to get movement because I heard of this phenomenon later on in my young adult life. This is where I began to learn about prejudice but didn’t know it was called this.

This prejudice began for me in my own family. I guess it stemmed from fear and of course the primarily European culture that existed originally in Hazelwood. My dad had all kinds of nicknames for the African Americans. Tutsoons, coons, and of course the N word was used pervasively throughout our family and the neighborhood. I was so impressionable of course and I developed an unhealthy fear of black people, but it must have been my desire to have friends that helped me overcome this unhealthy attitude towards