Good,Better,Best - an Autobiography: An Autobiography Revised Edition

By Michael A. Straight

December, 1985

Dear Father,

Thank you, Father, for helping me through what has been both a challenge and a struggle. Writing by hand has been difficult for me and for those who have helped me translate my writing to book form. Because of problems with my speech, it has been hard to deal with the many details of editing and printing.
Thank you also, Father, for allowing my employment to continue, for helping me to overcome the daily problems of working and living, and for allowing me to find some pleasures, too, even some girls and their love.
Thank you for the many friends you have helped me make, in my church and in others, in high school, in college, at workand for the help they have given me. And finally, thank you for my wonderful family, and for the strength you have given them in helping me survive. Mike Straights diary spans seven and one-half years. It is a story of early teens, triumphs in football, tragedy, and striving to become whole again after an automobile accident at age 16.
While it was a tremendous blow to be denied his beloved sport of football, he fought his way upward to many accomplishments though confined, for the most part, to a wheelchair. Since his accident he has learned how to drive again, owned several cars, bought (and sold) his own home, gone to three colleges, and has held a manufacturing assembly job for the last several years. Now, in addition to his job, he lifts weights, exercises daily, and goes dancing.
Mike has had, for him, great success (that most of us enjoy as normal). Yet love has eluded him; not having the true love of a woman returned to him has been his ongoing trial, as his diary will tell you.
Only through a deep love for God, and a sometimes wavering and often challenged faith in Him, has Michael sustained his determination to be good, better, best. That he has been able to write and publish this book is a tremendous tribute to both his faith and his determination, as you will see.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 16, 2012
• ISBN: 9781469156149

Michael A. Straight

n/a

Book preview

Copyright © 2012 by Michael A. Straight.

First Edition, First Printing, October, 1989

Printed in U.S.A.

Edited by Paul ‘K’ Simmons

Published by Michael A. Straight, London, Ohio 43140

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 02/04/2016

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

549558

Bible quotations within were taken from the New International Version Holy Bible, Copyright 1978, by the New York International Bible Society.

This book is

dedicated to My Loving Parents, Jim and Anne Straight

REMEMBER ALWAYS… GOOD, BETTER, BEST

About the Author

My name is, Adrienne North, a former member of "The Grove City Church of Christ in Grove City, Ohio. When its Minister (at about 1970 more so?), then, Bob Ellenburger asked some of its members to begin teaching it’s Children’s Sunday School classes, I did. That Sunday School class was where I first met Michael Straight. I loved the children and enjoyed teaching so much. Naturally I had some children I was closer to and Mike was one of those. He was so eager to learn and was very attentive. Mike was very popular with the other kids and also the adults.

He did well in public school and played football through the eleventh grade. His future seemed secure. He was on his way to his team’s first official football game of the season on August 31, 1979 when he was in an automobile accident. Mike was very critical, and in a coma for over 14 weeks. The doctors believed that if he lived he would be unable to care for himself. It looked very futile and bleak. But Mike proved them wrong. It was a long hard battle, sometimes one step forward and two steps backward, and he would get very discouraged. But he never gave up. He just kept trying and dreaming and praying.

Little by little he started improving. He began responding to voice and physical therapies. Soon he was talking more clearly, and he was able to use a walker. He improved until he eventually could take care of himself and be independent, which was very important to him.

He did have some highlights in his life during this time that helped him so much. The school football team made him an honorary member. And, Ohio State Coach Earl Bruce sent him an autographed football because Mike had intended to play for Ohio State.

As he became more independent he moved into a house close to me. He really got along very well but he sold the house in order to be able to go to Kentucky Christian College, which he attended for two years.

He is a devout Christian and wanted so much to be a youth minister. But it just wasn’t to be. He could not get accepted because of his disabilities, and he finally had to give up that pursuit. Later, he went to work for Halmar Electronics. They were very good to Mike and even got him a wheelchair so he didn’t have to bother with carrying his own chair in his car. His bad luck wasn’t over though, and in June of 1986 he was in another accident. It wasn’t nearly as serious as before, and when he recovered he went back to work at Halmar.

He is popular with the kids at church and helps out where he can, such as at Vacation Bible School and summer church camp at Round Lake Christian Assembly.

His family has been a great support to him through all of this, especially his mother. She has been there for him every minute, loving him, crying with him, encouraging him. It has been very hard for her because his setbacks were hers, to. A mother’s love is second only to God’s.

It has not been easy for Mike and never will be. But he has a strong love for God and a strong desire to succeed, and I’m sure with God’s help, he will. This book is Mike’s story. It took a lot of courage and hard work for him to write it. May God bless him as he continues to live for Him.

—Adrienne North

August 1, 1978

Dear Diary,

I have never made any attempt at writing a diary before, and I’m sort of skeptical about the whole thing. I suppose the best way to start is by keeping my diary centered around my interests, and particularly on football, because I like to talk about football all the time!

But, other things have also played a part in where I am today (or tomorrow!), so starting here I will go back to fill you in on some of My History.

Football—The Early Years

My education in football began years ago when my older brother Jim and I played in neighborhood round-up games every weekend. We always played at one of the local farms, and it was a lot of fun. We neighborhood boys always tried to look like the professionals on TV. We had huddles, an offensive and a defensive line, kick-off and punt teams, the whole bit. We also alternated our games—sometimes playing tackle, or two-hand tag above the waist. Hardly anyone got hurt because we were always careful.

Our round-up games (OK, pickup games to you city slickers—we lived on farms!) continued over several summers. Then, in 1975 when I was just starting the eighth grade at Pleasant View Middle School, I was asked to play with a traveling football team called the Wildcats Optimists. Of course I wanted to play, but I didn’t think my parents would let me because we lived so far out in the country. Well, I figured nothing ventured, nothing gained, so I asked them. To my surprise, they let me sign on with the team, coached by Ken MacNealy. (Golly!)

The Wildcats Optimists was a team made up of volunteers from different local schools. We practiced and played our home games at Westland High School in Galloway, Ohio. We played teams not only in the Columbus area, but also in Cincinnati, Chicago and Pittsburgh.

The only thing that I didn’t like about the team was their stupid weight limit of 132 pounds! I was over the limit at 138! It didn’t seem fair (to me) but some of my friends said, Mike you’ll lose the weight in practice, in sweat. We all will. Some others said, Girls go crazy over football players! That’s all I needed to hear—I knew I’d get my weight down.

Well, I was benched during the first eight games of the fall of 1975 because of my weight. In fact, in the entire 13-game season I was only able to play in the last five games—after they finally did away with the weight limit! Up till then I had been depressed and ready to quit several times.

During that time my older brother Jim was playing freshman football at Westland High School. Jim, my parents and my teammates kept encouraging me to stay with the team, to get what experience I could. High-school football would be coming up soon, and there would be no weight limit!

In the fall of 1976 I started my freshman year of football at Westland High School. I was a tackle, alternating between the first—and second-string teams. I was coached by Michael Burbridge, and the team record for the ’76 season was five wins and five losses. At the end of the season I’m proud to say that I did well enough to earn the numerals for my freshman football jacket.

Then, as a sophomore at WHS, I began practicing with the varsity team for the ’77 season. I chose 79 to be my jersey number. This was also the season that I learned first-hand about Dog Days!

Dog Days

As a freshman football player the upperclassmen had warned me: Do not play any more football after your freshman year, or else you will experience ‘Hell on Earth.’ But would I listen to ’em? No way. I was still going to play football at Westland High School, earn my varsity letter, be proud and be a champion! Sometimes, though, my positive feelings were tested when it came to the dreaded, hated, two-a-day practices in the Westland High Football Conditioning Program!

Those two-a-day football practices were better known as Dog Days or Hell on Earth. Dog Days for the Dog Days of August plus being treated like dogs—and also Hell on Earth because of the awful, hellish heat of August, made even worse by all the equipment we had to wear. Ask any football player, and I’m sure he’ll agree those names are well deserved!

Even if everyone hates the practices, they are essential in the physical conditioning of any and every championship high school football team.

I may be a farm boy—bale hay, hoe corn, weed the garden and slop hogs—but those jobs are mild compared to two-a-day Dog Day football practices. Before I was a varsity team member, I had no accurate idea what a week of two-a-day practices was like. I only knew that they began at 7:30 a.m. and ended around 1 p.m. Welcome to reality…

Latecomers were disciplined by running about 100 yards to a grove of trees, picking off a leaf and returning it to the coach. (I think I was late only once!) We’d practice till 10:30, take a break, eat our sack lunches, lie around on the mats in the upper gym, participate in the annual (officially banned) upperclassmen’s initiations into real football, then practice again till 1 p.m.

Besides learning formations and running plays, a good (?) part of both practices consisted of running bleachers and grass drills. And that’s what Dog Days is really about. As you can guess, running bleachers is all the way up to the top and then down again, at full bore. And grass drills? You start running from one goal line the full 100 yards to the other, and back. While you continue back and forth, each time the coach blows his whistle you hit the grass, diving forward with chest and belly down. A brief pause till the next whistle and up and on you go.

Problem is, you never know when those whistles will come. You might go 30 yards with none, then get a whole bunch one after the other. And—(BIG problem then)—there just wasn’t that much grass. Bare dirt (and sometimes gravel) really did wonders for the chest and gut!

Although I was on the varsity team roster, I played on the school’s junior varsity (JV) team for most of the season. My coaches then were Coach North and Coach Pratt. Pratt was the defensive coordinator. I helped the squad get a six-won, four-lost season, and earned my JV letter. I learned that Coach Pratt had discussed me with Tal Gulbis, varsity defensive coordinator, regarding my playing varsity ball in my junior year. I was very excited when I heard this news.

I know I’m going to be great in ’78 and I can hardly wait!

image1.JPG

Camp Enterprise

In May of 1978 I was nominated to attend a weekend at Camp Enterprise in the Hocking Hills in southern Ohio. The camp was sponsored by the Columbus Rotary Club, and designed to encourage young people to develop their own business, or Enterprise.

The nomination for me to attend was a complete surprise! I don’t know how the process worked, but I really felt honored to have been selected. Along with myself there were four other students from Westland High School—Evan Berhandt, Cathy Boggs, Becky Mindigo and Jamie Trimmer. We met with other students from Columbus schools at Columbus Central High School, and went on chartered buses from there to the camp.

We arrived at the camp Thursday evening and were assigned to our living quarters. Then on Friday, Saturday and Sunday we got to hear a series of business-type lectures by a half dozen or so successful business executives from Ohio, New York, Massachusetts, Texas and California.

One of the presentations seemed to stick in my mind most. The group of students that I was with was asked by the businessman speaker, What do you want to do for the rest of your lives, and how will you reach your goals? (I thought to myself, c’mon man, I want to be a professional football player—not a business tycoon!) He followed that question with, And, can you reach your goals with the way you are presently equipped—both educationally and financially? Our response was a unanimous NO! That was the response he expected, because he said, Well, you’re not alone. Unless you inherit money, or are given it in some way, it is hard to come by. And it takes money to get a college education. In other words, it takes money to make money. Now, have you ever heard of the stock market? This is what I want to discuss with you—some of the principles, advantages, and disadvantages of the stock market.

A boy in my group asked the same question that was on my mind. What about the stock market crash of 1929? The man answered, "Have you ever heard of Las Vegas? If you want to gamble there, you should do it in an informed or educated way. Sometimes it pays nicely; but other times it doesn’t and then it’s up to you to control your losses.

"It’s the same way with stocks—you get what information you can yourself, and you also pick out a good stock broker. A really good stock broker will help you study the market to see what the best bet in stocks is for you to invest your money in. The good stock broker will do his homework to minimize your risk—if you don’t profit from your investments through him, you may not use him as a broker again.

"Now about the stock market crash of ’29—that was a terrible experience for the USA and the whole world, but we learn from our mistakes, don’t we? Because of the crash, certain changes in the stock exchange regulations were made that help make such a crash much less likely now.

But the point is, buying and selling stocks is something for young people like yourselves to be aware of. I can give you a key and show you where to insert it—but only you can turn it in the right direction.

I felt that I learned a lot at the camp, even though I may never use the knowledge. Also, I did make at least one good connection at the camp. I was introduced to a man named Art Denton. He seemed to be interested in me and my future prospects. I didn’t think that I’d met him before, yet he seemed to know me. I asked him, Mr. Denton, have we met before? He answered, No, Michael, but do you know some Westland students named Terry and Ted Feaver? Yes, I do! Well, their father, Fred Feaver, works with me at Halmar Electronics in Columbus. Are you employed anywhere now, Mike? I answered no, and he suggested that I visit Halmar, fill out an application