American Dream Stories: Elements of Success

By iUniverse

Discovering electricity. Ending up the richest man in the world. Becoming a candidate for sainthood. Leading the fight for Civil Rights. Getting inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Revolutionizing consumer digital electronics. These accomplishments are at the heart of the stories of seven incredibly diverse individuals who epitomize the American Dream. There is something particularly magical about dreams, or rather the possibility of achieving your dreams in America, the land of opportunity. American Dream Stories: Elements of Success explores the lives and success of Ben Franklin, Andrew Carnegie, Dorothy Day, Malcolm X, Patti Smith, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Steve Jobs. Looking at their lives, offering definitions, and establishing themes, the Naval Academy midshipmen authors of this essay collection examine the nature of the American Dream, success, and what both mean to Americans.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jun 17, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491736326

Book preview

Copyright © 2014 Tom McCarthy, Brandon Beans, Silas Grosch, Andrew Hayes, Maddie Macfarlane, John McLaughlin, Evan Palelei, Akheel Patel, Tommy Schofer, Samir Shaikh, Alejandro Tavizon, Rheanna Vaughn, Graham Vickers, Ryan Warner

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

iUniverse books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

iUniverse LLC

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.iuniverse.com

1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4917-3631-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-3632-6 (e)

iUniverse rev. date: 06/13/2014

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contributors

Foreword

Chapter One Defining The American Dream

Chapter Two A Family Affair

Chapter Three Education And The American Dream

Chapter Four It

Chapter Five The Vacuum Of Success

Chapter Six Group Networking

Chapter Seven Good Luck, Bad Luck, Or No Luck

Chapter Eight Failure And Adversity In The American Dream

Chapter Nine Personality’s Role In Success

Chapter Ten Values And Motivations Of Successful Americans

Chapter Eleven Iconoclasts

Chapter Twelve Past, Present, Future: The American Dream?

Chapter Thirteen Deciding Who Is Successful

Endnotes

CONTRIBUTORS

Brandon Beans is from Hartsville, South Carolina. After the Naval Academy he will report to The Basic School in Quantico, Virginia before heading to the fleet as a Marine Officer.

Silas Grosch is from Middleton, Wisconsin. After the Naval Academy he will attend Dive School and EOD School before becoming an Explosive Ordnance Disposal Officer.

Andrew R. Hayes is from Manhasset, New York. After the Naval Academy he will report to The Basic School in Quantico, Virginia and then Flight School before heading to the fleet as a Marine Pilot.

Maddie Macfarlane is from Pensacola, Florida. After the Naval Academy she will report to her ship as a Surface Warfare Officer.

Tom McCarthy is an associate professor in the History Department at the U.S Naval Academy.

John J. McLaughlin, III, is from Naperville, Illinois. After the Naval Academy he will report to his ship as a Surface Warfare Officer.

Evan Palelei is from Las Vegas, Nevada. After the Naval Academy he will report to The Basic School in Quantico, Virginia before heading to the fleet as a Marine Officer.

Akheel Patel is from San Diego, California. After the Naval Academy he will attend Flight School in Pensacola, Florida before becoming a Naval Aviator.

Tommy Schofer is from San Diego, California. After the Naval Academy he will attend Flight School in Pensacola, Florida before becoming a Naval Aviator.

Samir Shaikh is from Reisterstown, Maryland. After the Naval Academy he will report to his ship as a Surface Warfare Officer.

Alejandro Tavizon is from Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. After the Naval Academy he will report to The Basic School in Quantico, Virginia before heading to the fleet as a Marine Officer.

Rheanna Vaughn is from San Diego, California. After the Naval Academy she will report to The Basic School in Quantico, Virginia before heading to the fleet as a Marine Officer.

Graham Vickers is from Diamond Bar, California. After the Naval Academy he will report to his ship as a Surface Warfare Officer.

Ryan Warner is from Corning, New York. After the Naval Academy he will report to his ship as a Surface Warfare Officer.

FOREWORD

Tom McCarthy

American Dream Stories explores the nature of success in America. The book is the work of the students in my spring 2014 capstone seminar of the same name. The thirteen students were first-class (senior) history majors in the U.S. Naval Academy’s Class of 2014, only weeks away from graduation and commissioning in the U.S. Navy or Marine Corps. The seminar’s focus on the lives of influential Americans stemmed from my three decade interest in careers and life courses in American culture. It also reflected my scholarly interest in exploring the boundaries and limitations of liberal individualism, manifested most recently in my work on the efforts of twentieth-century counseling psychologists and psychologist-administrators to bring science-based mentoring to American colleges and universities as an improvement on the traditional trial and error method of selecting a career. The seminar embodied my strong belief that college seniors ought to have a chance to reflect (for course credit) on life paths, values, choices, serendipity, and success before embarking on their own lives in the real world.

In the first half of the semester the students read and talked about the lives of seven significant Americans as presented in six autobiographies, biographies, or memoirs. These six works were Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, Harold C. Livesay’s Andrew Carnegie and the Rise of Big Business, Dorothy Day’s The Long Loneliness, Alex Haley’s Autobiography of Malcolm X, Patti Smith’s Just Kids (which recounted her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe and its centrality to the artistic success that both achieved), and Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs. I chose these seven subjects because they had a significant impact on American history or culture. In that sense each was successful. I also chose them because they differed from one another as people, differed in the nature of their success, and, more important, differed from my students. I did not want diversity for diversity’s sake. Rather I wanted the students to grapple with complex, controversial people who lived interesting lives that ultimately left a mark on history. I also selected these six works for their literary merit. Naturally, we talked about writing autobiography, biography, and memoirs, and the challenges that these genres present to historians and students of history, but that was not the primary focus of the seminar. Our aim was to understand how each person became successful, to learn more about the varied elements of success, and to think about how these may have changed over time.

Our six works and seven subjects worked well as grist for thought, discussion, and writing. Franklin’s Autobiography provided an archetype for the self-made American and the American autobiography, a life story that has inspired Americans for two hundred years. Livesay’s Andrew Carnegie told arguably the greatest success story in American history, Carnegie’s rise from poor immigrant boy to richest man in the world. Day’s spiritual autobiography provided a counterpoint to Franklin and Carnegie, a success story that involved sympathy for socialism, an embrace of Catholicism, voluntary poverty, and a commitment to the poor. Haley’s depiction of Malcolm X as an African American everyman took us to even more unfamiliar places and ideas about the nature of success. His Malcolm X seemed to be successful at everything he tried, even when some activities were dubious or illegal. Reflecting Isaacson’s warts and all biography and their own intimate familiarity with Apple products, the students acknowledged Steve Jobs’ cultural and historical significance but refused to lionize him.

By far, the work that stimulated the most discussion and the best thinking about success in America was Patti Smith’s Just Kids, a memoir of her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe when they were starving young nobodies in Manhattan. The positive impact that her book had on the seminar can be explained by artists’ differing conceptions of success. Partly, too, it was Smith’s indifference toward her own success. But most of its appeal stemmed from her compelling writing about the life-altering consequences of deep friendship and collaboration. Time after time, Patti and Robert forced us to pause, think again, and expand our definitions of success.

Many of our subjects were controversial in their day. By some lights, they remain so today. But I was pleased and impressed that the students approached each one with an open mind. They engaged the seven lives on the subjects’ own terms. They handled the subjects’ controversial views and behavior with maturity. Without abandoning their own values, they held their personal views at arm’s length while analyzing the lives and success of the seven. In this respect they were model seminar students. More important, these qualities demonstrated that they were ready to serve as junior officers in the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps.

During the second half of the semester, the students each wrote a paper-chapter that analyzed success in our seven subjects’ lives from a different perspective. Students examined the influence of family and education. They looked at the role played by individual initiative. They identified the help provided by other people, by networks, and by institutions. They assessed how each person responded to adversity and chance. They considered personality and values. They asked what we mean by the American Dream, whether the elements of success in America have changed or remained the same over time, and who gets to decide who is successful. The authors share these perspectives in the chapters that follow.

We spent an entire fifty-minute seminar discussing the first draft of each of the thirteen chapters. The other twelve students read the draft and gave the author written comments that served as the basis for our seminar discussion. I did the same. Since the students were intimate with the seven subjects by that point, these discussions were highly constructive, providing each author with a number of worthwhile suggestions to take the chapter to a greater level of sophistication and clarity. Most of our attention focused first on definitions and conceptual frameworks and then on the best evidence to use in support of the author’s approach. I told them that I expected to see a 25-30% improvement in the second draft. For the most part, the students rose to this challenge. Two student commentators and I read and critiqued the second draft of each chapter for ten minutes or so during the final week of the semester. The third drafts, due at the end of the final examination period, received light editing by me before publication here. As may be expected with student writing, the quality of the final contributions varies. However, these chapters reflect the best history writing that these students did at the Naval Academy.

The publication of these essays in a single volume was our goal from the beginning. I hoped it would spur greater effort and higher quality. Don’t let your mediocrity echo in eternity, I told the students. I also wanted the collection of essays to be a joint effort, so that the less motivated students (always an issue with last semester seniors!) felt an obligation not to let down their classmates. But the main reason that I wanted us to publish this volume together was so that these thirteen history majors left the Naval Academy and my department with a tangible sense of accomplishment. I wanted each student, not only to feel that he or she could research, write, and publish history, but to actually know how to do it. There is no greater gift than the recognition that we can do something that once seemed beyond possibility.

Like most senior history majors, our authors are fairly diligent (and sometimes exuberant) footnoters. But even the best footnoters do not always provide a citation. So the following dispensation is in order: the reader may assume that the source of the information in the chapters that follow was the work that we read about that subject. The authors of those works are hereby acknowledged to be the source of our information, and we thank them for providing such rich life stories to ponder.

Although statistics on growing income and wealth inequality in the United States have called into question the continuing viability of the American Dream, our contributors found much to affirm the American Dream in the lives of the seven subjects. As a group, the authors remain confident that the American Dream will afford opportunity for Americans in the twenty-first century. And well they might. Many of them have already covered a good deal of ground in life in winning their Naval Academy degrees, and research shows that ten years after graduation Naval Academy alumni command the second highest average salaries of any college or university graduates in the United States. But Naval Academy alumni generally do not look to income as the sole measure of success in life. I am confident that each of our thirteen contributors will achieve his or her own version of the American Dream and that success for each one will be as varied as it was for our seven subjects.

A big thank you from all of us is due Timothy L. Goff, a history major from the Naval Academy Class of 1984, whose generous gift in honor of his history professor General John Huston made possible the publication of this volume. All royalties from this volume will be paid to the U.S. Naval Academy Foundation and the General John Huston History Fellowship Gift Fund. Thanks also are due History Department Chair Richard Abels and history instructor Captain Carlo Scott, USMC, for their assistance in getting this volume published.

CHAPTER ONE

DEFINING THE AMERICAN DREAM

Ryan Warner

Introduction

Since explorers found the New World, America has long been viewed as a land of opportunity, a chance at a fresh start without the restrictions of society to keep individuals suppressed, with room for bettering or improving their own or other’s lives. This idea has survived throughout the construction of the world’s most prosperous society and country, the United States of America. This idea of unlimited opportunity is not the product of a great civilization or society, but rather a cornerstone on which it was built. This idea is known as the American Dream.

Everyone has heard of the American Dream, and most likely has an idea of their personal American Dream, but as the United States has developed, so has the American Dream. Although opportunity is still a fundamental aspect of the American Dream, it is no longer the only necessary aspect to completely fulfill the American Dream. It is important to note that one key characteristic of the dream that makes it a central part of American life is that it can be as big or small as each individual chooses to make it. In order to find the most popular and demanding themes of the American Dream it is necessary to analyze successful American Dream stories that have had some form of historical significance or impact. This will highlight the commonalities that compose the core of the American Dream. The lives of Benjamin Franklin, Andrew Carnegie, Malcolm X, Steve Jobs, Robert Mapplethorpe, Patti Smith and Dorothy Day have been deemed American Dream stories that have had a historical impact. This small sample of diverse stories about people recognized by society as successful allows us to create a recipe for the American Dream. Before exploring the ingredients to becoming an American Dream story it is essential to determine how the American Dream is defined. The American Dream is comprised of three elements: opportunity, adversity, and improbability.

Opportunity

One of the three key components of the American Dream is opportunity. For the humble American Dream, the amount of opportunity provided by America’s liberty and prosperity is enough, but those who have successfully completed the American Dream on a historically significant level needed an inordinate amount of opportunity. In the cases of Carnegie and Jobs this opportunity came in the form of technological revolutions. In concert with these huge opportunities there were many essential factors such as luck, individual initiative, and education that allowed these individuals to take advantage of their fortunate prospects. Day was also presented with great opportunity in the form of the Progressive Era and the Great Depression. Opportunity in the American Dream is often defined to mean economic opportunity, but as shown by Day, opportunity can come in multiple forms, including social revolutions.

Carnegie seized the largest of these opportunities. He was born in 1835, and moved to the United States from Scotland in 1848 at the age of thirteen. Armed with an above average education for his time, Carnegie was primed to take advantage of the American Dream. Opportunity in America was booming. Just as Carnegie was breaking out of his laborer status and moving up the ladder in the railroad business, America entered the second industrial revolution, which was led by the railroad and steel industry. After Carnegie left the railroad business, he became an entrepreneur, and he heavily invested in the steel industry through connections he had made earlier in his life. Carnegie soon created the Carnegie Steel Company. He became deeply involved with the day-to-day operation of his steel company and was a visionary of steel manufacturing with his idea for vertical integration, an idea he developed through his ventures in other steel companies.¹ Coupled with his ingenuity was his passion to have the best. This ideal included the machines creating his steel and also the managers, which he hand-picked, for his production plants. Carnegie had many traits and circumstances that worked in his favor throughout his time in the steel industry, which enabled him to sell his company to J.P. Morgan for $200 million. Carnegie’s success in the steel industry during the second industrial revolution is most certainly a factor in his lasting legacy as an American Dream story, but it was his innovations and accomplishments that cemented his legacy, as they permanently changed industry practices throughout the world. Author of Carnegie’s biography, Harold Livesay, wrote Carnegie thus played a critical role in the genesis of the American system of manufacturing that built the United States into the world’s leading industrial power by 1900.² His ideas and innovations were only possible because of the mammoth opportunity that was presented to him in the form of the second industrial revolution.

Similar to Carnegie, Jobs’ success as an American Dream story came largely due to an extraordinary opportunity presented to him by a technological revolution. Jobs was born in 1955 and adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs who moved to Silicon Valley shortly afterwards. During his childhood in Silicon Valley, Jobs was immersed in the heart of the computer revolution. With his interests naturally leading him toward electronics, he was in a prime position to be part of revolutionizing technology. With the epicenter of the microprocessor and computer revolutions literally taking place in his backyard, the next big opportunity in America was destined to include Jobs from the start. Clearly, there were many other factors involved in Jobs’ entrance

Reviews for American Dream Stories

[mramos_710291 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Broadcast journalist Dan Rather collected inspirational stories from a cross-section of Americans who expressed their feelings about transforming dreams into reality. Themes include freedom, enterprise, pursuit of happiness, family, celebrity, education, innovation, and service. The recurring theme throughout the book is that America uniquely provides opportunities for one to not only dare to dream but also to actively pursue those dreams. That our visions can come true if we believe in ourselves, accept help when it is offered and work hard.