The Eighth Chop from the Top

By Dr. Willie H. Smith

Eighth Chop from the Top is an autobiography that takes readers through the journey of one man’s life from early beginnings in rural North Carolina through an assortment of life experiences. The book offers an interesting story of opportunities, challenges, and emotional highs and lows, where family, friends, education, and career figure prominently along the path of one man’s life. Along that path, the author recounts a variety of life lessons that are provided as motivation, insights, and encouragement for readers. It is a story that takes readers from rural North Carolina to the largest cities in the United States and beyond. It takes readers from the farm to the highest levels of the federal government. It is a compelling story of culture, environment, race, and a range of encounters of a black man in the United States during a time of opportunity and change.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669817284

Dr. Willie H. Smith

Dr. Willie Smith is a native of Elizabethtown, North Carolina where he grew up on a small farm as the youngest of eight children. He has spent four decades working at various levels within agencies in the U.S. federal government, including the Department of Navy, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the U.S. Department of Transportation. His life and career experiences provide a rich story that he felt compelled to share in this autobiography. He is a graduate of Fayetteville State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration and Management. He holds two Masters degrees; a Master of Public Administration degree with concentrations in Financial Management and Government Contracting; and a Master of Science degree in National Resource Strategy. Willie also holds a Doctorate of Management and Organizational Leadership.

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Copyright © 2022 by Dr. Willie H. Smith.

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.

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

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Rev. date: 04/20/2022

Xlibris

844-714-8691

www.Xlibris.com

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

The 1960s—the First Decade

Stay Out of the Fire

Stay Focused on the Mission

Planting Seeds

Train up a Child

Pick Your Battles

The 1970s—the Second Decade

Short-Term Excitement

The Right Way and the Safe Way

You Can Take Willie Out of the Country

Let Life Come to You

Friendship Is a Bargain

Stay Out of the Middle of Trouble

Pull Up a Chair at Life’s Table

Always Have Your Thinking Cap On

Most of Our Problems We Cause Ourselves

The Halftime Score Is Not Always a Predictor of How the Game Will End

Paying for Your Room on Earth

Pop Quizzes

Exactly Where You Need to Be

The 1980s—the Third Decade

Boats Are Safe in the Harbor

Systems, Systems, Systems

Reality Exists in Your Head and in Your Heart

Your Fingerprints Are on the Job

Opportunities

The 1990s—the Fourth Decade

Never More Than We Can Handle

Family Matters

Life Is Meant to Be Lived

24 Hours

Leadership Matters

The 2000s—the Fifth Decade

Things Work Out Best

True Blue

Choices

The 2010s—The Sixth Decade

You Never Know When It’s Time

Heroes—Then, Now, and Forever

Once In a Lifetime

Irrational Rationality

Building a Future for the Future

Conclusion

References

This autobiography is

dedicated to my mother and father, the late Roe and Sarah Smith. Although their formal educations were limited as a result of a variety of factors, they set a positive example and ignited a level of imagination within me that served as a solid foundation for embracing the opportunities and challenges of life. I also dedicate this autobiography to Alpha, Sarah, and Ariana. Their presence in my life has provided a level of inspiration and grounding that makes life manageable.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I WOULD LIKE TO acknowledge the encouragement, support, and feedback of my siblings. They provided the flavor that proved to be the key ingredients in determining how I would navigate through life. The challenges associated with life’s twists and turns would have been insurmountable without the experience, guidance, and patience that they provided. I would also like to acknowledge the wide assortments of mentors without whom my life’s journey could have taken a different and more difficult path. Through their experience and wisdom, they provided a level of illumination to many elements of life’s experiences that were hidden in the dark recesses of the unknown for me. Finally, I would like to thank a host of personal friends and professional colleagues who continuously offered guidance through their unwavering support. Their encouragement and experiences added a richness to my life that cannot be fully captured by words alone.

S OMETIME AGO, I was in my birth home in North Carolina visiting a sick relative in one of the local nursing homes. She was in her late eighties, and her health had been declining for quite some time. In our broader family, we frowned upon putting our seniors in nursing homes. We preferred to take care of them in our home, the home they were familiar with. However, sometimes this was not possible. The extent of the illnesses, coupled with the advances in medical care and the specific medical and nursing needs (along with the expensive medical equipment needed to sustain such care), sometimes demanded that we relinquish day-to-day care to professionals and facilities better equipped to provide the necessary care. We did, however, find ways to visit as often as possible to show the love and to ensure that proper care was being provided.

On this occasion, several members of the family were there. It was a Sunday, and we had all just finished Sunday worship service. I struck up a conversation with an older gentleman who I had not met before, and we had a good and long conversation about relatives and family and life, and many other interesting topics. I have always found ways to engage in these kinds of conversations—especially with those individuals who have graced our planet longer than I have. With each opportunity, I lock my mind and my attention to their stories and soak up their accounts of people and events like a sponge, to the exclusion of almost anything else that’s going on around me.

I told this gentleman how I never had an opportunity to meet my grandparents (with the exception of my grandmother on my mother’s side). I relayed how not only had I never met my grandparents, but there were no surviving photographs, so I never had an opportunity to even know what they looked like. He began to tell me how fortunate he had been to know and talk with his grandfather as a little boy. He talked about how his grandfather had straddled the life experiences of having been a slave and later in life becoming a free man after slavery had ended. I reflected on how the horrible institution of slavery in the United States had lasted over many, many decades and that generations of people were born into slavery, lived to the ages of sometimes seventy and eighty years old, and then died in slavery. This system of bondage, servitude, and subjugation was the only life they ever knew. But not unlike the philosophy of Socrates, no real evil can remain a companion of a good person. The reality of physical harm, and even death, will see the soul of a good person survive all attempts aimed at its demise. I so profoundly embrace the hope that this is true. Anytime I hear stories or read manuscripts of slavery, there emerges a kind of hollowness in my core that is accompanied by a level of connectedness with and sadness over the plight of slaves in the United States that’s never easy to shake. This gentleman’s grandfather had seen both sides of the slavery experience, so his story was particularly compelling to me.

We talked about how his grandfather never learned to read, write, or count very well. However, not unlike all humans (particularly those denied the basic opportunities of life), his grandfather found ways to survive and cope with life’s circumstances. In almost every situation, necessity awakens creative energies and allows for the cultivation of innovation, which provides a fertile environment where creativity and imagination can grow and flourish. That reservoir of human creativity emerges most actively when the greatest attempts are made to suppress it.

One fascinating story that we discussed was the way in which his grandfather kept track of his siblings and offspring. Even the best mathematicians and those schooled at the highest levels of academia would have found it challenging to keep count of their siblings during institutions such as slavery. It was an institution where it was not uncommon for siblings to be separated from their families and sold off to other slave owners. This was often done as a demonstration of control and dominance over slaves in a way that was designed to perpetuate subordination. Sometimes, this separation would occur later in life as young boys and girls were separated from their families as teenagers. Sometimes, this separation occurred shortly after birth. Either way, it was a horrible, inhumane, and un-Christian practice that made keeping track of one’s children and siblings impossible. When the final chapter is written on our country, if the authors of that story give an honest account, they will recognize that our inability or unwillingness to address the issue of slavery in any meaningful way was likely the major issue that will have led to the downfall of an otherwise great nation.

This gentleman’s grandfather, when asked by his grandson how many brothers and sisters he actually had, answered with a very interesting story. He responded that he and many others were unable to keep records or to count very well. As such, each time a child was born, they would make a notch on an old oak tree. That way, even if the child was taken away, a sort of record would be maintained. This gentleman’s grandfather observed that he did not really know how old he was, or how many brothers and sisters he had, but he remembered his father telling him that he was the fifth notch on that oak tree—counting down from the top notch. I suppose that meant that his grandfather was the fifth one born of a larger family. We did not discuss how many notches were below the fifth notch, but I found the story compelling and fascinating, nevertheless.

I began to think about what that would mean for me if my parents had to use that same method of keeping records of their children’s birth. I was the last of eight children born to Roe and Sarah Smith. I guess another way of saying that would be that I am the eighth chop from the top.

God’s Terms, Not Ours

I suppose that when anyone takes on a task of putting in writing his or her life’s experiences, it becomes an exercise in reflection on many things. We remember the world through our own prism of reality. It is a reality that is colored by many shades of gray. It is also replete with memories that are clearly black or white. Some things bring back memories and experiences that provide great joy and satisfaction. At the same time, there are those memories and experiences that are less joyful as one re-acquaints oneself with the pain experienced during difficult times. In either case, Socrates was correct in postulating how a life unexamined is not worth living.

Writing the manuscript for this book has been one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Not because of those things I could not remember but more because of the things I did. I’ve been far more emotional while putting my thoughts and experiences in writing than I would have thought possible. The experiences of a lifetime are those experiences that define who we are within the environment that produced us. If we like the person that we have become, it would be difficult to say that the composite of our experiences (the good, the bad, and the ugly) are experiences that we would change in any way. I would not change a thing.

The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. observed how our human societies are very complex. He also noted that as individuals, we are also complex and multifaceted creatures. He discussed how we have familiarity with ourselves while at the same time we are a mystery even to ourselves. Dr. King indicated that the motivators that cause us to do things a certain way, react to situations in specific ways, and even embrace particular causes, are known to us in many ways, but they also lie in the darkness of the complex personalities that we are (Ringma 2002).

Mine has been a journey that has produced the character traits that define who I am at this point in life. I am a son, a brother, a husband, a father, a friend, and many other pieces that I embrace every day as I trek through life. In some situations, I have done extremely well wearing each of those titles. In other situations, there exist opportunities where I could have done much better. But at the end of the day, I embrace the famous words of Popeye the Sailor Man: I am what I am—and that’s all that I am.

Early experiences in my life have taken comfortable residency in my memory as the foundation of my character. These experiences have shaped the essential components of how I think about life, the universe, religion, and spirituality. I have always believed that the construct of life carries with it a certain set of inevitable complexities. I do not believe we add value to life when we overcomplicate an already complicated existence. There are so many questions that many of us have for which we seek answers as we navigate through life. As we