Five Greatest Influences for Good in my Life

We are all influenced or influence everyone we meet every day.  I have been fortunate to have known 5 men who helped shape me into the man I have become.  I also want to help shape others to become the men or women they can become.   It's a "pass it on" obligation.  It's a debt I can't pay back to them but can pay forward to those yet to come.  So I do what I can do hoping a few men I can have some positive influence on will settle an unsettled debt.

 

Earl Redlin: I have written much about him but he is a role model and helped shape this man at a young age with humor, joy and the capacity to look past the situation at hand to what can be.  He is the man who never quit in spite of opposition from people all around.  He never quit working even well into his 80s. I learned much about doing the right thing from him.

 

Dr. Robert Godwin:  He was my Choir director in concert choir at NDSU for 3 years.  An ex-marine he was a taskmaster.  There were no excuses.  There was no failure.  Only better.  His good humor and ability to have fun when fun was to be had and still work at a difficult piece of music made emulating his style of direction a goal in my life.  He dreamed great dreams.  Now retiring in his late 80's he still finds things to challenge his soul.  I Learned about discipline to a task from him.

 

Clair Hudson:  My first real boss.  He was a top down manager who had a vision and who when he decided to follow it was unstoppable.  There was little democratic about his operating style.  Yet he loved his people.  He cared about them.  It's just that his expectation was that we would do what he said we were to do.  If we found success it was because we took the ball he insisted we take and ran with it.  Sometimes a tyrant driven by too much, he showed that Vision and Determination would overcome much.  I learned to never give up, never give in and keep the eye squarely on the ball from him.  I also learned not to be offended if someone yells at you.  Thicken up the thin places in your skin.  He used to say, "Steers try, bulls succeed, what is the difference?"   He implied in his own crude way that sometimes you just have to have the courage to act and quit talking about it.

 

Loehle Gast:  He was the man who got me into Dale Carnegie.  I always appreciated his positive attitude.  Eventually he hired me to form and teach classes which I did for over 10 years.  It was a great time in my life.  I learned the skill of standing before people and getting desired results.  But more important from Loehle I learned to find inspiration in everything I touched or saw.  No sparrow fell to the ground without a story.  Under his good hand I became a confident positive person and during my working with and for him taught thousands of people in speaking, sales effectiveness, management ability and dealing more effectively with others.  He took this rough cut piece of wood from rural Dakota and helped form me into someone who believes in himself with the help of God.  That was a part of my life I didn't up till then have the tools for.  He gave them to me.

 

Pastor Dan Rothwell:  When I first met Pastor Dan in the mid 70's I was impressed with his smile and willingness to be engaged.  I didn't become part of his Church until the early 80's.  I was newly converted from being a nominal Lutheran to a passionate Christian.  I wanted to find a place to grow.  He showed me.  The WOW factor was everywhere.  I had as a Lutheran never seen, heard or experienced anything quite like that.  I saw my first healing in my own body by the laying on of hands thru Pastor Dan.  Faith for health, finance, relationship, mental wholeness and a hundred other things took all the parts of the puzzle and brought them together.  Even when I resisted some of the "New Things" in the body of Christ he dove in with both feet and tested the water.  I became his friend and we spent much time together.  One Monday morning after a particularly way out Sunday Night I called him to ask why we went there.  His answer was a good one.  "If we don't give air to all the things that are stirring in the Body of Christ we will become stale and dry".   He agreed that the guy who has spoken and ministered was way off but that sometimes we need to hear a view that tests our own theology.  I learned much about managing time, managing ministry and the power of managing by expectation.  No one wanted to disappoint Pastor Dan.  If you said you were going to do something you did it.  He wouldn't yell, he'd just be disappointed.  Life in the spirit was for him an adventure to be tested and tried.  Before he was famous Benny Hinn came to our church.  Before he was famous Rodney Howard Browne came to our church.  He allowed people to come and be who they believed God wanted them to become.  He allowed me the same.  I learned from him that God has a call on every one, and we can encourage them to find it and develop it. 

 

Of course there are influences today in my life I value.  Todd Beery.  Don Lyon.  But today I am now on the other side.  I have a responsibility to pay back what has been deposited in me as best I can.  These formative people are all either in the late sunset years of life or gone on to heaven.  I can only do what I can today for those yet to come.  I hope I can pay it all forward.

 

 "When I approach a child, he inspires in me two sentiments: tenderness for what he is, and respect for what he may become."
- Louis Pasteur

"A great man is one who affects the mind of his generation."
- Disraeli

"Nothing in life is more exciting and rewarding than the sudden insight that leaves you a changed person - not only changed but for the better."
- Arthur Gordan

"It is only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth--and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up--that we will begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it was the only one we had."
- Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

"True contentment is the power to get out of every situation what there is in it."
- G.K. Chesterton