The Time of Our Lives

by Tom Brokaw

  We are witness to America’s great common heart whenever there is a natural disaster, and not just in our country. Haiti could not have coped without the instant response of humanitarians from around the world, most of them from the United States. It was not just a weekend commitment. Thousands of people from a wide range of organizations encamped for weeks at a time under difficult conditions.

  Our youngest daughter, Sarah, a trained therapist, spent three weeks living in a tent and dodging rodents as she tended to the needs of abused and abandoned women as a grief counselor. Another group of American volunteers parachuted into an isolated mountaintop Haitian village to provide emergency food and medical relief before they cleared a landing strip for a more efficient resupply procedure.

  Whenever disaster strikes at home or anywhere in the world American relief workers are always among the first to arrive and last to leave. Volunteering is part of our American character, born from the hard work of creating a democratic republic when none existed elsewhere and then taming a wild and majestic land.

  We take the measure of our fellow citizens by their willingness to step beyond their own needs to help others. Every community has service clubs, veterans organizations, church groups, affiliates of national relief organizations, and homegrown charitable enterprises infused with the understanding that we all owe something beyond our personal needs.

  For an emerging generation of Americans, now is an opportunity to renew and strengthen that tradition of rising to meet the challenges an unpredictable world places in its path.

  CHAPTER 11

  Stepping Up and

  Signing Up

  FACT: There is no shortage of opportunities to volunteer and have an impact. United Way, the umbrella organization for community groups, launched a recruiting drive in the spring of 2011 to find one million volunteers to read, tutor, and mentor in inner-city schools. A website called Service Nation is a gathering place for individuals and organizations that are concentrating on using their talents to restart the American Dream following the Great Recession.

  QUESTION: If John F. Kennedy were around today and asked what you’d done for your country recently, how would you answer?

  A public-private partnership to institutionalize public service would be an ambitious project requiring a formidable amount of cooperation, coordination, and cash to launch but it would have at the ready an essential element: the volunteer spirit within the American character.

  It has long been part of the national ethos to step forward when the need is obvious but unresolved. In my lifetime I have been witness to large and small enterprises organized to great effect by selfless citizens with no motive other than to give voice and support to a cause that will benefit all of society.

  THE PAST

  It was not that long ago that Los Angeles residents thought smog was just a price to be paid for progress. When we first moved to Southern California in the summer of 1966, the city was enveloped daily in a yellow acrid cloud. Later that year the cooling winds of fall came through and the smog lifted. Meredith got up one morning and was startled to see a mountain range in the distance out our window. For several months it had been completely obscured by the smoggy haze. She had had no idea it existed.

  It was plainly obvious that the smog was an acute health hazard and a drag on the region’s economic future—who wants to live in an emphysema zone? Clean air standards were eventually introduced, including rigid new requirements for automobile and industrial emissions. Automobiles now burn 60 percent less gasoline than they did in 1972. Slowly, the mountains surrounding the San Fernando Valley began to be seen with more regularity.

  Across the country, young people weaned on activism and drawn to nature were giving new muscle to organizations such as the Sierra Club, the Environmental Defense Fund, Conservation International, the Nature Conservancy, and thousands of local organizations dedicated to slowing or stopping altogether the degradation of natural resources.

  President Richard Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA, to set national standards for land, water, and air use for the greater good, recognizing the fundamental fact of nature: It is all-encompassing. State lines and private property boundaries are no barriers to polluted air, contaminated water, or ecosystem destruction. Recent efforts by conservative forces in Congress to either eliminate or greatly weaken the EPA are bewildering to anyone who lived with the unchecked hazards of dirty air, polluted water, and degraded land not so long ago.

  The environmental movement was a classic example of a populist-driven change in American life, but we have miles to go before we arrive at a sensible place. Here’s a question I invariably ask myself as I drive along Interstate 405, the multi-lane stretch of highway connecting the most populated areas of Southern California.

  The diamond carpool lanes, where only vehicles with two or more passengers are allowed, are invariably free of congestion while the other lanes are bumper-to-bumper with singlepassenger cars and trucks, burning oil-based fuel at a ferocious rate. I’m often one of them, the lone passenger in a high-powered rental car, going to or returning from a visit with my mother in Orange County.

  What, I wonder, would my fellow travelers say if we could somehow poll them right now about the absurdity of what we’re all doing, encasing ourselves one by one in these expensive and muscular vehicles with rapacious appetites?

  I then try to imagine a future economist or historian, say a century from now, looking back on this scene and trying to understand how we failed to act on the obvious need to urgently develop alternative forms of transportation when the evidence of the political, economic, and environmental perils of carbon-based energy were so overwhelming. Will our freeways become our Easter Island giant statues? Only the pavement will remain.

  We seem to be, at best, reluctantly lurching toward more mass transit and alternative energy vehicles. I am personally persuaded that the most effective approach to the scientifically indisputable fact of climate change and the consequences for Mother Earth will be generational. Young people coming of age now are not conditioned by past practices and head-in-the-sand attitudes about what’s possible. They will lead the way in determining new sources of energy and more efficient transportation systems and utilities, in conservation of resources, and in adjusting lifestyles for sustainability.

  THE PRESENT

  Where is the popular uprising that has been so effective in other areas? There are no two better examples than MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, and Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the national crusade to find a cure for breast cancer.

  MADD was started by Candace Lightner in 1980 when her thirteen-year-old daughter was struck and killed by a drunken driver. Before Lightner began publicizing the heartbreaking stories of families who had lost a member to drunken drivers, the mix of alcohol and the highway was a fixture in American life. Laws on the books were enforced unevenly, and there was no designated driver concept in the culture.

  The resulting carnage and grief was overshadowed by the myth that weaving your way home from a party was part of the macho entitlement of getting a driver’s license. I shudder when I remember my own youthful behavior behind the wheel or as a passenger when too much booze had been consumed.

  MADD changed all that. More than thirty years later, drunken-driving fatalities have been cut in half, the national drinking age has been raised to twenty-one, and law enforcement agencies have instituted a policy of zero tolerance when it comes to driving while intoxicated. One angry, grief-stricken mother started it all and made our highways a much safer place.

  In the fall of 2010, I was invited by a longtime friend, Celia Miner, to return to South Dakota and help draw attention to Susan G. Komen for the Cure. It was started by Nancy Brinker as a pledge to her sister, Susan Komen, as she was dying of breast cancer.

  Nancy, a tall, striking brunette, had learned marketing skills working at Neiman Marcus and had a wide network of friends so, as she says, “With two hundred dollars and
a shoe box full of names to call for help” she started a phenomenal consciousness-raising campaign.

  My friend Celia is a breast cancer survivor, and it seemed like showing up for a Saturday morning registration of a Race for the Cure event was the least I could do. I was not prepared for the turnout—more than four thousand runners registered at the University of South Dakota—or for the passion of the cancer survivors with whom I had lunch.

  They were businesswomen, stay-at-home moms, teachers, and lawyers. One was a clinical biologist working on breast cancer issues. It was a cheerful, upbeat gathering, and any stranger looking on might have thought it was a sorority reunion with the campus so close at hand. This sisterhood, however, was bound by the ordeal of breast cancer and the welcome fact of survival.

  Celia Miner, a breast cancer survivor and Komen activist (Photo Credit 11.1)

  This was shortly before the 2010 midterm elections and political rhetoric was reaching incendiary levels, but in the Komen group I couldn’t tell a conservative from a liberal. They were united by their common condition and courage and more than eager to spread the message about the importance of regular checkups and the need to raise money for research and various treatments.

  My personal radar about the Komen organization turned to high and in the following days and weeks I was astonished by the pink presence of Komen organizers everywhere, including at NFL football games. During October, National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, some of the largest, toughest athletes in the world played their hard-hitting games while wearing pink shoelaces or chinstraps as a reminder of the cause.

  Komen affiliates have raised more than $1 billion since 1982 for education, screening, and treatment programs, especially for women who otherwise might not be able to afford what they need. Cancer specialists credit Komen for the Cure as a major factor in the statistic that matters most: There are now two and a half million breast cancer survivors, more than any other cancer group.

  Nancy Brinker’s pledge to her dying sister to raise the consciousness of the nation regarding breast cancer has been realized in the form of a powerful global organization with affiliates in 120 U.S. communities and more than one hundred thousand survivors and activists signed up for the cause. The pyramids in Egypt, the Empire State Building in New York, and the White House have all been “pinked” as a reminder of the work remaining.

  While she was doing this, Brinker also served as chief of protocol and the U.S. ambassador to Hungary during the George W. Bush administration. She is now devoted full-time to Komen for the Cure, living and working in Washington, D.C.

  Komen is not universally popular in the field. Some breast cancer survivors and organizations have complained it is too protective of its trademarked phrase “for the cure” and that it spends too much money on big stunts.

  Neither MADD nor Komen is perfect, but they have made profoundly important contributions to society and they grew from the ground up, not the top down. They share another characteristic: They were started by members of the baby boom, a generation who grew up believing they could change the world, and when they were given the opportunity they did not hesitate.

  Wealthy baby boomers are taking that can-do attitude to a new level. The aforementioned Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the apotheosis of a new generation taking a hands-on and concomitant financial commitment to help those who need it most. The Gates’ personal and financial effort is so ambitious and so far reaching in developing relief or cures for some of the most vexing medical problems in remote corners of the world it will surely be remembered as one of the most impressive developments of the twenty-first century.

  They are redefining philanthropy even more impressively than Andrew Carnegie and Henry Ford did before them. Their joint and very impressive effort with Warren Buffett to enlist other billionaires in a campaign to give away half their wealth before they die is another breakthrough that will find a prominent place in any history of great wealth and how it was managed.

  They were following the earlier suggestion of their fellow billionaire Ted Turner, who in the midnineties committed $1 billion to the United Nations and said to anyone who would listen, “We don’t need another Forbes Five Hundred list of the wealthiest people in the world; we need a Forbes Five Hundred List of those who give away the most money.” Gates and Buffett are at the top of that list, and they are on a global mission to ask others to join them.

  Buffett’s generosity has not diminished his self-mocking penurious ways. When I once remarked to him about Bill Gates’s hair, which looked as if it had been styled by a pruning shear, Warren laughed, referred to his own rumpled appearance, and said, “I often tell people Bill and I are so rich because we share a comb.”

  A comb, vast fortunes, and a determination to leave the world a better place without seeking recognition in the form of piles of brick with their names attached.

  They’re not alone.

  For all of the criticism directed at Wall Street during the Great Recession, a good deal of it justly deserved, it did not deter what is arguably America’s greatest urban all-volunteer good-deed organization. It is called the Robin Hood Foundation and it was the brainchild of Paul Tudor Jones, a Memphis native and University of Virginia graduate who came to New York determined to strike it rich or go dead broke trying.

  Fortunately for the five boroughs of New York, rich won out: He became fabulously wealthy as one of the pioneers of the hedge fund movement. By the time he was in his midthirties Jones was already a member of the B class, as in “billionaire.”

  No one enjoyed his newfound money more. An avid sportsman, he built shooting and fishing lodges in upstate New York, the Chesapeake Bay, the Florida Keys, Colorado, Africa, and Argentina. Then he had a bold idea for his hedge fund colleagues that went well beyond their personal possessions and pleasures.

  Shortly after the stock market’s spectacular dive in 1987, Paul summoned three other venture capitalists—Glenn Dubin, Maurice Chessa, and Peter Borish—to his Manhattan bachelor pad for takeout Chinese food and a big idea: We have to take care of our neighbors who are not as fortunate. Also attending was David Saltzman, who has been Robin Hood’s peerless executive director ever since.

  Jones enlisted them in an idealistic crusade to eliminate poverty in New York. Not just reduce it. Eliminate it. That was their goal and they set out to do it in a businesslike manner.

  They assembled a first-rate professional staff and settled on four goals: education, early childhood development, job training, and shelter. Once the Robin Hood Foundation was up and running, already established social agencies could apply for funds, but the standard was high. The board, which financed all the headquarters expenses so every other dime hit the streets, took a corporate approach to their philanthropy. Robin Hood staffers appraised the central mission of each prospective agency, pored over its books, sized up the personnel, and then established goals—metrics—for the agency to meet or the funding would be cut off.

  When I first encountered Robin Hood at a congratulatory breakfast it organized every year to celebrate the accomplishments of their clients, I was deeply skeptical, even though many of the board members were friends. Rich guys, I thought, trying to buy some respectability. I was half right. Most of them were rich—very rich—but they were also altruistic.

  In almost twenty-five years Robin Hood has raised and spent $1.25 billion in New York City, winning the support of Democrats and Republicans alike. They’ve built charter schools and housed homeless veterans, funded shelters for abused children and unwed mothers, and established work-training programs and food banks.

  At Robin Hood’s annual breakfast, titans of Wall Street, society matrons, and celebrity athletes such as Eli Manning and Lance Armstrong are moved to tears as they listen to former junkies, homeless moms, and abused kids bear witness in emotional narratives to the help they’ve gotten from Robin Hood–supported agencies, never failing with their message to remind the wealthy breakfast guests of the real value of their d
ollars.

  At an annual gala, which sometimes tilts over to the excessive side, the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York is converted into the prom everyone wants to attend. The entertainers have included Jon Stewart, Lady Gaga, Aretha Franklin, Aerosmith, the Black Eyed Peas, the late Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Beyoncé and Jay-Z, John Mellencamp, Robin Williams, and Whoopi Goldberg.

  The young, rich crowd bids astronomical amounts for prizes such as a walk-on part in a Gwyneth Paltrow movie or a seat at the Oscars. A VIP trip to the Beijing Olympics went for more than $2 million. Tom Brady of the New England Patriots auctioned off a visit to his training camp for more than $500,000.

  In 2009, financial wizard and philanthropist George Soros announced he would put up $50 million in a Robin Hood matching grant challenge, and the Robin Hood crowd met the challenge. Eighty million dollars was raised in a single night. It all went to schools, job-training programs, housing for the homeless, and food banks.

  Robin Hood didn’t blink when the Great Recession hit, raising a record amount at its annual galas in 2009 and 2010. Jon Stewart set the tone for the evening in 2009 when he said, “You’re going to donate a lot of money tonight; not enough, however, to offset all the s—t you’ve done.” It got a big laugh and an even bigger response at the bottom line.