This is a story about taking pride in your work, whether it's saving children or cleaning toilets -- or, in Willie Davis' case, both.Willie Davis is a janitor. Oh, you can call him a custodian, or a caretaker, or a sanitation engineer. You can call him the King of England if you want, he still takes a broom every day and cleans the dirtiest corners of Arthur Smith Junior High School in Alexandria, La.And when he's done sweeping, he mops. And he waxes the floors. He does the windows. He mows the lawn. He plucks the weeds. When he has to, he cleans the toilets.
IGREW an inch in college. That's not much. But it's still a change. It shows I wasn't a finished product when I arrived on campus -- not physically and certainly not emotionally.I remember that inch every year at this time, when newspapers -- including this one -- print the national "rankings" of college football recruiting classes.From top to bottom they are listed, celebrated, analyzed and re-analyzed. Who signed whom? Which school got the hottest studs? Who did the best shopping at the teenage supermarket?
They read off the names of the dead. There were prayers and tears and scribbled notes for "10 special angels." The governor called them all "champions." Heads shook in disbelief. Trembling lips were bitten.It was a memorial service Wednesday for the 10 members of the Oklahoma State basketball program who died last weekend when their small plane crashed in a snowy Colorado field.All involved were too young. The victims, the families, the crying students who packed the Stillwater gym Wednesday.
Mitch Albom writes about running an orphanage in impoverished Port-au-Prince, Haiti, his kids, their hardships, laughs and challenges, and the life lessons he’s learned there every day.
