The Boston Celtics are in the NBA Finals for the first time in 20 years. One of the people making an impact in the series is Leon Powe, whose father left home before the age of seven and whose family became homeless the same year when a fire burned their house down. Powe, the oldest of 7 children, spent a considerable amount of his childhood at the flea market helping his mother, Connie Landry, sell trinkets, toys, and used clothing from the back of a van. That was how the single mother supported the children after the fire and before Alameda County Child Protective Services placed Powe and his siblings in foster care.
Read more →Posts tagged: mentoring
Master Mentor 3: Fox Connor, the Man Who Made Ike
I picked up a book on CD called General Ike and soon found myself listening to a fascinating and intriguing tale. Central to it was an extraordinary man who was mentor to three men who had the biggest impact on winning WWII: Dwight Eisenhower, George C. Marshall, and George S. Patton. Unlike George Patton, who came from a very wealthy NY family and looked at entrance into West Point as the beginning of a life-long adventure in the military, Dwight Eisenhower came from the wrong side of the tracks in Abilene Kansas and had entered West Point mainly to get a free college education. One Sunday afternoon in 1921, Patton…
Read more →Good Luck Rabbi Slammer
About two years ago, I received a phone call from Rabbi Stuart Slammer, who having been inspired by reading Masterful Coaching, asked me to coach him. It turned out that Rabbi Slammer lived and worked less than a mile from my office in Brookline, Ma. I agreed to take him on and we enjoyed many conversations—something which caused Stuart to compliment me by saying I was prone to “knessed,” (random acts of kindness). Stuart turned out to be a fascinating and intriguing individual to work with—if he were not a rabbi in the tradition of the great Rabbi Soloveitchik, he might easily be mistaken for a Fortune 500 business executive.
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