1977

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I have to say that 1977 ranks at or near the top of my all time favorite years.   I was blessed with having the best classmates on the face of the earth and in my opinion the greatest collection of teachers and coaches ever assembled in one High School.  I was incredibly proud to be a Cooper Hawk whether as a student, baseball player, ski racer or cross-country runner, Cooper High School was the best and in particular my senior year 1977 was the absolute best year of school I ever had.

Over the past 50 years, I have made thousands of friends and had the opportunity to talk to thousands and thousands of people in my travels not only around the United States but around the world.  To this date,  I still talk about my experience at Cooper High School and what I find is that I can’t find anyone that has had a high school experience to match mine.  It’s true many people have fond memories of high school, but none compares to my experience.

Every chance I get, I drive by Cooper High School trying to re-live those incredible days, some times I will throw on the Bruce Springsteen CD and play “Glory Days” over and over.  I like to go sit in the dugout at the baseball field and re-live the great times I had playing with the greatest baseball teams and coaches ever assembled anywhere.   Don’t tell me the Yankees or my Twins had a better team or mix of players than the teams I played on in 75, 76 and 77.  Whether it was playing baseball, running cross-country, making films in speech class or sitting in Humanities class there wasn’t one moment I didn’t thoroughly enjoy.   This incredible environment made me strive for great grades and winning performances in sports.  I am not sure I can explain this because I haven’t seen anything like it anyplace but at Cooper during my time there.

The other amazing thing about Cooper High School was that the friendships I developed during that time have endured, all of my best friends went to High School with me, when I moved to my second home in Maple Gove in 1986, the whole neighborhood filled up with Cooper High School graduates.  The strong bond that connected us in High School carries on to today, my class in particular holds formal reunions every 5 years that are well attended, informal reunions yearly at the Crystal Frolics in July that include Heidi’s home tours of all the old home we lived in during the time we were in High School and of course a run to everyone’s favorite mexican fast food restaurant Zantigo.   Because there was so much time (5 years)in between our last reunion we even had an all class 50th Birthday party and this weekend we are having an all 70’s party.

When I share my love of the class of 1977 with other people they always think I am from a small town, with a very small class, the opposite is true, Cooper is in New Hope, Minnesota a large suburb of Minneapolis and our graduating class was at least 700 in size.   The friends I made, the teachers who taught me and the coaches who coached me have all played important roles in my life,  The success at Cooper High School set the stage for the success I enjoyed in my life.  Specifically, I had a network of friends that supported me and were always behind me every step of the way, you can always depend on a Cooper Hawk to have your back.

1977, what a year !  Besides my incredible experience in High School, I enjoyed my hometown, my jobs and dating my girlfriend Suanne who has been with me since 1975, married since 1980.  I long for a Saturday night dinner at the Nankin Chinese restaurant followed by a movie at the Mann Orpheum Theater on Hennepin.  I miss meeting my classmates at  Happy Joe’s Pizza in Crystal and I really miss letting all my classmates into the movies at the Terrace Theater in Robbinsdale where I worked as an usher.

The late 70’s was of course the dawning of the disco era with dancing at Scottie’s on 7th, I had one of those White Suits (just like Steve Martin’s) and all the craze was the silk shirts imprinted with different pictures and of course you were not allowed to button the top three buttons on the shirt.  I never got into the gold chains but believe they were huge at the time.  My all time favorite Baseball player, Rod Carew was the American League MVP in 1977.  I drove a 1977 Mustang Mach I that is still my favorite car.   1977 and everything that went with it is still my favorite year.  Everything was firing on all cylinders not only was the year great but the expectation of being able to go out on my own and pursue my dreams was forefront in my mind.

I was truly in the zone in 1977, I had a picture in my mind of what I was going to do with my life and I “KNEW” I could make it happen and I did make it happen for the next 30 years almost exactly as I dreamed about it in 1977.  I know how strong my dream was and how good I was at visualizing exactly the life I wanted so I am dubbing my system for creating the life you want, System 1977, if you can remember how you felt  when you graduated from High School and can remember the dreams you had and the plans you had, you can return to that feeling anytime you want and once you do, you can create the next 50 years to fit your  dream.  I know I had the unfair advantage of being a Cooper Hawk and having the support of the greatest classmates on the face of the earth, but I know everyone has the power to create the life they want and the best way to describe the feeling you need to have is taking yourself back to a time in your life when you were full of dreams and expectations and about to launch into the world.

For me,  1977 and everything about Cooper High School is etched permanently in my mind and nothing means more to me than having the opportunity to return to those days whether it is communicating with my classmates, having dinner with one of my incredible coaches or sitting in the dugout at the Baseball field.  My time at Cooper, confirmed for me that the world and life could be anything you wanted to make it.  Thank you Classmates, Teachers and Coaches, you mean the world to me and I appreciate everything you have done for me.

Thinking Big in Broken Bow !

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My first job after college and Broadcasting school was at KCNI Radio in Broken Bow, Nebraska.  I was so eager to start working in radio that I took the first job I was offered which just happened to mean I would have to move from the big city to tiny Broken Bow.  I was very excited about the job because I was going to get to do everything at this station, I was the morning announcer, the sales manager, the production manager, the chief engineer and weekend janitor.  I took on all these jobs for a whopping $ 400 per month plus 10% commission on every ad I could sell for the radio station.  On top of the jobs at the radio station, the local American Legion found out that I had played baseball in college and I was immediately recruited to coach the Broken Bow American Legion Baseball team which was a big deal for this town.   I don’t think I could have had a better situation, I not only was thrilled to be working in radio but coaching the Legion team gave me the opportunity to keep my baseball dream alive, I even took batting practice with the team to keep my hitting skills sharp. 

Living in Broken Bow was the first time I had ever lived away from home, but even though I was never able to find a nice place to live, everything was offset by my new career and the opportunity to coach the baseball team.  I was having so much fun that I didn’t even think about how little money I was making even though I was engaged and scheduled to be married in less than a year back in Minnesota.   My fiance and my mother would come to visit me once a month and my fiance made it very clear to me that there was no way she would ever move to Broken Bow, so I had a little situation on my hands and wasn’t quite sure what to do because even though I loved my job and coaching, my future wife meant even more to me. 

Because of my limited funds, I used to live on what ever was on sale at the grocery store, I remember eating nothing but baked beans for a week because they had been the feature item at the store.  Once a month though I would treat myself to an afternoon in Grand Island, which was the closest large city that had a McDonald’s, a movie theater and a mall.  My once a month afternoon treat consisted of going to lunch at McDonald’s (pretty great stuff when you are stuck in a town without McDonald’s), then I would go to the bargain matinée at the theater and finally would spend an hour or so at the book store at the mall looking at baseball books.  One day while looking through the baseball books I came across a book that had been misplaced with the baseball books, the book’s title was “The Magic of Thinking Big”, I remember looking at the book and telling myself I had to take my last $3 and purchase the book.  The Magic of Thinking Big was the first true personal development book I had ever purchased.   I took it back to Broken Bow that evening and I read it cover to cover, twice before going back to work on Monday morning.  This book opened my eyes to so many new possibilities that I had never thought of.  Before reading the book, I thought I would spend my entire life working for this little radio station in Broken Bow, after reading it I had made up my mind to improve my skills and find a way to get a better job in a more desirable location.  

Within weeks, I was actively Thinking Big and looking for a new opportunity, then I got the call from Brown Institute that a job had opened up in Belle Fourche, SD which was right on the edge of the Black Hills.  The job paid twice as much and in addition to my regular on-air duties I would also be the new color announcer for all of the High School and College basketball games broadcast by the station.  By the time you figured in my sports announcing duties, my salary was going to be more than 4 times what I was making in Broken Bow and on top of that my bride to be loved the Black Hills.  Let me give you a little time line, I started at the station in Broken Bow in May of 1979, in August fo 1979 I read the Magic of Thinking Big and by October 1, 1979 I had moved to Spearfish, SD, had a great new apartment just blocks from the campus of Black Hills State College and I was making almost 5 times as much working at a radio station filled with Brown graduates, including many from Minnesota, most in my age group and they all were either recently married or engaged.  It was a fun station, I was working with great people and my bride to be was thrilled with the idea of moving to Spearfish. 

I know that was kind of a silly little story but I hope what it illustrated is how important our mental programming is and how easy it is to do great things when you change your programming.  Like I said, I was totally content with my Broken Bow job because I didn’t know there was something better out there for me.  But once I read that book and started thinking Big,  incredible possibilities appeared almost by magic and my life improved dramatically in just a few months.  It really was from that point forward that I started investing almost every extra penny I had in books and tapes that would help me be more successful.  You know what ?  the stuff really works but you have to keep at it and make personal development a life long habit.   The mistake I made along the way was forgetting about my personal development once I achieved my biggest and most unbelievable goals.  When I stopped focusing on my personal development in 2001, it started a 9 year descent that ultimately took me to the bottom.  And it took hitting rock bottom for me to figure out why, but it is so clear to me now that I have been able to really dig in and refocus my efforts on my personal development habits.  In just the short time I have been really focused I have had some truly amazing opportunities appear magically, I have had money show up that was unexpected both in my mail box and also handed directly to me in a parking lot by a friend who for no reason whatsoever handed me $200 (2 clean ,crisp $100 bills) and told me to get some gas and take my wife to dinner.  The piece that is truly amazing is that this money started showing up when I started writing my life scripts on paper, praying for at least 20 minutes a day and listening to nothing but personal development CDs in my car (no talk radio to get me bummed out about the economy or our elected officials).  Thinking Big, focusing positive energy on what you want for your life and making prayer  a habit will yield some amazing results as long as you know in your heart that it works.  Knowing is the most important piece of the puzzle, it is not enough to merely believe you must “know” that your situation is going to improve and know that you are going to achieve all of your goals or something better. 

So whether you are in Broken Bow, Nebraska or Key West, Florida you can create the life you have always wanted, you just having to take the leap from “wanting” to “knowing”you can have it and amazing things will start to appear in you life.