In the Beginning

Homer

In the Beginning

My great-grandfather's father immigrated to the United States from Australia in the late 1800s. His father had migrated to Australia from England in an era when many people in England associated Australia with criminals.

I continue to search for the reasons he made that voyage. What I do know is this: his descendants — my grandfather and his father — were tough men.

During the Great Depression, when despair and tragedy crippled the nation, my great-grandfather Charles Sparrow was not selling. He was buying. He acquired a stretch of ground in an arid valley in southeastern Idaho and cleared it of sagebrush and rocks with the help of good horses and four sons.

The Welder

In the 1940s, when his brothers received agricultural deferments to stay out of the war, one boy — my grandfather Raymond Sparrow — did not defer. He was drafted into the Army.

Private Sparrow was in France guarding prisoners of war when, during an escape attempt, one of the prisoners shanked him in the abdomen with a jagged piece of metal. While recovering aboard a hospital ship, Army leaders discovered that this Idaho farm kid could weld. He spent the remainder of the war welding ships.

He returned home with little fanfare to a farm where his brothers had already staked their claims. Rather than cause contention, he sought employment elsewhere. There were plenty of infrastructure projects in those days, and his skills as a welder served him well.

Years later my aunt gave me parts of his Army uniform, including his Eisenhower jacket, which I still consider one of my prized possessions. I never asked Grandpa Sparrow much about his time in World War II, despite working beside him almost daily on the farm as I grew up. Most of what I know came later, passed down in fragments.

Pause for Reflection

The second "to do" in this book — the first being to look for the extraordinary in the ordinary and tell your own story — is this:

Find out who you are and where you came from.

It is not earth-shattering advice. But truth is truth, regardless of how simple it sounds or who says it.

The power of self-reflection never ceases to amaze me. Knowing who you are establishes a starting point. It provides a lens through which to look into the future and decide where you want to be.

Many leadership books begin with vision. I agree that knowing where you are going is invaluable. I would only add this: understanding where you are begins with knowing where you came from.

Your backstory — even your setbacks — becomes part of the setup for who you can become.

Grandma MarDene

My grandfather Raymond's bride, my Grandma MarDene Sparrow, left a legacy of conviction, music, service, and memory. She married at sixteen, raised six children, and filled church meetings with a soprano voice that could rise above the whole congregation.

She also handed down one of the great legends in our family.

Chub and Jack

In her own words:

"In his later years Daddy had a saying above his desk, 'Every man in his lifetime is entitled to one good wife, one good horse and one good dog.' Daddy had each of these in his life and each could be the subject for many stories and experiences — humorous, serious, faith-promoting, or character-building.

My subject for this story is Daddy's team, Chub and Jack. They are a legend in our family.

When the folks were first married, they bought sixty acres at the mouth of Mink Creek. Much of it was covered with sagebrush and willow. Daddy, with the help of this choice team of horses, moved a little two-room house onto the property and began clearing the land.

Chub and Jack were well matched and obedient. Daddy described them as 'a good honest team.' He said they worked together and never failed to give all they had.

One winter several men went together to Strawberry Canyon to gather wood. A snow slide blocked the road. Each man tried to drive his team through the slide, but the teams balked.

'We'll wait for Bill. His team will pull through.'

Sure enough, Chub and Jack pulled through. Equal to the faith Daddy had in them, they gave the task all they had. They worked together, obedient to their master, and broke the trail so the others could follow.

You know, a team can be a couple, a family, or any group with a common purpose. We can pull through the snow slides of life if we are obedient, work together, and give the effort all we've got. I want to be like Chub and Jack."

After telling that story, one critic muttered, "Cool — a feel-good story about horses. I don't have horses for ancestors, and I don't relate to your Christian overtone."

My answer is simple: this story is about who I am because of where I came from, and it sets the stage for where I am going. The invitation is not to become impressed with my family lore. The invitation is to find out where you came from, who you are, and where you are going.

Some principles are universal. Hard work, trust, loyalty, overcoming obstacles, teamwork — they can shape us even when the story belongs to someone else.

Loss and Legacy

My grandma died of breast cancer while I was at Army Basic Combat Training. She remained strong and kind to the end, always serving family and community. I miss her dearly.

I have never met anyone who loved her birthday as much as she did. April 16 will always be celebrated in my home in honor of her legacy.

The Deeper Legend

The legend of Chub and Jack runs deeper than a single snowbank. While helping construct the Twin Lakes Canal, the entrance to a tunnel collapsed and trapped Jack inside.

For weeks, Grandpa Hansen passed food and water through a small opening while men and horses worked to free him. Jack survived, but the darkness left him nearly blind and painfully sensitive to light. From then on he relied heavily on his handler's voice and on the feel of his teammate beside him to know where to walk and when to pull.

Chub stayed loyal, guiding him around obstacles, to food, and to water.

And Jack did not quit.

Despite his disability, he remained useful, helpful, and strong.

Personal Connection

My connection to that story is deeply personal. I have faced my own challenges and relied heavily on my teammates — sometimes literally — to guide me through.

I will spare the details for now; some are still too raw to share. But I invite you to find your own meaning in the story if you have not already. The lessons from Chub and Jack are endless.

Charlie

Michael Jr., the comedian and writer, often describes comedy as a movement from setup to punchline. The setup gives the background. The punchline turns it in a way you did not expect.

He has suggested that life works in a similar way: our background, our strengths, and even our setbacks become the setup out of which our purpose can emerge. I love that idea.

All of our backstory contributes to who we are and helps shape who we become. It all counts.

That is part of why this chapter matters so much to me.

Once I asked my brother about the expert marksmanship badge on his uniform, and he admitted that he maintained it despite vision so poor he could barely see the far targets. He compensated by getting very fast and very accurate at close range, and by relying on others with sharper eyes to watch for what he could not see.

That feels like part of my role in this book. As he tells the story of his life, I try to look out farther into the world for stories, studies, and ideas that help reinforce what he has learned.

But before doing that work, I wanted to add one more family story of my own.

When our Grandpa William "Tony" Francis was young, he was told in a blessing that he would live to a ripe old age. Later, serving as a radio operator aboard the destroyer USS Rooks, he saw a kamikaze plane diving toward their ship and thought to himself:

"Well Francis, it looks like you're going to have to swim tonight."

As a child I do not think anyone ever told me the moral of that story. I am even more in awe of it now than I was then. I see in it optimism, steadiness, humor in the face of fear, and the warmth that marked my grandfather's life.

Those stories still give me strength.

They do more than that, too. One of my favorite bodies of research anywhere is the work built around the "Do You Know?" scale, where children are asked whether they know things about their parents, grandparents, and family history. The results are remarkable: stronger family-story knowledge is consistently associated with higher self-esteem, a more internal locus of control, and lower anxiety.

And it is not just true for children. In one study, university students taking a family history course showed measurable gains in self-esteem and reductions in anxiety, with increased family identification helping explain broader improvements in well-being.

That makes intuitive sense to me. Telling heroic, dramatic, silly, heartfelt, ridiculous, and even half-apocryphal family stories helps locate us. It gives us language for endurance, belonging, and hope.

Tell your stories. Ask for the stories of others. Watch what it does to you, to those you love, and to those you lead.

And for those whose family stories come with pain, I want to say this too: I hope these stories help you on your own journey to tell the truth about where you came from in a way that brings strength and peace.