Leaving for Las Vegas

This column appeared in the Tri-Valley Herald in February 2006.

“It’s okay to tell my name in your column,” she told me. “My life has been full of hardship, and though I may fall down, I know what makes us weak makes us stronger."

And so begins the tale of a 26-year-old resident of San Joaquin County whose name is best kept silent, and whose broken heart led her last week to leave a job she loves and move to Las Vegas to live with a half-sister she barely knows.

Before we learn of her heartbreak, let’s meet her: “When I was 3, I cracked my head open on a carnival ride called the Tilt-a-Whirl,” said this young woman, whose smile and easy laugh reveal nothing of the challenges she’s faced in life.

Because her father and mother were traveling carnival workers, she didn’t get the stitches removed until after they’d grown into her head. Then they had to be removed surgically. “I have a scar that looks like a railroad track,” she said, her fingers trailing through her hair.

She and her family, which included an older half-brother and half-sister—all three children from different fathers—traveled up and down the state working carnivals.

Though she considers herself lucky to grow up with “a constant playground in my backyard,” life on the road could be dangerous, with gangs sometimes interfering with the carnival. She remembers watching her father get stabbed. “Fortunately, it wasn’t too serious,” she said. She also recalls when the girlfriend of a booth worker was killed while under a ride that was started up.

The family first worked for Foley & Burke, a carnival company that was bought out by Butler Amusements, owned by Butch Butler. “Uncle Butch was always dear to the kids who were living with the carnival,” she said. “The Butler staff treated everyone as family, and made sure at night the kids were in bed or with an adult.”

Her family settled in Tracy when she got old enough to go school. Her father continued to work for the carnival, coming home every few days. Her mom became a waitress.

Even then, on weekends, if the carnival was within driving distance, the family would meet up with their father to work.

She was 8 when she got her first job cleaning up after games at the booths. “At that age I learned the benefit of working hard for what you want in return.”

What she wanted was to please others, a trait she has to this day. “I never bought candy or toys for myself,” she said. “Instead I bought gifts to make my family happy.”

Then, life took a turn shortly after her parents divorced: At 11, she moved to Idaho with her father and his new wife. At 13, she went to live in foster care in Tennessee. At 17, she moved to Florida for 6 months with her mother’s boyfriend, while her mother drove trucks around the country to make ends meet. Later that same year she moved back to San Joaquin County with her mom.

For a time, life settled down, but in the past few years she’s faced more than her share of hardships: In 2002 she lost her cocker spaniel of 13 years to cancer. A month later her father was killed in a motorcycle accident. She lost a grandfather and both grandmothers.

In 2004 she was diagnosed with Chrones disease, only to discover after months of treatment and losing patches of her hair that the diagnosis was incorrect. She was then diagnosed with endometriosis, which may preclude her from having children.

Fortunately, during these years she got a good job in the financial services industry, and she made many close friends.

And before her father passed away, she learned she had another half-sister. "She’s my dad’s daughter,” she explained, “but even my dad didn’t know about her until my grandma’s funeral a few years ago.”

Through it all, through the many homes and broken families, through the deaths and sickness, this young woman refuses to feel sorry for herself.

“Being bitter would only make me weak,” she said. “I know there are kids who’ve had it worse, with no one to love them. I made a promise when I was little to always be grateful for what I have and to spend my life giving others the love I know they desire.”

But with love can come heartbreak.

A little over a year ago, she met a young man and fell deeply in love. Though she and her boyfriend moved in together and spoke often of marriage, he began an internet correspondence with a younger woman from Russia.

Still, she still loved him and stayed with him, and at one point he agreed to break off the internet relationship. “He called the girl in front of me,” she said, “and told her we were engaged and getting married.”

But the online relationship continued and a month ago she finally had enough. “I spoke a truth he didn’t want to hear,” she said. “He spit in my face and threw me out of the house.”

She was devastated. And yes, heartbroken.

Then, amazingly, a week later, he came to where she worked and proposed marriage. “I loved him with all my heart,” she said, “but I told him no. I told him if we were to get married, it had to be for real love.”

When she learned a few weeks later that the Russian woman was coming to America to marry the young man, her broken heart told her it was time to move.

And so last week she did.

Today in a new home with her half-sister, she keeps the promise she made when she was a little girl. She refuses to be bitter. She continues to love even those who’ve hurt her and to embrace her sorrow as a stepping stone to strength.

It’s what a life of hardship has taught her, and perhaps what she has to teach us.

"If only everyone knew it’s not the end of the world when you hit rock bottom,” she wrote in an email from Las Vegas. “It’s only a new beginning.”

The necktie debate

This column appeared in the Tri-Valley Herald in August 2006.

I was looking through a box of old photos the other day and came across a 1962 snapshot of me when I was 7 wearing a white shirt and dark narrow tie. I remarked to my wife that my attire hasn’t changed much over the years, through my ties are a bit wider.

This got me thinking—like my recent column on beards—about the status of neckties in the East Bay’s business world. While publications such as the Wall Street Journal have trumpeted the return of suits and ties to the office, I decided to do some local research on the topic.

“More and more I’m seeing business people in a sport coat and open collared shirt. That seems to be the dress code,” said Livermore CPA Weldon Moreland, who typically wears a tie to the office.

“As a CPA, I’m expected to be conservative,” he said, “so I typically dress in a white shirt, a tie, and dark suit.”

Over in Pleasanton, CPA Jim Pease, who rarely wears a tie, has a somewhat different view: “The East Bay’s proximity to Silicon Valley has had an impact on the status of wearing ties to work.”

Pease suggests that business icons such as Steve Jobs—with their more casual style of dress—have had a lasting impact on how business people dress today. “Unless required by employers,” said Pease, “ties now seem to be worn only on special occasions.”

Steve Sherman, an attorney and shareholder with Hoge, Fenton, Jones & Appel, only wears a tie if he has a court appearance or is meeting with a new client.

“Unlike the firms I’ve observed in the Tri Valley,” Sherman said, “the attorneys who work at law firms in San Francisco or Oakland almost always wear ties. I think those firms are more traditional and the dress code reflects that philosophy.”

Of course, neckties have been encircling men’s necks for centuries, and were made popular by the French monarch Louis XIV in the late 1600s. The fashion trend found its way to England, and in 1880, members of the rowing club at Exeter College invented the first school tie when they detached the long bands from their boater hats and tied them around their necks.

Over in America in the 1920s, a tailor named Jesse Langsdorf realized that cutting a tie from material at 45 degrees allowed the tie to fall straight from the knot, rather than off-center as was common with ties of the time. This cutting technique, which is today the standard in manufacturing, also made possible the appearance of the diagonal stripes still produced by many necktie companies.

With the counterculture movements of the sixties and early seventies, open collars became acceptable and found their way into the workplace. CPA Moreland, a longtime Livermore resident, remembers seeing a downtown men’s store go out of business in the early 1970s shortly after Lawrence Livermore National Lab started allowing its scientists and technicians to dress more casually.

Nonetheless, the necktie’s popularity roared back with the 1975 publication of John Malloy’s best selling “Dress for Success,” which established rules that still influence our perspectives, including the view that men who wear neckties appear more trustworthy and financially secure than those who shun the tie.

Attorney Sherman agrees: “Wearing a tie conveys a message that the person is more formal or serious. When I wear a suit and tie to court, for example, I'm all business. It's game on.”

Sherman also advises younger professionals to wear ties to business meetings as a form of respect. “While the younger professional may lack experience,” he said, “it can help convey that they are knowledgeable and well-prepared.”

Tom Mantor, President of Bank of Walnut Creek, agrees that wearing a tie signals respect for your client. Though most of his business customers do not wear ties, his bank requires the more formal attire, including on Fridays.

“We may be somewhat old-fashioned in that we require ties at all times,” Mantor said, “but we feel it’s important to look professional when we meet with our clients and when presenting ourselves to the business community.”

Still, many firms in the East Bay have adopted business casual dress codes, and some companies allow jeans to be worn to work on Fridays.

And so the fashion debate continues.

While leaving the tie at home has become more acceptable in today’s East Bay business world, Mantor poses a question that makes a good point about the necktie’s importance and power in the business world: “If you went to a job interview, would you wear a tie? I think so.”

And while Sherman believes that neckties will remain a fashion accessory for future generations, he asks a small favor of family and friends: “Please, no more Father's Day ties, tie clips, tie chains, or any other tie accessories.”

Learning to read all over again

This column was published in the Tri-Valley Herald in August 2006.

After completing two years of community college in the summer of 1992, Marc Hannah looked forward to attending the University of California, Berkeley. Hannah was an excellent athlete, had been the student body president at Hillsdale High School in San Mateo, and was even the homecoming king.

But one day on his way to visit friends, rounding a corner on a hill as he rode the 1969 Honda motorcycle he had rebuilt, Hannah slammed into a car as it pulled out of a driveway.

“The driver probably thought he had killed me,” said Hannah, now 34 and a resident of Dublin. “Actually, he had only changed me.”

Hannah said he was wearing a helmet when the collision threw him 40 feet to where he landed on his head. “I stood up, walked aimlessly for a moment, then collapsed.”

The world Hannah woke up to after the accident was indeed changed. While he had no broken bones or significant physical injuries, Hannah’s brain had undergone severe trauma. The former straight-A student with a gregarious nature now had difficulty speaking. But worse, he discovered he couldn’t read or write, and therapists could do little except encourage Hannah to heal his brain by using it.

“A portion of my brain had to rebuild its connections,” he said. “I had to basically relearn everything.”

As Hannah tackled the daunting challenge that summer of learning to read as an adult, some words on the page did seem familiar. Yet when it came to writing, he discovered he had to learn how to spell all over again.

Hannah said that even after he could recognize individual words, he couldn’t read a whole sentence without forgetting what he had just read. When he was finally able to comprehend a full sentence, he had to work up to remembering the meaning of a given paragraph, then eventually a page, a chapter, and so on.

Similarly, speaking proved to be a challenge. “Deep down in my brain I knew the next word I was trying to say,” said Hannah, whose green eyes deepened as he recounted the experience. “But the word just wouldn't come to my lips. I’d go blank and get frustrated.”

As the fall semester approached, Hannah made progress in his rehabilitation, but was far from recovered. Yet he was determined not to let his accident detour his plans for college, so he went ahead and enrolled at U.C. Berkeley.

Attending a first rate university at that stage in his recovery, Hannah said, was like having “one lobe tied behind my back.” He told only a few fellow students about the accident and none of his professors, who assumed he was a little slow: “I didn't really interact with my professors that much. I was very self-conscious and didn't want to make any excuses, or have anyone feel sorry for me.”

Enrolling in two classes in his first semester, Hannah received a C and a D—the first D he remembers ever getting in school. He was put on academic probation, but nonetheless took a full load the next semester.

Hannah said his social skills around campus weren't good and he often kept to himself in the classroom. Yet he did make a few friends—including girlfriends— during his college experience.
Hannah’s commitment to his studies paid off, and two and a half years after enrolling he beat the odds—as well as the academic timeline of some of his classmates—and graduated with a degree in English.

“So now, 14 years later,” Hannah said, “I don’t have any comprehension problems. My brain has healed and my emotional demeanor has grown. Having gone through such a difficult time, I can relate to others and their sufferings.”

Today Hannah donates time to community causes, including as a member of the Rotary Club of Pleasanton North. He makes a living working with Livermore Valley Insurance Services to provide group benefits, insurance and financial products to businesses and individuals in the Tri-Valley.

“Accidents happen and people need help,” Hannah said. “With proper planning, love and support, we can overcome any obstacle. I’m testament to that.”