This is a recent "Sharing Fire" interview that I did with a philanthropist from Northern Indiana, Jim Hardesty, who has donated his money to the Starke County Community Foundation and Ancilla College.

This is a "Sharing Fire" interview that I recently did for WNIT Public Television. It is about a woman named “Sonshine” who is sharing her fire with women and helping them reinvent their lives after years of drug and alcohol abuse and incarceration. 

Bill Ribblett: My Theatre Teacher and Life Director

At the ripe old age of 16, I was convinced my life as I had planned it was over. A few weeks before, I had made the Penn High School varsity football team as a full-back. However, before the big opening game, I suffered a crushed vertebra during a run. I was not a particularly talented athlete, but I had a huge neck and strong legs, so I could run people over like a locomotive with my helmet if I got up enough speed. Unfortunately, I met my match with a 235 lb. linebacker whose left arm came crashing down on my neck just at the point of impact, and I fell in a heap.

Lucky for me, the injury did not result in permanent paralysis, but the doctor told me I might not be so lucky next time. So I had to make a decision to count my blessings and quit football or to take my chances and perhaps never walk again. So I chose walking. Now the truth was, I never really liked playing football. The only reason I did it was so that I could be a popular jock. I believed this would enable me to date cheerleaders, because cheerleaders only dated jocks, but now that plan had to be scrapped. My life as a start football player and babe magnet had come to an end.

As I stood in the hallway, watching my former teammates weakly nod to me as they walked by, it was clear to me that I was no longer one of them. And since they were my only friends, I was feeling pretty isolated and depressed. What I really needed right then was sympathy, I wanted to hear things like “Man, that is so unfair! You could have been one of the greats!” or “Don’t worry man, we’re playing this first game for you!” But the only words my teammates uttered were, “Hey, how’s the neck?”, or “Too bad, man.”

But then my speech class teacher, Bill Ribblett, approached me with a serious look on his face. Speech class was required in high school at that time, so all of my classmates begrudgingly shuffled their way up to the front about once a week to give some kind of presentation. It was torture for most of us, and I complained about it just to fit in, but quite frankly, I secretly enjoyed it. One of the few gifts I was given was a deep base voice when I was in junior high school, so out of surprise more than anything else people tended to listen when I spoke. However, I tended to mumble when I had to give a presentation, so I was hoping that speech class would help me.

As Mr. Ribblett approached me, I fully expected him to commiserate with me over my life-changing misfortune. He said “Mr. Hardy, I hear you’re not playing football anymore.” I replied, mournfully, “No sir, I’m not.” And he smiled and said, “That’s great!” I was appalled. Shocked. Here I was looking for a little compassion, and he tells me that the end of my life as I knew it was great?! I incredulously shot back “What’s so great about it?” He put his hand on shoulder and walked me down the hall to his class. “Well, I’m having tryouts for the Fall school play, and I need several male characters. I think I might have a part for you if you come to tryouts.”

Anyone reading this does not have to be a fan of the TV show “Glee” to know what high school football players thought of guys who were in the choir or the theatre. In the early 70s, these were not real men. They were guys who were to wimpy or chicken to go out for sports. Sissy boys. It was bad enough that the entire football team had written me off as their friend, but to add insult to injury by being in the school play was out of the question. I would never live that down. So I laughed and said “No way, I am not going to try out for a stupid play.” And Mr. Ribblett looked at me with his steely blue eyes and said “Don’t worry, I understand. I mean, to get up there in front of all those people and perform takes a lot of guts. And obviously you don’t have any.” And he left me standing in the hallway.

There are few things worse than a football player admitting he has no guts. In my mind it was even worse than any names people might have called me for being in a play. I mean, after all, Tarzan was an actor, Charlton Heston too. And God help the man who called them sissy boys to their face. Determined to show my courage, I showed up at tryouts the next night for the play “The Silver Whistle.”

I don’t remember much about the tryouts, but I do remember morning announcements when the chosen cast members were broadcast for all the school to hear. I was given the part of Oliver Erwenter, the lead and biggest part in the play. I was elated and anguished at the same time. I was about to change the direction of my high school life in a major way and had no idea where all of this would end up. Little did I know that it would also change the direction of my adult life in profound and significant ways.

Bill worked with me constantly,  pushing me harder than I had ever been pushed. And I was awful. I know I was awful because I saw the video tape of my rehearsals. The school had one of the first video tape machines created, one of those one-inch reel-to-reel kind with a camera that only recorded in black and white. Bill decided to use it as a teaching tool for us actors and the truth was brutal. But still he kept pushing. And on opening night, when I stepped out on the stage, a feeling of calm came over me and I knew that the theatre was where I really belonged.

Then Bill talked me into going to a speech contest. The truth is that students who are on a speech team are much more dedicated to their craft than any other student in high school because they have to get up at 5:00 a.m. almost every Saturday morning during the coldest time of the year and ride a school bus to speech meets! No other school event demands such dedication. But he insisted I enter the “Group Discussion” category and I reluctantly went. Alice Colley, Howie Katz and I sat in the back seat of Mrs. Smith’s car while she briefed us on the the discussion topic (pollution, I think), and I remember Howie Katz taking frantic notes as I dozed in and out during the two hour drive to Fort Wayne, Indiana. I took one page of notes that were, quite frankly, indecipherable even to myself.

When the day was over, Alice, Howie and I had swept the top three places of the discussion category. Amazingly, I took first place, which made Howie livid since he knew how little I had prepared, and quite frankly I would been a little steamed if I had been in his place. But it became evident to me that what the judges were looking for was someone who could listen well and then summarize all the views that had been expressed. So basically, I simply listened to all of the facts from everyone else and BS’d my way through the entire four rounds. But it again showed me that communication was my strength, and I competed at the state level for three years in a row.

I was in almost every play in high school, and in fact met my wife, Jodie, playing opposite her on that stage (however, it wasn’t until 25 years later that we got married! But that is another story!). Eventually I went on to acting school and professional acting, and I still write plays. 40 years later, I still keep in contact with Bill Ribblett, who is a retired teachers association president in southern California. Today I teach at the University of Notre Dame and speak to groups all over the country about the kind of “Personal Encouragement Philanthropy” that Bill gave to me. Thank you Bill Ribblett, I am who I am because you shared your fire with me and believed in me more than I believed in myself.

The Incredible Mrs. H

Dottie Heminger did not look like a powerful person. She was red haired, under 5 feet tall, less than a hundred pounds, and in her mid-20s when I first met her. I was an underachieving eighth-grade student at Schmucker Middle School and she was my English teacher. My mission was to do as little as possible, and her mission ... well, let’s just say I underestimated her passion to teach.

As it turned out, she became one of the most influential people in my life, sharing her fire of passion of learning and language that would eventually ignite my own flame. However, I was a difficult case. I was intentionally trying to hide my writing abilities in the shadows. This paranoia was the result of a previous encounter with one of my fifth-grade teachers, “Mr. Smug” we’ll call him, who accused me of cheating. He claimed that the story I wrote for class must have been written by someone older, such as my parents, because “no one in fifth-grade knows how to use the word ‘whom’ correctly in a sentence.” I was shocked and devastated. I actually thought he kept me after class to compliment me on my story. From that time until Mrs. Heminger, I worked hard to dumb down my work so I would never be accused of cheating again.

                What “Mr. Smug” didn’t know was that my father was an avid reader and there were always books in our house. We had two sets of encyclopedias that I attempted to read from A to Z before my fifth-grade dressing down. I was constantly writing stories, and in fact, had written a book with two of my friends in fourth grade. I realize now that my teacher was not looking for the exceptional, he was only expecting the norm or below. Even worse, he probably does not remember that conversation with me many years ago that so drastically affected my life.

                That was before Dottie Heminger. For the first few months of Dottie’s class, I blew off most of the class assignments. I was a “D” student at best. Then one day, she passed around a two-sheet story with lots of dialogue – but no punctuation. Our assignment, while sitting in class, was to punctuate the entire story and pass it in. It seemed fairly simple and didn’t require a lot of effort on my part, so I quickly completed the assignment and was the first student to place it on her desk.

                The following day, she asked me to stay after class. Memories of fifth-grade re-emerged and I was not looking forward to whatever awaited me. After everyone left, she said, “Mr. Hardy, you were the first one to turn in this assignment in class, so I know you didn’t cheat. The fact is, you were the only student to get one hundred percent of the punctuation correct. This tells me that you are not stupid, you are simply lazy. Therefore, I want you to know that I will be on your back for the rest of the year and I am going to push you harder than you have ever been pushed.” She wasn’t kidding. This skinny, red haired lightweight turned into a force to be reckoned with.

                I wrote and wrote and wrote. I did class projects, a class newspaper, acted in a class play (where I fell in love with theatre). I started to get lazy for a while, until one day I came home to find Mrs. Heminger having coffee with my mother in our kitchen! Can you imagine the audacity of this woman to involve my mother in my education! She had some nerve! But I fixed her. I signed up for her ninth-grade class.

                By the time I finished ninth-grade, I had completed more than 100 poems that my mother typed on onionskin paper and made into booklets for my grandmothers. I still have one of those booklets. The poems aren’t very good by adult standards, but they were the training ground for my future writing. I pick it up occasionally to remind myself that getting good at something is an ongoing process, and one that never ends no matter how old we get. I still use the writing process Dottie taught me: recall, outline, first draft, second draft, final draft. Works every time. It worked for this story.

                Several years ago, I was asked to give a speech to a group of incoming teachers in the Elkhart Community School system. I knew immediately what I was going to talk about and I invited Dottie and her husband, John, to attend, but I didn’t tell them that the speech was to honor her. That speech was about the power of the influence of a teacher and I told the story you have just read. I thanked Dottie for all the time and effort she put into teaching, and for making me understand that, although I had a gift, I needed to constantly work to become better at what I do. Dottie cried and hugged me. She told me that I had no idea what my speech had meant to her. She had just experienced the worst semester of her teaching career and she was seriously thinking about quitting. After my presentation, she realized that there were students who, like me, needed her help, and in that moment she made the decision to stay. I told her, “Don’t give up on them. Look at what you did for me.” I realized that her efforts had come full circle: I had reinvigorated the teaching passion of the woman who had reinvigorated my love of writing. That is the power of what I call “personal encouragement philanthropy.” It has a ripple effect that returns to us like waves.

Dottie is now retired and we keep in contact via email and Facebook. Today I am the Director of Nonprofit Executive Programs at the University of Notre Dame, and I would not be here if Dottie Heminger had not believed in me more than I believed in myself. God bless you Dottie, and may your example be an inspiration to all teachers who wonder if they are making a difference. Keep sharing your fire.

Marc Hardy, Ph.D., is a writer and international speaker who is currently working on a new book titled “Sharing Fire: Encouraging Others to Greatness.” He is also the Director of Nonprofit Executive program at the University of Notre Dame, where he also teaches in the Master of Nonprofit Administration program. He is a graduate of the Ph.D. program in Philanthropic Studies for the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University.