The “Why” Behind What We Do Matters

00:00:15
Speaker 1: And we continue here on Our American Stories, and up next we bring you a story from one of our listeners from the Twin Cities, and that’s Minneapolis-St. Paul. You’ve already heard Paul Cotts on this show, and he’s back with more stories from his new book, Profiles in Kindness. Paul is a professor at St. Mary’s University of Minnesota. Today he’ll talk about the importance of importance and how the why of what we do matters. Here’s Paul. Many of us know what we do and how we do it very well, but when asked why we do it, we often pause and see that this is a question we might need to explore further. We’ve heard of people like Simon Senek, Mike Vack, and Maya Angelo, three current individuals who bring these ideas to our attention. They make the case that it isn’t just about the money so much as loving what you do and how you make people feel. Well, I admit that I love what I do, and recently I had a student who was so adamant that their grade should be changed on a critique assignment. The person is an intelligent, hard worker with drive and determination. At the moment, I did not love what I do. What confounded me was that they actually had a 92 on the assignment and were irritated that I docked them for not fully synthesizing two articles to a coherent conclusion that was not in the rubric. I was told in an email, my credibility was being questioned, and for a fleeting moment, I went back to the notion of pursuing a career in carpentry, which I also enjoy. But my why brought me back to the discussion with a revitalized impetus. Explicitly, they were right. I was trying to make this talented individual even better. Knowing, integrating ideas, and interweaving them together is vital to this degree and to life. I was also cognizant that I too have my limitations as their professor and a grader, so I called them. Yes, by phone. Zoom has already been a staple of my days, and I call people often because hearing a person’s voice and the nuance of feeling are kind of the senses that we could tap into, and often, we neglect them. It can also be tiring, so I try to use it with a little discretion. Sometimes people are startled because from an educator, a call means they are in trouble or there could be something wrong. While in talking with the person, I emphasized that they were doing very well and there was plenty to say. I asked them, “How are you doing?” Not on the upcoming assignments, but as a person. There was a pause. Conversation led to understanding, which led to the revelation that this course was the only thing good happening in this person’s life right now—the only good. This saddened me for a moment. The feeling was palpable. Their job was eating up weekends. Family issues, this class I offered, the stress of the pandemic, trying to be part-time principal at home with their kids, and that fear of the unknown—they were all weighing heavily on this individual. I shared how I used to bring my two daughters to the University of Minnesota with me, trying to finish my degree while still working in business. I would carry my books over my shoulder, holding the hand of one of my Aboolian daughters, and initially carrying my other bundle of joy in my left arm, alternating when needed. I was at hand to my kids, but not consciously fully present. Care was evident and had taught me to balance what I could, and I kept my kids fed and happy. Well, generally, it seemed to resonate with this person. We connected, and I understood, empathizing what they were going through. I didn’t realize that listening, and through storytelling, that breaking through the shell of a grade being lower than expected was just scratching the surface of what was truly within their soul. I sensed that the person wanted to know they have value and what they were doing was all worth it, and they were not getting the affirmations from their immediate surroundings. The individual acknowledged within our discussion that in the long run, the grade was not as important as knowing that what they do and how they do it has to complement why they are even pursuing this degree in the first place. When I showed how what they did in the rest of the course demonstrated their mastery, the person laughed in some relief and realized that they were actually doing phenomenal work already and should not worry as much about this assignment grade. Instead, what their future could be and how bright it looks could be a horizon worth looking toward. The why of what we do is often what keeps us going forward and sustains our heart and mind, eating in a sympatical, especially when we doubt ourselves or wonder about our true purpose. I question my purpose. Sometimes I encounter some very difficult situations, and often I put my head in my hands and ask for guidance from others and above. Yet when I see a baby laugh, for instance, my grandson, and see new life emerging before my very eyes; I see a student change in confidence, or see for themselves the realization that they are valuable and they grasp that they can give what they have to someone else. And a special thanks to Robbie for his work on the piece, and thanks to Paul Cotts, whose book Profiles in Kindness is available on Amazon and all the usual suspects. And think about what he did. He was not having a particularly good day—no day for a teacher’s good when the student calls to complain about a 92—and he did what, well, good teachers do. He made call. He called the student. And that’s the why. In the end, why do we even teach? I know why. My dad told he wanted to improve young people’s lives, make them better people. Paul Cotts, the why behind a phone call with a student. Here on Our American Story. Folks, if you love the great American stories we tell and love America like we do, we’re asking you to become a part of the Our American Stories family. If you agree that America is a good and great country, please make a donation. A monthly gift of $17.76 is fast becoming a favorite option for supporters. Go to OurAmericanStories.com now and go to the donate button and help us keep the great American stories coming. That’s OurAmericanStories.com.

00:02:44
Speaker 1: And we continue with Our American Stories. And up next we hear from Laurie Spreadley, the owner of the company Goo Goo Cluster. You may have heard of this candy bar that was created back in 1912, but if not, here’s Laurie to share a little bit of the history of the Goo Goo and where they are today. So Standard Candy Company was started in downtown Nashville in 1901, and they were making hard candies, caramels, kind of single-ingredient confections, and in 1912, the founder, Howell Campbell, and his right-hand man, Porter, were in the kitchen kind of playing around, and they invented the Goo Goo Cluster, and it was the first time anyone combined multiple ingredients into a single-goal finished product. So it was made of caramel, milk chocolate, peanuts, and a marshmallow nougat. And at first it didn’t have a name, and Howell was selling them on a streetcar in downtown Nashville. And story goes that a teacher was on the train and asked him what he was going to call this new confection, and he was like, “I have no idea,” and they conversation shifted to his newborn son. They started asking what he was up to, and they said, “Well, he just started talking. He’s saying words like goo-goo, ga-ga,” and they said, “That’s what you should call it: a Goo Goo.” They’re so good, people will ask for them from birth, and now we’re stuck with a silly name. So my grandfather had been in the confection industry, and we’ve made wedding cakes and owned a bakery, and my dad, out of business school, discovered Standard Candy was on the verge of bankruptcy, and he called his dad. I was like, “I think we can save this,” and so they bought it in ’82, and so I’m the third generation to be involved in the business, and it’s been a wild ride. When they purchased the company, it was only the original Goo Goo, and so they introduced the pecan variety, which at that time was called the Supreme, and it just replaced the peanuts with pecans. And that was in the ’80s, and then in the early ’90s they introduced the Peanut Butter variety, which is the Peanut Butter Center with peanuts in milk chocolate. That’s most of our favorite. I never thought I would work for the company. After college, I moved to New York City. I worked in sales, kind of did my thing for about six years, and was just looking for something new. And at the same time, Goo Goo was going through some restructuring and changes, and I was kind of like, “I think I can put my mark on this. I’m qualified, and I think, you know, we can have a lot of fun with this.” So I did. In turn, when I was 15 years old and couldn’t drive to a job, I would go to work with my dad. That summer, and they had a jar out front of all three flavors, and I probably had a Goo Goo every day. I called it a lunch. I was like, “It was like, it’s a peanut butter version. It’s got some protein. It counts.” I honestly usually don’t even have them at my house. Growing up, everyone was like, “You have to have. You’re the Goo Goo house, you have to have them,” and we just don’t. I don’t think anyone. I guess maybe we’ve lost our sweet tooth. But we did give them out at Halloween, and we lived on a really popular trick-or-treating street growing up, and everyone knew we gave out full-sized Goo Goo Clusters, so we were extra popular on Halloween. I think it was in first grade—I don’t know what age I was turning, maybe six or seven—and I took for my birthday party, I took my class to the factory, and we all wore hairnets and got to see the entire process. And my friends still talk about it to this day, and I’m so glad they do remember it because now with food regulations, its UK, I can barely get into the factory, so I’m glad we all got to experience that, and I guess, you know, pretty good first grader. So in 2014, we opened up a retail store in downtown Nashville, and that was—it’s really become like our test kitchen. We were able to handmake any sort of confections we desire. We get to kind of be our own Howell Campbell and make our own take on a Goo Goo Cluster. So we started out making, having with our pastry chef make his own creations and putting all sorts of wonderful goodies together into a finished product. And we started, I guess, around the same time partnering with local chefs and what we call our Summer Chef Series. And so every summer we partner with six or so chefs in the community who get to create their own Goo Goo. We have a ton of fun with it because we all get to try all these new combinations. Outside of the Summer Chef Series, we’ve also started partnering with other local businesses, one of them being a barbecued, and they were celebrating a big anniversary, so they asked us to create a Goo Goo for them, and it actually uses barbecue sauce, so it’s a little sweet, it’s a little spicy, a little funky and fun, and that’s been a big hit. The Glenn Campbell Museum created their own, and we even will create custom candies for corporate events or parties. There definitely are some big Goo Goo fans out there. We’ve got a huge fan out of Canada, and so he’s big on Twitter, and we kind of have fun with him. He’s been to visit a couple of times and been into our store. But most of the stories are just roll nostalgic. A lot of people remember eating them with their grandparents or parents. One of our employees, Best Schon, she remembers sharing one with her mom at the checkout aisle and the grocery. They’re just some really sweet memories and stories, and everyone’s always wanting to share them with us, which we love. I think a fun thing about the brand is that it’s really evolved over the years, but it stayed true to exactly what the original ingredients were. So back when it was first created, they were sold in a glass candy jar with no wrapper, and then that evolved to putting it in a little paper sleeve at the candy counter, and then it was wrapped in foil, similar to Peppermint Patty, and now, and then it went to a sealed wrapper kind of like it is today, but a different, different imaging. It’s really fun to be a part of a history. We still have a presence in downtown Nashville right where the original one was first created. It’s truly a stone’s throw from the old factory. Yeah, I’d say our biggest challenge is trying to find—trying to transition our customer base from the older generation who remembers eating them as a kid, to younger generations, and making it a little more young, fun, playful, and so that’s what we’re trying to tackle. That’s what we’re—we want our store to be like. We want everyone to feel like a kid. It’s also one of the few places downtown where kids are going to have fun. You know, we’re not one of the honky-tonks or a museum. We’re just a playful environment where you can feel like a kid again. And so it’s been really fun to have that store to tell our real history and also get immediate customer feedback. And if you can’t visit us in our downtown store in Nashville, we actually—you can design your own candy bar on our website, so GooGoo.com. You can create your own confection. You choose your chocolate, you choose your any of your mixings, and we’ve got some weird things like potato chips and Fruity Pebbles. And kids definitely go a little, a little crazy with their confections. They are throwing in all sorts of stuff that I personally don’t think goes well together, but I’m sure with a ton of sugar they’re happy. We’ll make it in our kitchen and ship it to you. We’ve rolled that out during the pandemic, and it’s been really fun to see people who are not able to visit Nashville still be able to participate. And a great job and a team effort by Madison, Faith, and Robbie on the piece. A special thanks to Laura Spradley, owner of Goo Goo Cluster, a third-generation family business trying to stay relevant in current times and fun and meaningful to families’ lives. And to design your own Goo Goo Cluster and have it sent to you, you can go to the website GooGoo.com. That’s GooGoo.com. The story of the Goo Goo Cluster, a Southern tradition, and many people around the country know it too, here on Our American Story.

00:09:59
Speaker 1: And we return to Our American Stories, and up next, a story from the late Virginia Mancini, the wife of Henry Mancini, one of America’s greatest film composers. If you don’t know his name, you certainly know his compositions, which include the “Pink Panther theme” and “Moon River” from Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Here’s our own Monty Montgomery. They get us started with the story. American composer Henry Mancini was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on April 16th, 1924. But that’s not where he grew up. Here’s his wife, Virginia (or Ginny). But, the rest of the story. Henry grew up in West elquipp But, Pennsylvania, outside of Pittsburgh, in a steel town, and his father worked at the Jones and Laughlin steel mill, and Henry had a very modest childhood. West al Equippo, you have to understand, is on the wrong side of the tracks, and many Europeans settled there, especially Italians. They were a very poor Italian family, and they, they were very close, and it was a very small town. So his life was fairly simple, and once his father realized that he didn’t want his son to go to work in the steel mill, he turned them on to the flute because his father played the flute. And when his father came down with the mumps, in his frustration, he handed Henry the flute and taught him to play, and they both played in the Sons of Italy band in West el Equippa. So that was Henry’s introduction to music, and he loved it. And there’s a part in his history that talks about his father taking him into Pittsburgh to see the movie and the stage show at the—I forget the name of the theater—but one of the most popular theaters in Pittsburgh. The drama captured Henry in ways that he never realized because he thought the music was being played live behind the screen, and when he found out that it was recorded, he was fascinated with the whole way movies are put together and the music is there to create the emotional reaction that you’re looking for. And that’s fascinated, to the point where his instincts told him to just do what he felt like doing. Eventually, you know, he followed his intuition, and it paid off because once he graduated from high school, he had a chance to go to Juilliard and the music business. Mancini would also serve during World War II, where he’d make strong connections with fellow musicians, meeting members of the Glenn Miller Band after the war, and when the Glenn Miller Band reformed, sans Glenn Miller, he’d become their piano player. But how did Jinny meet Henry? It starts with American musician Melo Tourmae. I worked with Melturmey for three and a half years, some of the most fun times of my young life. And when Mel was advised to go out on his own as a solo performer, I didn’t know where my next meal was going to come from. So I got a call one day from a friend who said that Tex Bennicket was out here with the Glenn Miller Orchestra and was going to be at the Hollywood Palladium. And the vocal group that had been with the band decided to leave in Hollywood, and they needed a new girl singer. So I had nothing better to do, and I went down to the Million Dollar Theater in downtown L.A. and walked into Tex’s dressing room where the auditions were being held, and there was a tall, young Italian at the piano named Henry Mancini who was playing for the auditions. All the rest of the orchestra was out on the golf course, so he was a little bit peeved that he had to stay back to play for the auditions. I don’t remember what I sang for my audition, but I did get hired, and never having been out of California before, I left on a train with 36 strange musicians for a tour for two months, for a tour across the country, starting with