Bill Strickland speaking at the Creative Cities Summit 3.0 last week in Lexington. Photo by Scott Clark.
As a kid, the Incredible Hulk was my hero. I’d stand in front of the mirror with my Hulk Underoos flexing my non-existent muscles to see how I measured up. Now that I’m all grown up with kids of my own, one would think the whole hero thing would have long faded.
It hasn’t.
I still have heroes — they just happen not to be of the superhero sort these days. Rather, they’re ordinary people living extraordinary lives. Bill Strickland, the founder of the Manchester Bidwell Corporation and the one who gave the closing keynote speech at the Creative Cities Summit 3.0 last week, is one such hero.
Bill says that all people, rich and poor alike, can be assets to society. His message is hardly rocket science, and yet for some reason it resonates with audiences in profound and unexpected ways. To see so many people I know and respect moved to tears by Bill’s talk last week is something I will forever cherish. And yet I can’t help but wonder why such a simple message is capable of moving so many people.
I think the answer is that Bill isn’t just a messenger — he’s the embodiment of the message itself. He’s spent nearly his entire adult life putting this theory to the test and transforming countless lives in the process. His jobs training program, located in the worst neighborhood of downtown Pittsburgh, has become not only a beacon of hope for his home city but a model being replicated in cities around the world.
If we treat our children like prisoners, says Bill — where rote teaching and military-style discipline substitute for instruction and where they enter dilapidated buildings through metal detectors — we should expect them to act like prisoners. But if we treat them with respect and provide them with an abundance of sunlight, healthy food, art, music, and fresh flowers, their potential will be unleashed in ways few of us could imagine.
And therein lies Bill’s genius.
“Bill Strickland is a genius, because he sees the inherent genius in everyone,” says Jeff Skoll, the 45 year-old billionaire and first President of eBay, who has become one of Bill’s closest friends.
Ruminate on this for a moment. Imagine looking at a homeless person begging for change and believing with all your heart that somewhere inside that person lies a genius. Imagine looking at the person who asks you, “Would you like fries with that?” and knowing beyond any doubt that if put in a different environment, that person’s inner-genius would emerge.
That, my friends, is something I’m still not capable of. And that is why Bill Strickland is my hero a superhero.
Bill’s theories were molded through firsthand experiences. He grew up in one of the poorest and most dangerous neighborhoods in Pittsburgh in the 1960s. Had it not been for his mother, chances are he would have ended up like so many of his peers — which is to say, dead or in prison before reaching his twenties. However, Bill’s mother thought if she could make her home an oasis of dignity amongst the despair of the ghetto, her children just might have a chance to make it out alive and successful.
When Bill would spend his weekends scrubbing the floors of their home with a toothbrush while his friends hung out on the streets, he didn’t exactly see the light of her ways. That would come a few years later, after Bill’s high school art teacher, Mr. Ross, recognized something in Bill that no one ever had before. Where most of Bill’s other teachers saw nothing more than another hoodlum in the making, Mr. Ross saw an individual with the potential to do anything he set his mind to. He saw a young man with a special gift for molding clay into beautiful pieces of pottery.
Bill’s real genius, however, wouldn’t manifest itself until years later. As it turned out, his genius in molding clay paled in comparison for his genius in molding troubled human beings with “spiritual cancer” into the beautiful human beings they’re capable of becoming.
I still look in the mirror from time to time to see how I measure up against my heroes, and I’m just as hopeful as I was thirty years ago that one day I’ll grow up and become a superhero, too. I still have just as far to go, but at least I’m not focused on the muscles anymore.
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Very well said Nathan, thanks for this. I too was misty eyed after Bill’s talk and I hope that we all take some of that to heart and rise up to his example.
Nathan, you said it correctly, he has taken what others merely theorize and has put it into action. I too was tearing after his message.
It wasn’t his words but his life that spoke volumes. He instantaneously became my hero.
Wow. Great write-up. I too, was fighting tears during his presentation. The ability to see past the circumstances that color a person in our mind, is truly a goal worth striving for. Thanks for sharing this. I’m happy to have it on my mind again.
It was a moving speech!. I am reading his book and stood in line to get his autograph. I hope we can do something like he has done in Lexington. I will volunteer to help!