Dust Bowl Grit: A Lifelong Lesson in Dignity and Grace

I was delivered into the world at taxpayer expense. A welfare baby. An Okie. My first home was a tent at the federal government's Weedpatch Camp, where the Joad family settled after they made it to California, in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.Three decades later I had earned my BA, MBA, and Ph.D. degrees. For the next forty-six years I served as professor of economics at one of the nation's top-rated colleges. I also led a highly-regarded management school. Along the way I worked in consulting, served on boards of directors, testified as an expert witness in legal cases, and even lobbied successfully in the US Congress.Yet I do not consider myself a "self-made man." All my life I have been impressed with the power of encouragement from good people to change the course of the lives of others, including my own, by acts of kindness and encouragement and generosity.Such has been my lifelong lesson in dignity and grace.