MACKAY: In a word, inspirational

I have a very fat file of Harvey Mackay’s columns that I have saved over the past couple of years. I keep them because his thoughts and prescriptions for success ring true, even for a retired person.

His column in the June 23 Coeur d’Alene Press about the power of kindness compelled me to write. It was inordinately dear of him to share such love and life-affirming encouragement.

I grew up in a house where Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations was my encyclopedia. I was able to hold fast to the wisdom of the quotes and employed it throughout my life. I come from a single-parent home of very modest means, but discovered that persistence and excellence would bring me personal and enduring fulfillment.

Even without a college degree, I was hired many times over others with education as an advertising copywriter. One day, I received a fortune cookie which said: “He who has creativity without education is like one who has wings but no feet.”

I decided to get my feet. I went back to school, double-majored in journalism and sociology at Rutgers, and received a full-ride scholarship to Princeton in sociology. I earned my Ph.D. there in 1994.

Education was the door that opened my mind to a world that had only existed in my quotation book. I was introduced to the original texts from which those quotations came. What an epiphany!

Every time I read Mackay’s columns, I feel the same sense of inspiration and joy that I did in college and graduate school. I appreciate that. I also will be eternally grateful for the optimism he shares during these times of great uncertainty.

VICTORIA C. BRUNO

Hayden