75 & 97

Numbers. We’re wired for numbers. We build our lives around them. They become a part of us. We have a social security number which identifies us – even though it was never supposed to be used for that. We have PINs and memorize birthdays, anniversaries, milestones all with numbers. Our lives are remembered in numbers. If we’re old enough, we know what 11-22-63 is, the day President Kennedy was gunned down. We’ve built 9-11 into our cultural conscience.

            Numbers. My life has been about numbers. I obsessed over my undergrad class rank; my monthly pay; my won-loss record with juries. With my arrest, I learned new numbers – the Virginia statue number for embezzlement. I saw on my sentencing order (again with social security number prominently displayed) a seven-figure restitution order. I reviewed records, massive piles of checks and numbers – all numbers – to account for my taking. And, I kept lists of numbers: of monies, assets conveyed to my employer and my wife, all in the desire to make things “right.”

            I came into DOC with an “offender ID” number – six digits – already issued. Two weeks later, DOC “upgraded” to a seven-digit number system. I put the six digit aside (though I still can recite it) and memorized the seven. Guys in here know how many years, months, days they will serve. It’s all numbers.

            I thought a lot about two numbers this week and what they mean. “75” and “97,” two obscure random numbers yet they carry meaning for me. And that, I realized, is what makes a number significant: What it means to us.

            “75.” Seventy-five years ago this July 4^th Yankee great Lou Gehrig gave one of the most poignant and heartfelt speeches in American history. Gehrig, “the Iron Horse,” had to give up baseball, his career, his artistic medium, when his body inexplicably began to deteriorate and weaken. We now know Gehrig had ALS, a form of muscular dystrophy that now bears his name.

            On the 4^th of July in 1939, the still young Gehrig stood at home plate as he was feted and recognized for his baseball accomplishments. And there were so many. Baseball – a game I hold in near reverence – is built on numbers and Gehrig’s dwarfed all but a few. The crowd knew, the man they had called “the Iron Horse” who set a record for consecutive games played (a record not eclipsed until Cal Ripken more than fifty-years later), was dying.

            Gehrig did not want to speak that day. He wanted, as was his custom, to stay quietly in the back. But, at the urging of his manager, he reluctantly stepped to the microphones. He spoke of his love for the Yankees and the men he played with and then he uttered these words:

            “Some people say I’ve been given a bad break. But today I consider myself the luckiest man alive …”

            In my prior life my wife and kids would laugh each time as I watched Gary Cooper in “Pride of the Yankees,” recite those words. No matter how many times I saw it, I choked up. They were, they are, te most powerful words of courage and hope in the face of death I had ever heard.

            There have been days these past six years when I conjured up those words to keep going, keep hoping. Gehrig knew he was dying, yet in his mind’s eye he was blessed. Two years after he said those words Gehrig passed away. Baseball, however, will never let Gehrig pass. His numbers still rank him among the greatest, but his words spoken from the heart 75 years ago will live on long after every record is erased.

            “97.” He lived to the ripe old age of 97 and when he passed the other day celebrities and politicians marveled at his life. And in here, at least a dozen of us who had read his life story knew we were better men because of him.

            Louie Zamperini lived an extraordinary life by any measure. A member of the 1936 U.S. Olympic track team he was in Berlin, Hitler’s showcase event where Nazi legions sat in stunned silence as black American runner Jesse Owens took gold. After the beginning of the war he became an Army Air Corp bombardier. What made his story amazing was little known until recounted in author Laura Hillenbrand’s best seller, Unbroken.

            Zamperini’s plane crashed in the Pacific. For 47 days – a tremendous number of days by any means – he floated in the Pacific. “Somehow,” he survived. Reaching an island, he was captured by the Japanese, taken to “Execution Island” and interned in a prisoner of war camp. He was starved and beaten by one particularly sadistic guard. “Somehow,” he survived.

            After the war, he returned to Southern California a hero. But, he couldn’t escape the anger and demons that welled up inside him from his time in captivity. He couldn’t escape the guilt of surviving when all the others on his plane didn’t. He drank and watched his life spin out of control.

            And then it happened. Louie was convinced by his wife, a woman pushed to the edge by his demons, to go to a church service. A young preacher named Billy Graham was having a tent revival in Los Angeles. Louie Zamperini went and discovered he didn’t have to live in guilt and hatred. Louie Zamperini was saved.

            He found the strength and courage to return to Japan and to forgive the guards who had treated his so cruelly. He found the courage to forgive himself.

            I read Ms. Hillenbrand’s book within weeks of its release. That copy of the book went from man to man in here. As I read it, I thought of a friend of mine who in my worst days at the jail visited almost daily. I was falling apart; I hated myself; I hated what I’d done. My friend told me to stop wearing sackcloth. “Stop being so hard on yourself. Every hair on your head is numbered.”

            Every hair is numbered. Even for a balding man those words made sense. I mattered. I was alright. As I read Louie Zamperini’s story, his was a story of numbers – every hair numbered.

            There are few books I consider life changing. Mr. Zamperini’s journey described in, Unbroken, is one such book. Throughout these years I’ve thought often of him and his amazing story. It is a story of numbers – of times in track races, days lost at sea, days in captivity, and finally days knowing his hairs were numbered. “97,” an extraordinary life for an extraordinary man.

            I found myself thinking of numbers this week: my friend DC turned 61 and has spent 42 years incarcerated. My father turned 81. In three weeks I’ll be 55. In 5 weeks I will have been locked up 6 years. Numbers all around me. And then I came across 75 and 97 and I remembered some numbers really do matter.