W. Alan Beckelheimer "Something To Think About ..." Published Jan. 19, 2005

The people of Cumberland County have taught me a lot -- thank you

By the time this column is published I will have left the Crossville Chronicle and Cumberland County for Rutherford County, the place of my birth and where I was raised. I am going back to school to bring my goal of becoming a lawyer one step closer to becoming a reality.

I value my time in Cumberland County not for the money I made here, or the place I slept or even the job that I had. I value my time in this community because of the people I met and the stories that they allowed me to tell. I cannot count the number of times someone in this community opened their home, business or family to me so that I could tell their story. There is a certain element of trust involved in this job and for that I am thankful and only hope that I represented you in print as well as you represented yourselves in spoken words.

I am a young man and young people make mistakes, are sometimes stubborn and hard to work with because of their unwillingness to listen to the wisdom of others around them. I thank the members of the Chronicle staff for appreciating this and having the patience to temper me into a decent writer and give me the appreciation for people to help forge me into a caring advocate of the community in which we live.

Journalists have a very odd place in our society. Most people loathe them like lawyers, until they are needed. But journalists do the job that they do because they love people, they enjoy telling the stories of the world around them and they are advocates for their fellow citizens, who have a voice but don't always know how or where to throw it in the most effective manner to get the desired results.

If you will bear with me, I would like to share with you some of the things that I will miss the most about Cumberland County: my Gran, getting my hair cut by Chad at Jack's Barber shop (thanks for being a great friend), eating at Sister's, enjoying the natural beauty of the area but especially Black Mountain and the sunsets that can be seen there, climbing the rock on Hwy. 70 W., learning alot about government and the history of the area from Cumberland County Mayor Brock Hill and Crossville Mayor J.H. Graham III, the Palace Theatre, and like I said before, the people. I can't say enough about the people here, I have lived in different parts of the country and the world and have never encountered people so honest, determined and kind.

Writers are always supposed to have the right words for every occasion, but that's not always the case. Sometimes other people say things better for you than you can yourself, it probably has something to do with being partial to oneself. So here is a quote that has inspired me in the past and continues to inspire me to fight the good fight and try to fulfill the potential that was so graciously given to me.

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better.

"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming.

"The credit belongs to the man, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause...

"Who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat." -Theodore Roosevelt

· · ·
W. Alan Beckelheimer is a Crossville Chronicle staffwriter. His column appears Wednesdays in the Chronicle.