The last box of archives is more a bushel basket, even two. Gets fluffy when you peel the layers apart. Here’s a note: “6/3/82 Honorable Discharge. Sounds like an ejaculation with your wife.” I’ll throw that one away. A carbon copy of an early letter as a columnist, I’m gonna keep that. – JDW
October 7, 1988
Dear Don,
Maggi called me and asked for some promotional information about myself. She said it would probably be better to let me write it than to have the magazine do it. I’m not so sure. Frankly, I don’t like to talk too much about myself and I think the less the public knows about me, the better. It’s better for the column.
The photo already provides a great deal of information, e.g., my race, my gender, perhaps my age. While I concede that my readers are sometimes going to be confused about the veracity of the information I provide, mine is rather a personal column. It tells more about me than others might.
That said, I offer the following:
SWM, 6’3″, 180 lbs. A baby-boomer, glacially-receding hairline, part Clint Eastwood, part William F. Buckley. Honest to a fault, drive an American car. I work out daily, running, weights, basketball. I served in the United States Air Force for 3 years, 11 months, 23 days, 18 hours and 32 minutes. I didn’t feel it was the best use of my time, but it beat getting shot at. I was a Czechoslovakian linguist which I figured was better than a sniper in Vietnam.
I am college educated, having attended Allegheny College, the Defense Language Institute, Western Connecticut State, Northern Arizona University, Willamette School Of Law, Chemeketa Community and a script writing class at Portland State. That’s all I can remember.
I’m trying to learn a trade. Find a talent I can trade for money. I’ve been single, I’ve been married, I’ve been single, in that order. Somebody told me once that I was a Capricorn with a bad moon rising.
I have no interest in offending anyone. I believe that what goes round, comes around. Nothing bores me. Even boredom interests me. I love rock and roll. I think it is better to have loved and won than never to have loved at all. There’s a lot to be said for silence. I think the foot bone’s connected to the ankle bone and the ankle bone’s connected to the shin bone. The shin bone’s connected to the knee bone. After that, it’s all up for grabs.
As soon as you think you are cool, you are not. As soon as you think you are special, you can’t be. You are only as good as you think you are, if you act like it. For every time there is a season, it’s fall. I love sports. They are more honest than business and more edifying than politics.
On the other hand, I believe the arts are why human beings exist as a species. Art is the ultimate achievement of mankind. I admit I find politics riveting and I believe too important to be performed by politicians. I think high school is a form of child abuse.
I believe that age is relative and I am relatively younger than most people my age. I’m not so sure that’s good. I try to live my life according to the Golden Rule… I try to go first. I like to run around out in front of life to see what it looks like coming at me. We all make mistakes. After all these years of practice, I’m still not very good at sleeping. If I had to do it all over again, I’d skip a lot of it. There comes a time in every man’s life when it’s time, and when it’s all said and done, it’s all said and done.
Maybe not.
I wonder.
A question I am frequently asked now that I am a popular columnist for THIS WEEK: “Jack, honey. If you woke up one day and found out that you’d become a channeler overnight, whose voice would you be using?”
It’s like that.
Jack D. Welch
Some years later…