No One Asked Me But… (May 3, 2023)

By DR. LARRY MOSES

No one asked me but… For the past year I have been working with a grassroots committee made up of Virgin Valley and Moapa Valley residents whose purpose is the establishment of an independent regional school district outside the confines of the Clark County School District.

By way of history, in 1956 the State Legislature attempted to solve the problem of 208 small school districts in the state of Nevada and passed a law requiring all school districts to be co-terminus with the 17 counties within the State. They allowed for only one independent school district, that being Carson City School District, the home of the State legislature.

There was no way, in 1956, that the state legislators could have anticipated a school district in Clark County of over 300,000 students and 42,000 employees – a district that has grown so large, and politically powerful, that it no longer feels the need to abide by the state laws that it finds restrictive.

This is evidenced by this District’s refusal to comply with various sections of NRS 388G, which would have given a greater degree of autonomy to the parents and administrators of local schools.

You may well be aware that this local, grassroots committee was successful in getting an Assembly Bill (AB 420) to establish a Rural North East Clark County Regional School District. written and presented to the Education Committee. The bill never came out of committee. In fact, it never even got a hearing in the committee and therefore died.

Meeting with our Assemblyman Toby Yurek, our State Senator Jeff Stone and our former- State Senator Pete Goicoechea (who we lost when we were gerrymandered out of his district during the last interim), the committee was assured that we should not give up hope for there is still an avenue or two to be explored.

All of that is merely background to the issue at hand for today’s column. Keep in mind as you read this that it is an opinion column and not a news column. While the information is factual, it is incidental to the issue at hand.

As many of you may know, I am much older than many of this committee’s members. But I am learning some things from these youngsters. There was a time when being older meant you were wiser because you had to be wise merely to live to be old. Today there is better living through chemistry and being older merely means you have good medication.

One of the things I have learned from my younger colleagues is perseverance. A dictionary definition of perseverance is persistence in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success.

While I tend to fall back on my Marine Corps philosophy of Improvise, Adapt and Overcome these youngsters are teaching me the merit of perseverance. They remind me that the erosion of Valley of the Fire did not take place overnight. It was the continued erosive pressure of the wind and rain over a period of time. We have just started and we will not quit until we are successful. That is perseverance.

In 1779, John Paul Jones took command of the Bonhomme Richard, a converted merchant ship under orders to harass British shipping. In the process, Captain Jones with his rag tag fleet ran into one of the British Navy’s newest and best naval vessels the Serapis manned by a crack crew of British sailors, the best in the world by reputation.

The Bonhomme Richard was manned by a mixed group of sailors picked up at the docks around the world. There was not a man aboard the Bonhomme Richard ignorant of the tactical superiority of the Serapis. However, being outgunned, suffering the loss of his gundeck, nor the alarm that the ship was sinking could depress the ardor of John Paul Jones and his crew.

When asked if he would strike his colors and surrender his ship, Captain Jones replied, in face of what appeared to be insurmountable odds, “I have yet to begin to fight.”

Eventually the British captain struck his colors in defeat to John Paul Jones and his crew. This, my friends, is perseverance.

Accepting the fact that giving up is not a solution to a problems one is facing can be a real challenge. Here are some quotes about perseverance that can be helpful when the going gets tough.
“It always seems impossible until it is done.” Nelson Mandela.
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.” Winston Churchill.
“A bend in the road is not the end of the road… unless you fail to make the turn.” Helen Keller.
“It’s always too soon to quit!” Norman Vincent Peale
“The only guarantee for failure is to stop trying.” John C. Maxwell.
“Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the other.” Walter Elliot.
“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” Thomas Edison.
“Failure is only the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.” Henry Ford.
A Japanese proverb states, “Fall seven times and stand up eight.”
To succeed, you need to persevere.

Another characteristic I am learning from these young people is optimism. I am basically a pessimist. I figure if you expect the worst, anything that happens to the good is a win. A pessimist is never disappointed.

A good example of optimism is the story of the child whose over optimistic approach to everything worried his parents and they decided to cure him of that problem. For Christmas, this young man wanted a pony and the parents felt this would be a great time to cure this problem.

On Christmas Eve they had a local farmer come and fill their garage with horse manure. When the parents arose on Christmas Day, they found their son in the garage with a shovel going through the manure. They asked him what he was doing? He replied, “With this much manure there must be pony in here somewhere.”
That my friends is optimism at its finest.

This reminds me of the story of Marine Col. Chester Puller in Korea. When he was told that his Marines were surrounded with Chinese troops in front, on each flank and to his rear, he replied “Good they can’t get away this time.”
That my friends is optimism.

Thought of the week… “Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and most of all, a love of what you are doing.”
– Pele