WINNERS LEAVE A LEGACY

Great people leave something behind. Winners recognize that no one can make it alone. Even though champions get the medals, they realize that there are many people behind their success, without whom it would not have been possible. Their teachers, parents, coaches, fans, and mentors. One can never fully repay those who have helped winners. The only way to show a little gratitude is by helping those who are following. The following poem says it all.

   THE BRIDGE BUILDER

 An old man, going a lone highway, 

Came, at the evening, cold and gray, 

To a chasm, vast, and deep, and wide,

 Through which was flowing a sullen tide. 

The old man crossed in the twilight dim;

 The sullen stream had no fears for him; 

But he turned, when safe on the other side, 

And built a bridge to span the tide. 

"Old man," said a fellow pilgrim, near,

 "You are wasting strength with building here; 

Your journey will end with the ending day; 

You never again must pass this way; 

You have crossed the chasm, deep and wide-

Why build you the bridge at the eventide?" 

The builder lifted his old gray head: 

"Good friend, in the path I have come," he said, 

"There followeth after me today 

A youth, whose feet must pass this way.

 This chasm, that has been naught to me, 

To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be. 

He, too, must cross in the twilight dim; Good friend, I am building the bridge for him. "

                             --Will Allen Dromgoole 

Socrates taught Plato; Plato taught Aristotle; Aristotle taught Alexander the Great. Knowledge, had it not been passed along, would have died. 

Our greatest responsibility is to pass on a legacy that the coming generations can be proud of.