5-15-25

I’m amazed at what some people can do…..sometimes it’s the big dogs, the ones

with all the looks, the money, the power…..but you expect that….I’m more

impressed with people who are just everyday run of the mill Joes and Janes who

step up and get busy…..who see something that needs doing…..or something that

needs saying….or some dream they haven’t followed yet….and the uncommon

side of the common man decides to just start…..and they wind up doing

uncommon things……

So I’ll kick off this monologue by saying that all my life I have enjoyed reading…..I

go back and forth between books that have meaning, or that tell history, and then

just good old novels…..I’m impressed by people that can use words with such

descriptive ability that you feel like you can actually see what the words are

describing…..you can read words on a page and get wrapped up in the emotions,

or the tensions, or the joys, of what is going on with the characters…..and I’ve had

some favorite authors over the years…..for non-fiction I’m a big fan of John

Krakauer who wrote “Into Thin Air” – a true recounting about a disastrous

attempt to climb Mount Everest…..It was one of the few times I can recall reading

a book and actually shouting out loud when I read one passage about a man that

everyone thought was dead suddenly walking down off the mountain like a frozen

zombie……I love the historical fiction of Steven Pressfield who wrote “Gates of

Fire” about the 300 Spartans who stood in the way of the mighty Persian army at

Thermopylae…..it is a well researched fiction based on reality that is so incredibly

well done that it has been mandatory reading for young Officers in military circles

for years……for non-fiction, I’m a huge fan of J. Oswald Sanders who wrote

“Spiritual Leadership”, a book which has had life-changing effect on me, and John

Maxwell, the prolific writer on leadership principles who is one of the few authors

who has multiple books on my shelves in my study at home…..and as long as I’m

going into favorites, I’ve got to say that my newest addition to the favorite author

list is Jack Carr, the former Navy Seal who’s series of thrillers in the Terminal List

series are some of the most realistically written novels I’ve ever come across…..all

good stuff….all worthy of the reads……all authors that I would love to meet

personally some day…..

But here’s the thing…..every one of those guys was not an author at first…..they

just had an idea, and they put the first word down on paper, or in their computer,

and what happened was sometimes quick, sometimes not so quick, but eventually

each one of those men became best selling authors……they were just uncommon

common men doing uncommon things……

But if I had to pick one guy who sparked my interest in reading and for whom I

have read nearly everything he wrote it would have to be fictional author Tom

Clancy…..no one in modern literary history has done more to shape the dynamics

of modern publishing than Clancy….and I don’t say that lightly…..it’s true….and it’s

a tale worth telling…..so let me tell it to you…..

Clancy was not an author by trade…..he was a guy who had wanted to go in the

military when he was young but had problems with his vision that disqualified him

for military service…..so he became an insurance salesman…..no kidding…..how

absolutely ordinary does that sound?....

Tom Clancy was born in Baltimore MD in 1947…..his Dad worked for the post

office and his Mom worked in a department store…..he was a boy scout….went to

Catholic School…..and eventually went to Loyola to get his college degree in

Physics, but his grades were so bad he switched his major to English because it

was easier…..he was a really average student….like literally average, and

graduated with at 1.9 GPA on a 4.0 scale….that’s a C-student!…..after college in

the early 70’s he became an insurance salesman…..just a common guy, right?.....

But then he started writing…..and his first novel is one of my all time favorites,

The Hunt For Red October……a fictional accounting of what would happen if a

Soviet Submarine Commander decided to defect to the west with his nuclear

sub….Clancy finished the book in 1982 and in 1984 he finally found a small

publishing house that would give it a shot….he sold Red October for

$5000….chump change……the published hoped that they would sell 5,000

copies….but it immediately sold 45,000 copies!.....and then Ronald Reagan read it

and mentioned it in public, saying that it was one of the “best yarns”…..the sales

jumped to 300,000 in hardcover and over 2 million in paperback…..his first book

was a national bestseller….one of Reagan’s senior staffers was so impressed with

Clancy’s technical ability to write about US and Soviet intelligence and naval

doctrine that he bought multiple copies and gave them out to staff in the West

Wing…..rumors have abounded for years that the FBI spent time questioning

Clancy to see where he got all of his source information for the book, but it was

really just someone who knew how to research and how to write…..Tom Clancy is

one of only a handful of authors to sell over 2 million copies of a first

printing…..and most of you know that he continued writing….in a big

way…..seventeen of his novels became New York Times bestsellers…..more than

100 million of his books have been sold…..eight of them have been made into

movies or TV shows…..four of them have been turned into bestselling video

games…..he made millions, and even became an part owner of the Baltimore

Orioles baseball team….

I once read his book “The Sum of All Fears” about a terrorist getting a nuclear

device into the United States and was amazed at the depth of it…..there is one

section in which the nuclear bomb is detonated and Clancy literally took several

pages to describe the splitting of the atom and the series of chain reactions that

lead to the explosion….. in his book Debt of Honor I can still remember thinking

that the solution that his main character, Jack Ryan, came up with for bringing a

crashed Wall Street back on line was just simple genius and I’ve used it as a

teaching point many times…….

Tom Clancy was a very normal guy…..just a common man…..someone who you

might have passed in the grocery store and not thought twice about…..but he was

an uncommon common man who did uncommon things…..his writings are

credited with having changed the publishing world…..literally…. the whole genre

of modern military techno-thrillers is attributed to his work…..publishing houses

opened new divisions just to look for more Clancy-style authors…..he developed

his own publishing empire and helped to elevate other aspiring writers……his

name became the banner that other writers worked under…..One pundit said tha

Clancy was to military literature what Starbucks was to coffee…..I’m telling you

folks, it is as if the world suddenly had fiction, nonfiction, and Clancy…..his own

category…..

I tell you all of this, not because I want you to run out and buy a Tom Clancy novel

(although you might)…..I tell you all of this because I don’t want anyone of you

who is listening to this to underestimate your own ability…..Clancy was the most

common of common men who would go on to do uncommon things…..he dined

with Presidents, and he still looked like an insurance salesman……just a

dude….like all of us…..just a guy with a C-average in college, and no real thought

of what was next, but he had this idea….this itch he had to scratch….this notion

that he could be a C-student in English and still write a good book…..and he

changed the literary world……some of you out there have been sitting on an idea

because you don’t trust yourself….or you think of yourselves as just too common

to do uncommon things…..if there was ever a role model for doing something that

no one expected, it was Tom Clancy……

I had a pastor once who gave one of the few sermons that was so good that I had

to get a copy of it…..his message was that sometimes what God calls us to do is

“start”……just start…..he used to say with some old man wisdom that “many think

but few know, many are called but few go”…..and then he said “just start”…..

So that’s my message for today……all of you common folk…..all of you uncommon

common folk who could actually do uncommon things…..you’ve just got to start….

Look at Clancy…..

And that’s a wrap for the Rightside Way!