Payback Time - 43 Years Later

It was a hot summer day in 1967 on the campus of Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland. Following the advice of his high school student council advisor, a man he revered for so many reasons, Lance found himself in an auditorium with a hundred other rising juniors, chanting "La La Pops! La La Pops!" a motley tribute to La La, one of the staff leaders of his group. The din in the steamy room of six robust groups trying to outshout each other was both ear shattering and deliciously irreverent. Urged on by staff, barely older themselves, this was just the opening act in a week of growth and self-realization beyond anything Lance had ever known. It was Maryland Leadership Workshops. And he was completely at home.

On a somewhat a cooler summer day some 43 years later, Lance returned to that exact room (WITH air conditioning this time) and heard the same din, this time as the father of a delegate. He was on a mission to create a stronger foundation and Board of Directors to sustain MLW far into the future. In those intervening years, Lance rose from delegate to staff, to Program Director to become the first elected President when they finally incorporated. After about 12 years, he left MLW to work with several adult leadership programs throughout Maryland. The MLW program, bless its heart, continued under several leaders after him, but the financial and political stresses of this era were more profound than one heroic person and a perpetually young staff could handle for long. So, Lance came back to finish what he had started four decades ago.
ts legacy. (think akin to a Kunta Kinte baptismal rite of passage into adulthood.) Since he was already signed on to strengthen MLW this year and had time to kill on sabbatical, he chose to stay at the program for two days getting reacquainted with the distinctive peer teaching model and contemporary curriculum.

Lance remembered how struck he was that first summer at meeting people who spoke his language. These were smart, articulate, self-aware kids who had felt the inherent loneliness of leadership, even at their young age, but couldn't escape the rush of being at the center of action and change. Lance had been elected 9th, 10th, and Senior Class president and President Pro Tem of the Student Senate in the 11th grade. He had never NOT been active in leadership activities. At MLW, he was in community with his peers from across the State and the skills sets they admired came easily to him. Problem solving, communications, group dynamics, conflict resolution...these were the building blocks of this society and music to his ears. And while many of his peers back at school chided him for "selling out", Lance was consumed with the next dance, food drive, student convention or school board petition.

But at MLW, leadership was spoken here. Lance carried it forward to his first job running the Maryland Association of Student Councils at the Maryland State Department of Education and later, his life long association with Leadership Montgomery, Leadership Maryland and a handful of other adult county leadership programs. It was a life changing week, and while he hardly expected it would do the same for his youngest son, at least he offered the opportunity. Lance saw his life rotate through arts, leadership and administration at various times, but they all fed off and complimented to each other. But none of this was new.

What was new was the confidence he had in himself now to make a real contribution back for the life MLW had given him. Tomorrow would be the first step on that road. A 43 year long road that circled back to this place. Strange, Lance thought, how life literally comes full circle.