SubscribeLessons from my brother’s life
When last I spoke with my brother Earl, he was ebullient, almost giddy.
“Hey Sis,” he began. “Just wanted to touch bases.”
“God is good, even when we aren’t good,” he said, as he talked excitedly about the changes he was making in his professional life. He was finally leaving the NAACP, the organization that he loved and for which he had worked practically all of his adult life.
We praised God together and talked about “the options” God had presented him. We talked about how prayer had sustained him through difficult days and had helped him when he needed to make critical decisions. “Oh yeah,” he gushed. “I know. I am always gonna pray.”
After a few more minutes, we hung up. I proceeded with the busyness of my day, grateful that I had stopped by home in time to receive his second call. I had missed the first one my son told me when I arrived back home that afternoon to pick up my daughter.
That was 10 years and almost a month ago, but even with my faulty memory I clearly remember that conversation and rarely resort to my journal for its details. Earl died in a car accident on an Alabama highway near Montgomery on June 11, 2000, the day after we talked. He was going somewhere, doing a thing that he loved.
I have come to view our conversation that day as God’s gift to me. To know how happy he was somehow mitigates the pain when I think of his death. Today I am thinking of his life and how much laughter and love and service and purpose he crammed into his nearly 50 years.
Today would have been Earl’s 60th birthday, and I am recalling some of the lessons I learned from my brother. For me, he remains a prime example of a person who lived his life with purpose. From the age of 13 when he began volunteering with the NAACP youth council in Savannah, Earl’s sight stayed fixed on working for the civil rights of others here and aboard.
Here is a shorthand version of lessons I learned from my brother’s life:
- Find something you love and do it with passion.
- Be authentic. Live who you are in all situations and with all people.
- Treat all people with respect and have no respect of persons.
- Take your mustard seed of faith and find a way to do the things you desire to do.
- Commit yourself to something. Don’t be a fence-sitter.
- Love your family with all your heart.
- Develop deep, enduring friendships.
- Be righteously indignant about something at some point in your life and use that energy to make a difference in the world.
- Don’t take yourself too seriously or analyze everything. Sometimes a movie is just a movie.
- Know and love yourself; more importantly know and love God.
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In keeping with Earl’s spirit and commitment, my family in cooperation with the Ralph Mark Gilbert Museum and the Savannah Branch NAACP is sponsoring The Earl T. Shinhoster Youth Leadership Institute July 26 -31 in Savannah. The Institute seeks to help youth ages 12 -14 discover and sharpen their leadership potential.
Peace and power, brother Earl.
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