Allison Lebovitz speaking to the Kiwanis Club on making the world a better place
photo by Claire Henley Miller
Alison Lebovitz encourages others to make the world a better place one step at a time.
The activist, author, and WTCI talk show host spoke on Monday before Kiwanis Club members at the Mountain City Club. She began with the Isaac Newton quote, “We build too many walls and not enough bridges.”
To exemplify this, Ms. Lebovitz, who considers herself more of a storyteller than a speaker, said when she rides on planes she tunes out what is going on around her and gets in “her own world.” This causes her to sometimes think of the missed opportunity she had to connect with the stranger sitting next to her.
In light of this she told the story of Stasia Kelly – the daughter of the famous clown Weary Willie. Weary Willie, she said, was known as “the clown that never smiled.” Except for one time. On the day Emmett Kelly – the man behind the frowning clown – received the phone call his daughter Stasia had been born, a photographer captured the only picture of him smiling.
Ms. Lebovitz went on to say that years later, when Stasia was on a plane to go to her father’s funeral, she held the smiling picture of her father in her lap. The man next to her struck up a conversation with Stasia. She told him about her father, showed him the picture, and said this was the happiest day of his life, because it was the day Stasia was born.
Ms. Lebovitz said the man went “ashen.” Then he told the daughter he was the one who took the picture.
This story reminded Ms. Lebovitz of how powerful people’s stories could be. She segued into a little bit about her own story – how she grew up in Alabama, frequenting her grandfather’s segregated, all-black bar called the Red Bell Café. She recalled her grandfather’s funeral in 2006, and how a woman she had never seen before wanted to say something at the gravesite.
The woman allegedly told the crowd that in the 1950s she was a young activist living in Montgomery. One rainy day she was trying to get signatures in front of the Red Bell Café when Ms. Lebovitz’s grandfather invited her inside, gave her a dry booth, and let her continue her work without asking what she was doing.
As it turned out, the woman was helping start a movement that would contribute to the Montgomery Bus Boycott. At the funeral she said Ms. Lebovitz’s grandfather had been part of something much bigger than simply giving a young African American woman a place out of the rain.
“When we can give to others, we get things back,” Ms. Lebovitz said to end the story. She said a person’s actions caused ripple effects. For example, she talked about her oldest son and how she and her husband wanted him to play a team sport. But instead, her 15-year-old said he was going to start a rock n’ roll band and be the drummer.
But he had never played an instrument, Ms. Lebovitz said. Regardless, the son and his friends started practicing at Ms. Lebovitz’s house four days a week. They decided to enter a high school talent show and play the song “Free Bird” by Lyndyrd Skynyrd.
Ms. Lebovitz said she was surprised to discover her son and his band were good, and getting better. In fact, they went on to win second place in the talent show. By supporting her son’s band idea instead of forcing him to play a sport, Ms. Lebovitz found her son became happy. His band became his team, she said, giving her an “aha moment” as a mother about the importance of doing what makes a person happy.
“How do we become that 15-year-old who has the audacity to try something new?” she challenged the audience.
The last story she told revolved around Alfred Nobel, the chemist and inventor who patented dynamite. She told how in 1888 Ludwig Nobel died, and the French papers falsely reported Alfred Nobel was dead. The papers allegedly said, “The merchant of death is dead.”
As a result of the mistake, Alfred Nobel read his own obituary and sequestered himself in his home for many days, thinking over the legacy he was leaving as the “merchant of death” because of dynamite.
He decided to change his fate, Ms. Lebovitz said. And, upon his death, he left millions of dollars from his estate to establishments of humanitarian efforts, resulting in his legacy of the Nobel Peace Prize.
In closing, Ms. Lebovitz asked everyone in the room to look at the legacy they were leaving behind and change something about it to make it better.
She said stop and get to know the people all around.
She said, “Stop trying to figure out what society expects (you) to do, and figure out what (you’re) passionate about, and what makes (you) happy.”
This way of life will bring positive change in the world, Ms. Lebovitz believes.