[September 5, 2024] The cinders that made up the surface of the Cooper High School running track were digging into my back, making so many tiny pricks that my blood turned my track shirt a bright red. Someone offered a hand to help me up after another runner tripped me accidentally. Hobbling off the track, our coach came over to yell at me for getting blood on his new track surface. And he gave me his professional advice for the injury, “Just shake it off.” Oookkayyyy.
I’d just placed third in the 100-yard dash against five others in the race. There’s something majestic about a good race, raw competition, finishing neck and neck against others who had trained to win. It’s freedom of the kind hard to explain. A coach from another team said, “Good job running against the older kids.” Nice of him for the recognition and sportsmanship. A big, uncontrollable grin came over me, and I laughed out loud.
Running is the core event in track meets, and rightly so. Running on a well-maintained running track – the perfectly marked lanes and flat surface – and the expectation of an exciting race is an exhilarating experience. I ran the 50, 100, 220-yard dash and 440 relay. I was also a broad jumper (the name later changed to long jump after complaints from women), long jumper, and triple jumper. We were limited to four events during any track meet, and the head coach told us which events we would compete on any given event day.
My family had only arrived in Abilene a few weeks before school began. In my Sophomore year at my new school, Cooper HS, I joined junior varsity like others my age and was told when to report after school for a tough workout regimen that awaited us. Runners, like me, have a special place in the conscience of Americans. We love runners. During the Olympics, everyone watches for the runners; they are sleek, highly toned, muscled, and beautiful – men and women – who run like the mythical Mercury, the Roman god of eloquence, messages, and speed.
However, like an old, worn-out shoe collecting dust under your bed, joining the high school Track Team provided me with no real social advantages or school perks. Junior varsity team members had extra difficulty earning a varsity jacket with the track winged foot “letter,” so coveted by us. With that team jacket came bragging rights, and it also attracted the eye of girls. I did learn a valuable lesson, my picture in the school yearbook with my teammates wouldn’t get me a nickel cup of coffee at the local diner.
But I wouldn’t change anything about my membership on the high school junior varsity track team. We joked around, poking fun at each other, cheering our teammates, high-fiving the coaches, and waving at the crowd. I learned about good sportsmanship and that I could hold my own in a tough sport. I also learned that if you wanted to place first and be a winner, you had to do much more than the minimum required by the coach. That meant working out on your own.
Sports was a big part of my school, and there was a clear line of respect between those active in sports and participation in school clubs and those who were not part of anything. Many of my new friends fell into the latter category since they worked part-time jobs or helped on the family farm or ranch and couldn’t spare the time. I delivered the Abilene Daily Reporter newspaper twice daily, before school early and after track practice. I made nice money, including tips. I would share much of that money with my Mom.
I was 5 foot 10 inches and 129 pounds, a skinny, young teenager happy to live in Abilene, a nice town home to three Christian colleges and Dyess Air Force Base. My Mom took some courses at Abilene Christian College. She was also a high school swimming, basketball, and softball athlete at Bonita High in Louisiana. My Mom encouraged me to “pick a sport and do your best.” Bless her heart. That’s why I wouldn’t quit, ever.
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NOTE: See all my letters here: https://www.theleadermaker.com/granddaughter-letters/
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It is wonderful to read that it was your mom who encouraged you to join an athletic’s team and stick with it.
Sir, another great love letter for prosperity. And yes, I find them very entertaining but also insightful. I really do love the entire series of letters that you’ve written, in part, because they remind me of my childhood – which is a couple of decades after yours. In my upbringing a kid had to be extra careful not to get involved in illegal drugs, not because they were illegal, but because those drugs do great damage to your future. Today in America under our current Whitehouse, drug use is okay. I think that is wrong. Just see first son Hunter Biden as a classic example of failure.
Point well taken, aiken. True. The US government is not going after the druggies or their suppliers much anymore and it shows. Look at the crime, broken families, drug users on the sidewalks, tent cities, the homeless, and the list goes on. What is being done? Almost nothing. DON’T DO DRUGS.
Got that right, Peigin, don’t do drugs. I don’t care who says it’s okay, don’t do drugs. You will ruin your future and be trapped by the drugs.
I don’t comment much here but I have to write this time that I enjoyed this letter.
Sir, wonderful letter and loving letter. I have enjoyed your letters to your granddaughter now for more than a year and would hope you keep on writing them. I know that your time has almost come to discontinue these letters but maybe you could just put them into another format. Oh, and if you do decide to write a book from these, let us know. I will surely buy a few copies and pass them around as gifts to my friends.
Nothing like waking up early and getting to read a letter to Gen. Satterfield’s granddaughter…. I often get to have a flashback to my old track and field days in high school, and what a time we had. 😜
There is a lesson here:
“The cinders that made up the surface of the Cooper High School running track were digging into my back, making so many tiny pricks that my blood turned my track shirt a bright red. Someone offered a hand to help me up after another runner tripped me accidentally. Hobbling off the track, our coach came over to yell at me for getting blood on his new track surface. And he gave me his professional advice for the injury, “Just shake it off.” Oookkayyyy.” – Gen. Doug Satterfield
The lesson is resilience, strength, and courage. These would help Gen. Satterfield for his entire career in the US Army and be something that allowed him to have a good liife.
Exactly correct, Willie. I was thinking that too. Others below pointed this out. And this is one of the reasons these letters are more than just entertainment but provide a vehicle for learning something important about how to be successful in life. ✔✔✔✔
I hope that Gen. Satterfield takes this series beyond 100. Let’s all encourage him to do so.
He had a rough time and laughed about it.
Hi Dern, I’m not so sure he laughed about it, but certainly Gen. Satterfield as a teenager didn’t let not finishing first or being tripped, get him down. He got right back up and brushed it off. And didn’t let the blood effect him either. Maybe he didn’t notice the bleeding but I’m sure his running teammates told him. These are the kind of things that I like about reading this blog and especially these letters to his granddaughter. This is what being human is about – being strong and resilient, doing the right thing even when you are just one of the gang, and being good and helping others. That is what Gen. Satterfield is in spades.
Wow, Gen. Satterfield. Thank you for another love letter – of sorts – to your granddaughter. You’ve not given us feedback on what she thinks of your letters.
Here we are now at Letter #92 and closing in on #100 where the series ends. Thank you Gen. Satterfield in advance for your series and insights into your childhood. What most folks reading this might not pickup on so quickly, is Gen. Satterfield grew up at a time when drugs were not such a big scourge as it is today. Mostly the drug culture came about in the late 1960s and got really going in the early 1970s. By that time, Gen. Satterfield was a young man in college and then later in the US Army. The latter didn’t tolerate drug use and those caught were kicked out and right so. The drug culture was something that fortunately, didn’t capture the young Gen. S. and for all of us, we can be appreciative. Maybe Gen. S. will comment on that at some point.
Good point on the drug culture coming in mostly after Gen. Satterfield was grown. But it still took courage and having his head on straight that he didn’t get involved in this dead-end habit.
Loved the story. I’m sure your granddaughter will also love the story. 💕
As a new kid at school, Gen. Satterfield was right to get involved in athletics early on. That forces you to know people and to interact. For someone shy, that is good for them. I liked it when Gen. S. said that he had blood on his shirt and his coach yelled at him for getting blood on the new track. Ha Ha. I can just see it now. The young Satterfield must have been mortified.
As a long-time reader and fan of Gen. Satterfield and his website, i just wanted to note that this letter is classic Gen. S. He always writes about resilience and how important it is for us to always get back up when knocked down. And he discusses it briefly here. i think this letter is more of a metaphor for his life than true to life (which it certainly also is) and should be read that way in order for us to remember that we must always get back up. That is how we will be judged. and rightly so.
JT, you and me both. For those who read this blog and actually try to apply what Gen. Satterfield gives us in the way of advice (free for the taking), “getting up when knocked down” is a common thread — and very useful life values. Thanks.
Another beautiful and relatable love letter to Gen. Satterfield’s granddaughter.
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From the boy to the man, another great letter from Gen. Satterfield.
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For those new to this website, if you are willing to make an investment in yourself, go and get a copy of Gen. Satterfield’s book. My favorite is “55 Rules for a Good Life” and read it.
https://www.amazon.com/55-Rules-Good-Life-Responsibility/dp/1737915529/
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Right, if there is one thing we can say about the teenager Doug Satterfield is that he had no problem getting back up when knocked down – literally and figuratively – and keep on going. This is another great story about a normal day in the life of Gen. Satterfield that we all can relate to.
Boy to man …. yep! This is why these letters take me back to when I was a kid and struggled in High School, just like he is doing.
True facts. ✨
BOY TO MAN ………… I like it.