Les Fernandez, called “Coach” (by just about everyone) became my mentor when I was 18. Strolling around White Plains NY during my first year in college, I saw a sign “The Cage Teen Center.” It pointed to steep steps leading to a basement under a Woolworths store. I saw a canteen, ping pong tables, hang out sofas, and over to one side in another space, a boxing ring and gym paraphernalia. A warm, smiling voice greeted me. Les told me that he ran this teen hang out for tough kids who were often in and out of jail. He coached Golden Gloves boxing. He was a teacher, social worker, counselor and made “The Cage” a safe place for anybody to hang out. He invited me to visit often, and I did. The next year he transformed The Cage into an accredited alternative high school called EduCage. It lasted over 25 years and was so highly regarded that kids were known to do “bad things” to get thrown out of regular school so they would qualify to go to EduCage.
His warm-hearted wisdom and big smile live inside me. During my lifetime pursuit toward a deeper democracy, his words continue to ring true: “Sally, look for people who see a need, who reach out and lend a hand.” For me, these simple words describe the heart of democracy. Democracy is unbounded, not just enshrined in noble ideals but alive in people’s choices. It gives people the ultimate respect, authority and freedom to see a need, lend a hand and serve one another.
Especially now, I want people to make democracy their own and meet this time with indomitable spirit and resourcefulness. My new book, The Global Heart of Democracy, is a collection of stories revealed in interviews with people around the world that illuminates how this impulse toward an inner spiritual democracy lives in people’s hearts. Stories, rather than philosophy, touch and transform us. We realize we are not alone but part of a collective awakening of humanity.
I gave Coach a small, framed quote that he kept on his desk for many years, Success by Ralph Waldo Emerson. The last line reads “to find the best in others, to leave the word a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived, this is to have succeeded.”