The Last Lecture

The Last Lecture
4
The Parent Lottery
I WON THE parent lottery.
I was born with the winning ticket, a major reason I was able to live
out my childhood dreams.
My mother was a tough, old-school English teacher with nerves
of titanium. She worked her students hard, enduring those parents
who complained that she expected too much from kids. As her son, I
knew a thing or two about her high expectations, and that became my
good fortune.
My dad was a World War II medic who served in the Battle of the
Bulge. He founded a nonprofit group to help immigrants’ kids learn
English. And for his livelihood, he ran a small business which sold auto
insurance in inner-city Baltimore. His clients were mostly poor people
with bad credit histories or few resources, and he’d find a way to get
them insured and on the road. For a million reasons, my dad was my
hero.
I grew up comfortably middle class in Columbia, Maryland.
Money was never an issue in our house, mostly because my parents
never saw a need to spend much. They were frugal to a fault. We rarely
went out to dinner. We’d see a movie maybe once or twice a year.
“Watch TV,” my parents would say. “It’s free. Or better yet, go to the
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