Food for Thought: It Can’t Be Done—or can it?

Sometimes I am amazed by the uncertainty or lack of self-confidence that people often express.

As a pastor I often would ask someone to do something and they would rattle off all kinds of excuses why they couldn’t do it. They didn’t have experience, they wouldn’t know what to do, they were afraid of what people might say, they were afraid that they would fail.

I wonder what might have happened if Thomas Edison would have decided that electricity wouldn’t have worked, or the Wright Brothers would have said if someone had told them that no one would ever fly. What if Jonas Salk had decided that Polio could not be conquered? What would Jesus have done if someone had told him that there was no way to redeem people from their sin?

If you find yourself having such thoughts about your ability to do something or to help someone or your wisdom to advise someone, ponder these predictions about radio and ultimately television, the internet and so forth:

A Boston Post editorial from 1865: “Well-informed people know it is impossible to transmit the voice over wires and that were it possible to do so, the thing would be of no practical value.”

Sir William Thomson, later Lord Kelvin, a Scottish mathematician and physicist, is quoted as saying in 1897: “Radio has no future.”

A notice titled “Telegraphy Without Wires” in the Jan. 23, 1897, Scientific American, reporting on a demonstration of Marconi’s radio: “If the invention was what he believed it to be, our mariners would have been given a new sense and a new friend which would make navigation infinitely easier and safer than it now was.”

A May 7, 1899 review in the New York Times headlined “Future of Wireless Telegraphy”: “All the nations of the earth would be put upon terms of intimacy and men would be stunned by the tremendous volume of news and information that would ceaselessly pour in upon them.”

According to a report in Dunlap’s Radio and Television Almanac, Sir John Wolfe-Barry remarked at a meeting of stockholders of the Western Telegraph Company in 1907: “…As far as I can judge, I do not look upon any system of wireless telegraphy as a serious competitor with our cables. Some years ago I said the same thing and nothing has since occurred to alter my views.”

H.G. Wells wrote in “The Way the World is Going” in 1925: “I have anticipated radio’s complete disappearance…confident that the unfortunate people, who must now subdue themselves to listening in, will soon find a better pastime for their leisure.”

In 1913 Lee de Forest, inventor of the audion tube, a device that makes radio broadcasting possible, was brought to trial on charges of fraudulently using the U.S. mails to sell the public stock in the Radio Telephone Company. In the court proceedings, the district attorney charged that: “De Forest has said in many newspapers and over his signature that it would be possible to transmit human voice across the Atlantic before many years. Based on these absurd and deliberately misleading statements, the misguided public…has been persuaded to purchase stock in his company…” De Forest was acquitted, but the judge advised him “to get a common garden-variety of job and stick to it.”

Think about that the next time you click on your car radio, or turn down a request to do a volunteer project.

Refugees

Several years after arriving in Jeffersonville, Indiana, I was invited to become the executive director of the Kentuckiana Interfaith Community. This multi-denominational organization had roots way back to the 1940s when it was known as the Louisville Area Council of Churches.

KIC existed to help bring together the various denominations in Kentuckiana so that they could work on issues and programs of common interest. Its immediate predecessor, the Louisville Area Interdenominational Organization for Service (LAIOS) had been the first such organization in the country to include not only Protestant but also Roman Catholic denominations. The organization’s transition into KIC came with the inclusion of the Jewish community, again the first metropolitan council to take that step.

For over eleven years I served in this position and found it to be very challenging as well as rewarding. But the first day, I wasn’t too sure. I moved into my office, put my books on the shelves, put a picture of Polly and Beth and Brian on my desk, and then said to myself, “Now what do I do?”

It didn’t take long to find out. Our first major project was to be a part of a massive nationwide resettlement of refugees, primarily from Southeast Asia, but from Cuba, parts of Europe and Africa as well.

We teamed up with Church World Service to become an official resettlement agency and got underway. Working with congregations of all denominations, we were able to bring several hundred to Louisville in the next couple of years.

What incredible stories.

Part way through the refuge program the Mariel boatlift started bringing thousands of Cubans to the U.S. We sponsored the first Cuban who came out of Miami holding center to be resettled. While he worked out, the Cubans in general were different than the Southeast Asians who adapted well. Many of the Cubans at that time were taken out of prisons and mental hospitals by the Cuban government and dumped in the United States. So, while we brought some wonderful people to Louisville, we also ended up with some real problems, including one man who, it turned out, was operating a gun smuggling and prostitution ring through Louisville bars.

One refugee that I remember was a Bulgarian woman who got off the plane crying. She had been assigned to us, but we found she had a son somewhere in Florida. We tried to contact him before she arrived but he didn’t want to have anything to do with her.

However, once she arrived in the country, it was a different story. He sent us money, came to see her, and eventually flew her to Florida to live with him. The reason for the switch was that he was in the country illegally and feared that if he became involved with the national agencies, they would discover him and deport him. Once she was settled, he could work with her on a private basis. She had been crying when she got off the plane and she was crying when I put her on a plane to fly to Florida, but for different reasons.

I remember one other couple, Cubans who were separated in the refugee camps in Miami. She came to Louisville while her husband was assigned to a Catholic church in Chicago. It took us some time, but we eventually tracked him down (this was before computers) and got them reunited in Louisville. What stories these people had to tell and what a joy it was to be a part of relocating them to a new life in the U.S. It was probably one of the most significant things that I have done in my life.