Lawrence Green in 1973 in the Big Sandy School library.
Someone once criticized me, telling me, everything with you is a story. And I think he was right – but I don't take it as a criticism, I see it as acknowledgement of a gift, to be shared.
This is my story of Lawrence Green.
Lawrence Green was nothing much, really.
He was diminutive, he did not stand out in a crowd, unless the crowd happened to be a brawl, in which case, Lawrence was probably knocking the stuffing out of someone twice his size. Some would like that about Lawrence.
But he did not necessarily like that about himself. He understood there was always going to be someone bigger, stronger than he was. He knew where his power resided. His power, his gift, was in his words.
In the early 70s Lawrence Green gave me a gift, but he told me, you will always have to work for this gift. You will have to earn it, over and over. It took me years to get to the point where I could look at myself and say, I am a writer. Decades. I am not a great writer, I may not even be a good one, but I am one who will never stop trying to improve. This is one of the pebbles given to me by Mr. Green.
No, he was nothing much, just a teacher who went to school every day with a pocket full of pebbles. He would lay a handful of them on the desk before the students he sought to teach. Many ignored them, cast them aside. A few picked one or two up, put them in their pockets, took them home.
Some stayed on the farm and the pebbles never went far from the Big Sandy area. Maybe they had them in a pocket when they rode a horse or drove a tractor on the family farm or ranch. They may have thought about them or stroked them in their fingers. For some they took them nowhere.
Others carried the pebbles of Lawrence with them and went far from their home town, far across the nation, even beyond this great nation and into foreign lands. Sooner or later many of the pebbles were dropped, perhaps into a pond or a placid lake.
You know what happens when you drop a pebble into a calm body of water. There are ripples. The energy of that pebble is expanded in all directions, and its power grows. Over 25 or so years Lawrence Green saw his pebbles carried far and wide and his lessons grew in their influence.
What were those lessons? I believe they were different in each case; for me here are some of them: if you care about what you are doing, do not do it half-assed. Stick with it until you get it right. If you do not know the answer, look it up, take the time (this is one of the lessons I am still working on).
Here is one I always emphasize, whenever I am talking to someone who wants to write – when it comes to words you need to fall in love with them. Words are tools of language and language is a powerful force in this world. Words are more powerful than fists, and each word is a precision instrument. Like any fine tool, the proper word must be used for the proper job. You will never be a decent writer until you learn to use the proper word to say exactly what you mean, you must never be sloppy and say "good enough".
You will never be a carpenter if you drive a nail with the flat side of a crescent wrench. Same thing with words. Lawrence stressed to me: take the time, get it right. If you do less than your best, and it goes down on paper, then you are forever less than the true version of yourself.
When he said such things, I took it to apply to more than just writing.
It is no coincidence that during the time Lawrence taught at BSHS some folks graduated and went on to significant accomplishments as teachers, athletes, businessmen, politicians, scientists, musicians. Most of them will stand up and tell you how Lawrence Green put a pebble in their pocket and it helped them along the way. Read the transcript of Jeff Ament's acceptance speech into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, where he mentioned how Mr. Green was an inspiration to him.
Or perhaps listen to the words of my friend Ayesha Khan, a developing writer who I have mentored as she works to finish her first novel. Ayesha never had the privilege of meeting "Mr. Green" as she refers to him with respect.
She was born in Bangalore, India, four years after Lawrence retired from teaching. She has a degree in engineering and speaks six
languages. As I have worked with Ayesha in Seattle the past couple of years, as I have given her what guidance I could, often things would come up which I attributed to the teachings of Lawrence Green. I dropped a pebble in the water and the ripples found their way to Ayesha, who is now. back in Bangalore, 14,000 miles from where Lawrence imparted such pebbles to me.
Ayesha says: When I was in school, I didn't have a Mr. Green in my life, someone who inspired an entire generation, someone who touched so many lives and is remembered in such a way. I'm happy that he existed even so far away, because he's indirectly touched my life through Steve as he goes about teaching me, in such varied ways, about writing. I'm sure what everyone feels is gratitude for him, as do I. This world needs more teachers like Mr. Green.
Lawrence Green was nothing much, just a man with some pebbles; a man who reached halfway across a world.
