In praise of red cabooses

More than half a century ago, a publisher risked starting a children’s book series with a non-traditional format: kid-size at 7x8” and full of colored art with text. Today we know them as “The Golden Books.” Among the early titles was The Little Red Caboose, about the last car on a train with quite a “woe-is-me” attitude because he wasn’t “important” like the engine, boxcars, oil cars, coal cars, or flat cars. Then one day the engine didn’t have the pull to take its heavy load up the mountain.  It started to slip down, threatening a runaway train situation. The little caboose slammed on his brakes and kept everything on the tracks long enough for two big engines to come up behind and push it all up the mountain.  When it was all over, the “rescue” engines give the caboose credit for saving the train.  His new-found fame meant that children now waved at the "important" caboose as he passed them on the tracks.

Of course, it’s a children’s story, but one of the truths behind it is this: do not underestimate your role in life. Persevere when it gets tough.

Dan's sense of humor led him to feature
this fun photo of his son and granddaughter
on the book cover

One of my heroes of perseverance is a polio overcomer named Dan Miller. We met about twenty years ago when he spoke at a volunteer banquet at my church.  His story is that he contracted polio right after high school graduation.  He had planned to train to be a physical education teacher—he was a star in sports at his local high school—but polio left him with severely impaired arms and legs. In those pre-mobility-scooter days, he got around with great difficulty with crutches. Still, he pursued his dream.  His college adviser, while acknowledging Dan’s physical impairment, cheered him on with a simple statement:  “Let’s see what you can do.”  Even though Dan had to work harder than other students, and improvise for his handicap, he still graduated from college and was hired as a physical education teacher!  Eventually he became an award-winning elementary school principal. I helped him write his autobiography—a blend of fun and challenge—which sold by the thousands when he traveled as an inspirational speaker. 

This spring, the stories of two more overcomers came to my attention. One had his story published in the magazine highlighting events and people at Washington State University’s new School of Medicine. Abel Saba grew up in Burkina Faso, a West African country with one of the world’s lowest literacy rates.  The son of a pastor, oldest of six siblings, he counted going to school a privilege. At 18, he founded a primary school just outside the capital city.  To raise money for it, he hauled and sold water. Then he helped build the first schoolhouse.  He arrived in the U.S.  on a visa in 2009, working at entry-level jobs but still managing to send money home for his school.  Fluent in French and his native language, he had to learn English after arrival in the U.S.  He worked overnight shifts so he could attend nursing classes during the day. Now he’s pursuing the long and difficult path of getting a doctorate in the family nurse practitioner program with the goal of establishing a health care center next to the school.  One of his WSU instructors remarked, “He has a very gentle spirit, but a directed purpose.” 

The other story was an essay in the Seattle Times by Ater Malath, originally of South Sudan, part of the swath of Africa (including Yemen, Somalia and Nigeria) facing famine and mass starvation. It’s estimated that in South Sudan a million children are acutely malnourished and at risk of dying. Ater, who came to the United States as a refugee, says his first name means “perseverance.”  He described himself as “a tenacious person—an attribute that helped me survive war, starvation, and the trials of refugee camps.”  At nine years old, he lost his parents to a village massacre. With his uncle he fled bare-foot for hundreds of miles through war-torn countryside, then lived in several refugee camps. Twelve years ago he was among the wave of children allowed into the U.S. from Sudan.  He arrived alone, a teenager, in Fargo, N.D. Without the cultural supports of home, he forged a life that included working “at horrid meatpacking plants, and a long series of filthy, backbreaking jobs. But I was grateful to be in a country not wracked by warfare, famine, extreme poverty and hopelessness.” He later brought over two sisters and a brother to America. He and two siblings earned college degrees; one returned to South Sudan and runs a small market.  His essay was a call to action to help peoples half a world away in a crisis of horrific dimensions.

To compare these remarkable overcomers to a “red caboose” may seem ludicrous. But I think there’s a point here.  Most of us probably know people who are stuck in negatives that are trivial compared to what these people have gone through. But no matter where we are in life—and for Christians, there's the anchoring truth that God knows exactly where that is—there is hope if we take life a positive step at a time, keeping our hands in His.