Below is an 8-minute VIDEO of Rick Guzman’s remarks after receiving one of his alma mater’s 2024 Alumni of the Year awards. It was a stellar group, including a doctor, a widely published poet, and a 3-star general, which explains Rick’s first comment: “I’ve never followed a general before.” His brief remarks beautifully combined several themes he has honed over the past few years when talking about The Neighbor Project, especially the ideas that you have to believe in your neighbors enough to invest in them, and you have to help them become the leaders and change makers they are inherently capable of becoming. The links below take you to other videos where these ideas are explained more fully.
Here I’d like to expand on another perspective, the one of a father watching his sons mature and become those change makers themselves. My perspective is grounded in profound gratitude. When my youngest son Bryan died at the age of 21, my grief was mixed with an overwhelming sense of privilege. How fortunate was I, I felt, to have had the luck of being this person’s father. I feel this way about each one of the boys. Rick, Aaron, and Daniel followed me in speaking at Bryan’s memorial service, and afterwards, Hal Wilde, then president of North Central College, came up to me with tears in his eyes and said, “You’re the luckiest man in the room.” I told him later that it was a moment I’ll never forget because for me it was a truth that touched the core of my being.
I believe parents take too much credit for the things their children do well, and also too much blame for things that don’t work out as well. In the end, especially when it comes to their successes, it comes down to the fact that they were born with something outstanding in them. Of course, we play some role in nourishing and shaping that something, but finally it’s mainly them. We’re just fortunate enough to be at their side as that something matures. Rick’s voice breaks slightly as he mentions me knowing how important it is to spend your life equipping someone to be the best leader they can be. Doing that is one of the major themes of his career. However, I never actually spoke to him directly about doing that.
My intellectual patron saint is James Baldwin, and it was Daniel who once reminded me of something Baldwin wrote: “Children may not listen to their parents, but they never fail to observe what they do.” Many times I have talked directly to my sons about some big life issues and what they should and should not be doing, but it’s a simple truth bordering on 
cliché that they probably learn more by just watching you. They learn both small things and the large important things in life. Daniel once sent me a picture of his Christmas tree. It showed him pointing to simple silver balls hanging near the trunk on the inside. He wrote, “Brings out the inner glow,” just as he had heard me say and do when decorating our trees for years. Aaron once told me he said to his daughter Grace, “I did this with my Dad, and you’ll do this too with your little one.” In church, on a Father’s Day, the pastor asked if anyone would like to say anything about their Father. These moments sometimes backfire when nobody has anything to say, but Aaron spoke up right away, saying, “When I think of my Dad I think of all the time he spent with us, watching our sports and concerts, playing catch, taking us to Wrigley Field….”
My profound gratitude is also for these supposedly small times that really add up in the end. I can’t say that I enjoyed every single minute, but in retrospect that’s what I tell my sons and all parents to try to do. Enjoy every minute: because one day you may be a bit bored watching your umpteenth baseball game, but the next moment—because time does seem to go that fast—you’ll be watching your child conduct an orchestra, play a concert, or make a speech like the one below.
♦ The best introduction to The Neighbor Project’s vision—including the idea of believing in your neighbor enough to invest in them—is Rick’s short talk “Every Person’s God-Given Ability to Contribute.” See Aaron conducting a beautiful piece, which features his daughter Grace. And see Daniel in concert.
