Accidental Friends 

By

Bill Cottringer

INTRODUCTION

     This is a story you have heard or read about many times before, only being altered versions with different characters, conflicts and outcomes. This story is mostly true, with some precautions as to not violate laws, make incorrect judgments or defame others unfairly. And of course there are slight embellishments to jack up the interest level to accommodate the growing ADHD generation of readers.

    What makes this story different from others is that the story is being told without an ending in mind, which will be determined by the readers. Like all other stories, there are only three possible endings:  The perfect one where everyone gets to the finish line at the same time and everyone ends up pleased and satisfied, the worst one where nobody gets to the finish line and no one ends up pleased or satisfied; and of course somewhere in between these extremes, where the audience is partially pleased and partially displeased as to how the conflicts are resolved and what remains in their imagination. Which of these our story will end with will be decided by the readers.

     Our story is mainly about two accidental friends, Cameron Carter and Sam Carver, first meeting as 17-year olds sitting next to each other on a 707 out of Newark headed for the US Air Force basic training facilities at Lackland AFB, Texas. They had both signed up to be fighter pilots as officers going through the 12 week Officer Candidate School Training program, being underage and requiring their parent’s consent. The two young lads had just graduated from high school, one in New York the other in New Jersey. They were both classic over-achievers and could have gotten into college with their strong drive and effort to become someone important, but neither parents had that kind of money.

     So they both unknowingly decided to do the next best thing—to become officers in the Air Force and get their college degree’s paid for by Uncle Sam after their 4-years’ service. They both struggled through basic training boot camp, unfortunately only to find out that the Air Force had disbanded the OCS program, now requiring completion of a college education to become eligible for commissioning as an officer. The Air Force gave them two choices—get an honorable discharge or continue on in a technical training field of their choice.  

     What these two young men didn’t know, was that they had both aspired to work their way up the executive ladder in the criminal justice profession, both in a distinguished law enforcement career. So, the choice was easy, given the openings in the 6-month Air Police Tech School a few miles away from where they were. They graduated top of their class and then it became time to choose assignments. Back then, the word was to put your preferred location last on the list and the least desirable as first. For these two accidental friends, Tulle Greenland was their first choice and Japan was last. Holding true to rumors it was off to Japan they went after a two week leave back to New Jersey and New York to say good bye to everyone. During the next three years they were bunkmates in Japan and then Vietnam.

     Time pasted by quickly and before they knew it, they were back at Travis Air Force Base ready to get discharged and start their careers, starting with the criminal justice college classes paid for under the GI Bill. They said temporary goodbyes and promised to keep in touch, having become very close during the war in Southwest Asia. But here is where they end up going their separate ways and sadly losing contact, only to reconnect by accident after more than 50 years. One Christmas, an older Carter, finally located his long lost Vietnam bunkmate, on the Internet.

     The accidental friend Carver was doing 50 years in a New York prison of an attempted murder and robbery of a notorious drug dealer. Carter even found out they had made a TV movie about Carver’s crime, called “Murder in Mind.” The idea to tell the rest of the story was born. Oddly, at the time, one was busy with his career “outside the system” as a prison warden, while the other was facing the struggle to survive as an ex-cop prison inmate “inside the system.”

     The part of this story that neither Carter or Carver really knew about, had to do with all the life choices they had made to find and live their purpose in this life. One made several bad choices in multiple marriages and musical chair careers in a desperate search for true love and the perfect position to make a difference in the criminal justice system, using his limited skills and over-abundant motivation and over-achieving drive to succeed. The other made one very bad choice that ended his criminal justice career, oddly hoping that it would save the financial difficulties his career wasn’t able to pay for. As they painfully learned, “Hindsight is always 20-20.”

     The very important insight Cater and Carver finally figured out from their reunited accidental friendship was a life changing one. Serendipitously and spontaneously, they mutually discovered they had both wasted their lives to focus on making choices that they thought would bring them the future results they wanted. Realizing that it is only the choices we have before us now that we need to be careful with, was the tipping point in moving from failure to success in their happiness quest. The saying, “Better late than never,” comes to mind with much resonance.  

       Now it is time to go to another part of this story, which is about an irresistibly likeable, elderly gentleman who had to wait 95 years to see his long anticipated hope come true, by never giving up on his dream of being able to leave a legacy to make a difference in life. On his long journey to win big, Cliff Steel Carter, younger accidental friend Carter’s father, played the four main roles God assigned to human beings in the play of life—He was a villain, victim, bystander and finally a hero.

     Some people, Cliff understood, unknowingly play these roles in life. But not Cliff, he was always aware of what he was doing and why and he was always sensitive to the point of no return—when he was just about to give up himself to let the role to consume him. This was the important juncture in life that the Chinese culture has one symbol to cover dualistic possibilities regarding outcomes of a certain event. These were moments of opportunity vs. moments of danger. Too many people were unable to see this point of no return before it came and went. The sad result was ending up stuck on the wrong side of where you really wanted to be.

      Cliff’s small but crucial part of the story is full of all the stuff that makes any story intriguing about an average guy who at the end of the day, as we shall see, hardly lived an average life. Sometimes we only see a shadow of what is coming or what has happened and therefore we fail to appreciate the moment for what it is worth. It just passes, basically going unnoticed, except for the few they influence in not so small ways.

     We all have plenty of troublesome conflicts, adventure, danger, surprises, useful insights, joy, sadness, moving inspirations and even hot, steamy sex. Please join us as we travel an unforgettably inspiring and intriguing journey to see what was involved with one very average but tenacious man who wouldn’t let go of his insatiable will to win and all the funny, sad and outrageous things that happened in between, especially the influences he had on others who ended up making a huge difference in life. There is something for everybody in this story and you get to determine the ending.

     Young Carter’s was born on Friday May 13, 1921 in a small suburban town outside Camden, New Jersey. Actually, he was born in a hospital in Camden that was a stone’s throw away from this parent’s large, three-story house. It was a common joke that he didn’t have very good luck because the May 13th he was born on just happened to be a Friday. The fact was that he had about average luck in his life. He came from an average family of five, was raised by two very average parents, along with two mostly average sisters—all in the looks and brains departments, and about the only un-average thing he ever did was join the army to fight in World War II as a sergeant eventually, after his third and last year in service.

     Cliff had average grades in school and wasn’t a star athlete, prom king, honor student or even the best dancer. Somehow, though, he managed to get accepted at a local college on the GI Bill after he returned as a civilian. Now the truth be known, Cliff was a bit of a dreamer and frustrated creative-type, but to be successful doing that sort of thing took a higher degree of intelligence than earlier IQ tests showed he had.

     Oddly his 7th grade teacher branded him as being below average intelligence, maybe even “retarded” as the term was loosely used back then before it became politically incorrect. His parents, both being of average intelligence, were a little disturbed by this unexpected and certainly unwanted news, but later found out his low score on this test he took was probably more related to having to go to the bathroom really bad during this standardized testing and so he rushed through his answers to be able to be excused and be on his way. Relieved he was, at least until his parents got his scores. That was rather awkward for everyone, even his two older sisters.

     But then the next year, in eighth grade things changed, when his teacher was so impressed with his meticulous school work, she told his parents maybe he should become a brain surgeon. Well, needless to say, that relieved his parents immensely. But, he didn’t go onto become a medical doctor, but rather just a manager in the local tire factory where he made good money as a grey collar worker, mostly with the overtime, and had worked for 45 years before retiring. A very good run considering his own parents had to raise him through the Great Depression.

     He lived in the same house with his high school sweetheart who he married when he returned from his military service, until they grew apart and ended up with a hurtful divorce and two children in custody limbo. This was highly unusual at this time because divorce was totally against his catholic faith and so maybe that is why he later became a more liberal Episcopalian.

     After that he moved to a small cottage in a neighboring town, small enough to save enough money to enhance his good looks and lively personality to look for another true love, which ending up taking longer than he expected. It took a very long time to find love again, because it is love that always ends up finding you, but usually at the most inconvenient times.

     Cliff did a lot of daydreaming all his life. That was his way of escaping his average life that sometimes bordered on quiet desperation. Most of his dreaming had to do with realizing greater things in life, like becoming rich, powerful and famous, or at least fulfilling a noble purpose in life like helping others to be successful in following their dreams. He didn’t tell anyone his secret dream of inheriting a lot of money from some stranger, who recognized he was indeed very special regardless of the average package he was trapped inside and could only hope to change.

     At any rate, Cliff’s father Henry, used to play what was called the numbers game at private policy shops in the Camden area. There you could wager on as little as a penny for several dollars’ worth of groceries. Cliff thought that kind of idea gave average people hope for being able to do something very un-average. Maybe even spectacular.

     Much later in his own life he was rather amazed when one New England state formalized his idea into a lottery ticket program in New Hampshire. Since he sensed it was part of his destiny to come across a lot of money unexpectedly, he actually started driving up there a couple of times a year to purchase a single ticket for a chance at the jackpot, which was a modest $500,000 amount. But, this was still a lot of money back in the sixties.

     Cliff’s second wife Emma, was much more practical than him and thought the seven-hour drive was a total waste of time. This was ironic because it was his first wife, Anna, who was a psychiatric social worker full of unfulfilled idealism, hopes and dreams. And since Emma witnessed Cliff going through this routine for many years, without any results, well this confirmed her assessment of such foolishness.

     But she did leave him with a bit of wisdom about his all and that was two important things he needed to do to improve his chances and finally get a return on all the dollars he had faithfully spent over the years. This very practical advice was to not think about winning like not watching the clothes go round and round in the dryer, and to plan out exactly what you would do with the money that would have the best outcome.

     Emma always said, “Cliff, you had to have a solid plan and work the plan.” “Yes dear,” was his usual response. He actually already knew that from all the management training he had in his job, but just forgot to apply it to his personal life. That is not as unusual as it sounds though. Many marriage counselors don’t practice what they preach to others, in their own lives. And not all doctors are healthy or teachers able to teach their own children.

     Cliff had actually used this last bit of advice much earlier during the war. He was an avid reader and somewhere he read that when things were calm in your life, that is when you should plan what your response was going to be when life wasn’t so calm and adversity suddenly came upon you.   This was a big part of the human potential movement in the sixties that his older generation thought was a waste of time. But this idea stuck with him for some reason. At any rate, before going off to war, he thought carefully about how he would survive being wounded or how his own parents would react to their only son being killed, His father had served in World War I and so that last idea was a reality.

     What actually happened was some fierce battles in Italy and France, which he somehow survived when many of his unit weren’t so fortunate, ending up getting killed or horrifically maimed and disabled. He had planned earlier what to do when such eminent death was knocking on his door. He would pray to get out of the situation unhurt, with a promise to God as to how he was going to repay the gift of life. He survived and who knows if the other solder’s who didn’t, failed to plan ahead about such a dreadful possibility. That would be a very dangerous topic to speculate on, he thought to himself.

     Of course what nobody knew was that Cliff had always known that he would live to be 97 years old. That is just knowledge he was born with, similar to his faith, that didn’t have to be created, just nurtured. He knew better than to tell his own mother about this or even his second wife, since they had both been raised that you could never know this fate because only God did.

     His mother would always say, “God knows every hair on your head.” So he kept this very basic secret knowledge to himself. But of course it came in handy when he turned 65 and could draw social security and still work full-time, living the good life, and then eventually retire comfortably for quite a while on the company and the country. That whole system was based on most people not living past 75. Here, Cliff’s secret knowledge paid off.

      Cliff played the lottery religiously every week. Only a couple of dollars, but consistently. It had spread from New Hampshire in the later sixties to other states and moved closer to Pennsylvania. But week after week and year after year, nada, zilch return on his investment. He began to think it was all a bad cosmic joke having such a dream and hope that would never happen.

     It became somewhat depressing, so on his ninetieth birthday he decided he might as well stop with throwing all his dollars away and begin helping his children help the children’s children support their athletic purchases at the very expensive Dick’s Sporting Goods store, where baseball bats cost over $150 on sale. You see, Cliff’s wife made him save two dollars for everyone he spent on the silly lotto fiasco, since she knew this was all a government scheme to give poor people some kind of hope, but more importantly spend money they didn’t have, to support the top-heavy government infrastructure with more tax money.

     In the next few years two things happen to resurrect some more serious investing by Cliff—twice a week visits to his long term friend at the Safeway video department who provided him with his movie entertainment and four Mega Millions and Powerball tickets. They were always quick pics, because long ago he learned that method improved the ridiculous odds of winning a jackpot.

     On March 30, 2012 three people from Illinois, Maryland and Kansas won the largest Mega Millions jackpot in history at a staggering $656 million. Of course, the after tax lump sum take home from that was only about $215 million, but still a lot of money to figure out what to do with. Then the next year on May 18th, one lucky lady won the Power Ball for $590.5 million. Slightly less take home, but who was counting?

     “Hmmm, things are heating up,” he silently thought to himself when he was getting g closer to his 95th birthday on May 13th which happened to be on a Wednesday in 2015. It could happen this year, not being on the Friday nemeses. He had already planned out the details of how he would deal with winning all this money, as the jackpot for both Mega Millions and Power Ball were both over the $700 million mark.

     However, he was obligated to follow the other part of the advice his wife Emma had left him with—to not think about it at all. Easier said than done, but loving his wife’s memory, he at least tried to put it out of his mind when he decided to go later that birthday Wednesday to the Safeway Store in North Bend Washington, were he had moved to, two decades ago on a whim.

      He had always wanted to live on a river in the mountains, back near where he had completed basic training at Fort Lewis near Tacoma and he had read about an opportunity in a magazine to buy a chalet that had been earlier converted to a B & B but later back into a private residence, now for sale. And at a price he had in savings, thanks to his practical wife Emma who had made him double-save all his foolish lotto spending over the years.

     About this time, Cliff Carter’s estranged son, Cameron Carter, started his own amazing story, finding his old Air Force buddy, Sam Carver after not hearing from him in over 50 years. The younger Carter later finds out the important connection between these two separate stories, as his was just happening now.

     It was June 19th, 1962 at Lackland AFB, Texas, where two very young 17-year old “boys” were bunkmates in the USAF Basic Training Class, one from New Jersey and the other from New York. They had both just graduated from High School but were underage to join the service and so they had to have parental permission. One forged his father’s signature and the other got his Mom’s legitimate John Hancock. Nobody ever found out about the forgery. But all the other older guys in basic training knew. How could they not question the size and youthful appearance of these two?

     How these two ambitious youngsters ever survived two months of brutal basic training with the stringent gigging system of the Air Force at the time, not really needing marginal recruits, was anyone’s guess. The deck was stacked against them, being less than average in intellect, experience and abilities. It only took 25 gigs to get booted out and they both had a combined 35 within the first four weeks. Their long range plans of going to Officer Candidate School, which they had originally qualified for from test scores, was becoming bleak to say the least. Five gigs alone were assessed when the quarter wouldn’t bounce off the bed and two for a drop of toothpaste showing. Having dust balls under the bad was as close to fatal as possible. 25% of the class succumbed to that mistake.

     Carter and Carver, the two accidental friends of this present story, were both the black sheep of the basic training class of over 150 your airmen-to-be, and whenever either one would get a stray letter from home, the Drill Sgt. Would always be sure to make the comment, “Who the hell would want to write you two morons?” Ouch, that stung personally! And the first time the Sgt. Asked who had a driver’s license, both shot their hands up a little too quickly only to get the honor of “driving” the broom up and down the floor in between bunks about 100 times before their hands had blisters and arms when limp. Then of course they were required to hold the heavy push brooms above their heads for 15 minutes before yelling “uncle.”

     This wasn’t starting out very well at all, because both airmen candidates had qualified and contracted at their respective recruiting stations in NJ and NY, to complete Officer Candidate School to become pilots because of their good testing scores before entry. The Sgt. Probably knew this and was likely pulling “An Officer and Gentleman” strategy way before that movie came out with Richard Gere and Debra Winger, who ironically visited young Carter’s prison in the Midwest with her governor boyfriend much later. At least the other basic trainees didn’t know about this secret. They would have been very surprised to know so much was in store for such “yard-birds,” as one of their friends from Boston would say.

     Well, as we saw earlier, plan A for these two lads came to a very quick and disappointing end. They did make it through the basic training, just a few gigs short of getting booted out, but a week before graduation, their hopes and dreams for the expected Air Force career in flying planes quickly came to a halt. They were sadly informed that the USAF had closed down the Officer Candidate School (OCS) option, tacking on the requirement of a college education to becoming an officer, and neither had even applied for college. So, they were given two options: (a) being honorably discharged because of the unfortunate change of plans they had actually “contracted” to happen, or (b) choose another career path.

    Neither Carter nor Carver were quitters, so they talked it over and decided to join the air police and go through the next 6 months technical school training. The had both aspired towards careers in law enforcement as second fiddle to flying jet planes, an odd dual interest, but they didn’t give it much thought. So off they went to air police tech school training, where they both excelled, being number one and two in the class of 200. They had been very competitive in high school, both academically and athletically, so test-taking was a breeze, and especially fun on the firing range and in gym.

     Graduating at the top of their AP class had a few perks. The typical assignment choices came in threes and they both learned from a particularly nosey, tall skinny guy with glasses everyone disliked, that the Air Force would always give you just the opposite of what you asked for, in that reverse order. For instance, if you asked for Yokota AB in Japan as number one, and then Tulle, Greenland as number two, and Iceberg, Iceland as the last choice, the last choice would be where you went. But for honor graduates you got the order you wanted and since they both wanted to go to Japan, and that is where they went on a long 18-hour flight on November 1962 on the Flying Tiger Airlines, with stopovers in Nome, Alaska and Hickam AFB, Honolulu. Too brief for anything other than a quick beer and burger, which were both more than a little over-priced because of inflation of the upper 49th.

     Being disappointed about having to guard F-102’s instead of flying them, had its initial toll on Carter and Carver, but they were both tenacious, resilient and optimistic so they mutually decided to make the most of it and enjoy this oversees experience and delay life plan b for later. They both played on the winning AP basketball team (45-0 for two seasons) that eventually saw one player go to the Philadelphia Warriors and two twins, dearly named Heckle and Jeckle, to the Harlem Globetrotters. And they traveled on trains everywhere on their three days off, even to Hiroshima where they were not received very well. Despite being shunned, they thoroughly enjoyed and learned much valuable empathy from exposure to the museum the Japanese people built on ground zero as a memorial. 

   Then an opportunity came about to volunteer for temporary duty in an obscure, unknown country in Southeast Asia trying to fight for its freedom. They both had fiancées at home waiting for their eventual return from overseas with marriage on their minds, but the call for help from the Vietnamese people was too loud and genuine to pass up. They were both patriots and protectors at heart and especially for the underdog like they often found them in the position of being. So off they went to a place neither had a clue about from school or personal knowledge. It was an adventure for two foot-loose and fancy-free 19-year olds.

     When they landed at Tan Son Nhut AB on a KC 135 in the early evening in 1964, neither could begin to fathom the heat or humidity during the rainy season, even though they knew what summers were like on the East Coast, very muggy or “close” as they called it. You simply couldn’t walk down the street in a shirt and tie in any East Coast city without being drenched in sweat within just a few minutes. Saigon was worse than New York or New Jersey could ever know. “Well,” they instantaneously thought, “This will be very different,” breathing in hot air only to be sweated outward. Kind of like condensation.

    There were simply way too many interesting stories In Japan and Vietnam to get into now, because what neither Carter nor Carver knew, this was all just the tip of the iceberg in their incredible story to-be that was unfolding without advance warning or any credible propaganda.   Maybe we will come back to a few of these juicy, intriguing stories, but for now let’s fast forward to 1969, when they were both honorably discharged and shipped back to the USA, but not before a month layover in Honolulu for a much deserved, real R & R with women, drink, beach, ocean, sites, food and sleep to forget the horrors they managed to endure in Vietnam.

      This is where the real story starts and eventually begins to turn into the proverbial ‘rest of the story.’ Carter and Carver both took tests at the end of their Air Force days to qualify for a special program to complete college and return to the service to finally become pilots, not being able to give up on their original dreams. Tuition was paid on top of normal VA benefits, but with the requirement of returning for a 6-year obligation to the Air Force. They had no idea of the economics of college or stateside living, so they didn’t give the obligation a whole lot of worry. It was the only way.

    Carver applied for and got accepted at John Jay College of Criminal Justice Studies and Carter opted for Rutgers University in Northern New Jersey, with a split major in Psychology and Sociology. They breezed through studies and both went onto graduate school and luckily found out they could satisfy their military obligation by committing themselves to a minimum of 4 years in a criminal justice profession. That was a no brainer and quick way to avoid the unappealing return to military service, even though there wasn’t any war going on at the time. They both had enough nightmares about that obligation hanging over their heads. The reoccurring one was opening a rail car to find it full of North Vietnamese soldiers, with more guns than you could count going nuts with the appearance of the American GI’s.

    Now the last time the two men had talked was back on the day of being released from active duty at Travis Air Force base in 1962. They both started their careers in law enforcement without knowing what the other was doing. Carver took a job with the NYPD, while Carter became an off-the-books DEA contractor investigating illegal drug usage by the SDS underground organization in southern colleges. Both flourished in their careers in law enforcement, but a change was under way. Carver wanted to have a go at eventually operating his own security and investigations firm to make some big bucks, with the corporate ladder-climbing in business loss-prevention being the way.

    Carter aspired to be a prison warden, maybe because that is a strange childhood fantasy he actually played out at the local neighborhood empty lot where he built his jail in an underground cave. Every day after school and on the weekends, he held about 5 or 6 smaller neighborhood kids locked-up for a few hours, giving them only stale bread and tap water he snuck out of the house with, not wanting to explain what his intentions were. After all, he might be arrested for what he was doing. False arrest or possibly even kidnapping, although the kids never napped during their brief incarceration.

     Years passed with no communication or knowledge of what either was doing with their lives, while both were rising to headlines for anyone else to see and admire. Once in 1971, Carver called Carter’s dad on a lark, to see if he could get in contact with his old Air Force Bunkmate from the 6250th AP Squadron to see what he was doing in civilian life. Carver himself was busy climbing the corporate ladder in the private sector in retail loss prevention, while Carter was taking a hiatus from criminal justice and prison work, to work on his doctorate in psychology. At any rate contact did not happen because Carver had an unlisted number that was never given to Carter’s father to pass on.

     The two continued their careers with vigor and enthusiasm. Carver started as a New York City police officer and then started climbing the corporate ladder in loss prevention and then eventually became a Detective Agency owner, with added income from his horse farm and reserve police officer weekend and event duty. Carter became a prison warden, first in Kentucky and then in Australia, Illinois and Nebraska. But still no contact between the two. When the Internet first became an available way for people to find one another, Carter stepped up his efforts to relocate his old basic training, Japan and Vietnam bunkmate. But still no luck. On December 12, 2015 Carver found out why he couldn’t find Carver and this is the beginning of the rest of the story.

     Carter found out the two reasons he had lost contact with his Vietnam buddy. First, he wasn’t using the right name, which included a hyphenated last name and first name initial, for a conclusive Google search. Once he found out about that mistake, he discovered the other reason for the no contact. Somehow, Carver had taken a wrong turn away from his community pillar and stellar business status and was in prison, serving a 50 year sentence for the crimes of attempted murder of a notorious drug dealer, robbery and burglary. Carter soon found out CBS actually made a popular TV movie of this crime, calling it “Murder in Mind.” He watched the You-Tube trailer and eventually secured a personal copy of the movie DVD. He knew this movie was made entirely from the perspective of the surviving victim, because his friend Carver, was never consulted on any “facts” or the event in 1988.

     This begins the rest of the story to set the record straight, 50 years after Vietnam and 25 years after the movie. Through frequent and lengthy letters over several years, the two filled in the blanks, with both light and heavy reading. Carter was never one for discounting meaningful coincidences and knew there had to be a surprise driving this friendship renewal. Somewhere after the 10th letter exchange, he realized that his purpose was to help his friend at a very dire time and maybe Carver’s purpose was to challenge Carter to show him what he needed to do to be paroled and free once again to live out his long life with his wife and children who had stuck with him for the last 30 years. That is what probably amazed the younger Carter the most about this whole story just unfolding. 

     This Carter-Carver story is based on the compelling conflicts and their inspiring resolutions, which always make a story great. Here are these conflicts in our evolving bi-story:

1.      The traditional conflict we all have with life—“us vs. life,” where we struggle against life’s adversities and obstacles in the way of trying to translate our dreams and hopes into realities that pay back dividends on our investments.

2.      The common conflict of “us” vs. “them,” or as with Carter and Carver, the peace-preserving protectors against the war-creating distractors.

3.      The deeper, inner personal conflict of “us” vs. “us” where we are confronted with our faults and demons in acknowledging them and trying to reconcile our worst and best selves into becoming the whole person we have just pretended to be all along. Eventually everyone has to go through this transformation process where we apply the important insights we learn from life’s lessons, at least that is what all the success and self-help gurus proclaim.

     Now back to Cliff’s Carter’s story, it was after the 7p deadline on his 95th birthday that he had his companion neighbor friend drive him to the Safeway store to buy 5 Mega Million and 5 Powerball tickets, both quick pics naturally, without knowing if the huge jackpot was starting all over again at a measly $10 million. He was okay with chancing that, because he had known all along this was going to happen before he died and there were only 2 more years left and so why not now? He immediately went home afterwards and watched one of the movies his friend Meg had rented him—an interesting movie with Morgan Freeman and Dianne Keaton called “Five Flights up.”

     The rest of this story happens when he woke up, had his morning McDonald’s breakfast burrito and headed to rent some movies and check his lucky ticket.

     Over the years, Cliff had watched many movies and read many books for both pleasure and what he could learn about how to tell a good story about something important that other people could easily relate to and benefit from. He knew good stories in movies and books had to involve serious conflicts with somewhat surprising or at least satisfying resolutions.

     During one of Cliff’s earlier mid-life crises, he had fancied himself writing a novel that would make a difference in his own and other’s lives. And of course, he imagined some smart screen writer and movie director would be moved so much with the story, that they would have no hesitation in wanting to do whatever it took to make a movie about his story.

     Cliff had a photography hobby that started with an old Leica camera his father had bought for him when he got out of the service. Later he migrated into the Canon F-1 manual film camera and had taken many good shots but nothing iconic as he had always aspired towards. He knew the two most important things about taking great pictures was lighting and perspective. Of course good equipment could enhance those things.

      Then the digital age came about with low light and high speed full sensor DSL’s and things were changing for the better, unfortunately even for unskilled amateur photographers and crowding the field. At this point in his life, Cliff had enough money to be able to afford a top of the line medium format digital camera most professional photographer’s lust after—The Hasselblad H5D-60 with an astonishing 60 megapixels, 1.5 full sensor, and all the right low light wide angle, 80 mm and telephoto lenses at a 2.8 aperture.

    Cliff actually had a showing of his better scenery, people and animal shots at a local art cafe and sold quite a few. He didn’t get rich, but sold enough to buy more picture supplies and camera gear peripherals to access unusual perspectives of difficult scenes. People seemed to like the special way he framed pictures, which was a talent most photographers overlooked. Not Cliff. He wanted to capture the essence of the consciousness of the scene and communicate its importance to the viewer, which he seemed to have an uncanny knack for. He specialized in landscape scenes that were of a painting-like quality that mystically blended viewer with picture.

     Towards his golden years this is exactly what Cliff wanted to do with this story of his, which kept going on in fragmented, but somehow connected segments in his head. He always knew this semi-conscious story was meant for a great movie. But the problem was, that the best stories were mostly true ones and you just couldn’t make stuff up like he enjoyed doing in wakeful daydreams. It had to be based on something that had happened or at least could happen.

     “Could happen,” that was the key Cliff finally understood after all these years of patiently waiting for his purpose to be revealed and become a reality, besides just living a good life and being a good manager, husband, friend and parent. Maybe there was someone else waiting in the wind, more suited to tell this story. This is how the story unfolds from an average beginning, into memorable moments along the way and a spectacular ending we all hope for. We all want our lives to count for something and not just wasted in the wind like a meaningless, empty forgotten memory.

     Within a year after winning the big one, Cliff knew he had made the right choice as to how to best manage the winnings to do the most good for the longest time. That was his major concern. So, setting up the non-profit trust was obviously smart for three good reasons: It reduced the tax liability for everyone, it kept everyone involved anonymous and insulated from greedy free loaders and annoying self-serving marketeers, and it assured dispersals were made according to the governing rules he made in starting the trust. So after the first year’s slight glitches with the appointments to the trust Board of Directors, designing grant application forms, establishing the selection criteria for making dispersals, getting rid of poor quick spending desires, and closing all the legal loopholes, things started running smoothly.

      After the growing pains of such a huge undertaking, the second year was a lot of fun. The trust manager actually started making grants with the 10% repay mandate yielding some returns, which made the trust funds perpetual, just like a for-profit corporation. But non-profit businesses like this, just invested their earnings and profits for internal growth, rather than paying eternal dividends to stockholders. Each of trust managers received a healthy annual salary of $100, 000, which still went a long way in 2015. At any rate, nobody was complaining because they knew they were involved in something very special like never thought of before. So for Cliff this year was one for getting all his affairs in order, which actually took the better part of a year.

     The next year, on the Saturday night after his 97th birthday, Cliff put on the one suit he had left, a white shirt and a colorful tie he was known for in the early days and a pair of dress socks and black leather wingtip shoes he had had for over twenty five years. He had one last drink of his preferred late night companion, 18-year old single malt scotch whiskey in his favorite Russian blue cut glass tumbler. It was usually two or three, but tonight one would do. There were no more Saturday night movies to watch.

     Then cliff methodically and slowly laid down on his poster bed in the single bedroom of his A-frame cabin on the South Fork of the Snoqualmie River. He knew it was his time to say good-bye to this life, as he had known since very early childhood. His Basset Hound, Maggie Mae, of 13 years, knew this was the end of her friend too, just as his favorite nephew Bryce did, when he helped his great uncle move up here twenty years ago after the second Mrs. Carter had passed. He had followed him here a few years after moving his uncle to try out for the Mariners major league baseball team and got a seat on the bench and eventually moved into the starting open third base slot. The two had many heart-to-heart talks about life out on the porch after home games when Bryce came over for a cookout, usually alone, but sometimes with his gorgeous wife who just kept getting better looking.

     Cliff had already said all his good-byes and so with no more concerns or things he needed to do he simply died. Of course he had a big smile on his face which helps us make sense out of and take inspiration of the story. What was the smile all about? Several things actually. For one thing, he died knowing very well he had lived a good life as an average hero doing what matters most—faith, family, friends and fun. He also assured his status as a great hero with the trust he had set up with all the seven grandkids to make sure all the money from winning the $720 million Powerball jackpot was put to the best use in making a difference in the world for the longest time possible.

    Cliff’s smile was also about a survey he took part in just right after his 90th birthday seven years earlier. Some graduate student in the psychology department at the University of Washington, set out to interview 100 people who lived to be 90 years old to find out what they all might have had in common and what advice they would want to give to the younger generation. As it turned out, Cliff had not succumbed to the common regrets the rest of the group had. The regrets were not taking enough chances in life, not contemplating life enough and not spending enough time doing what matters most.

     No, Cliff took plenty of chances in his life and never second-guessed himself about the choices he had made, even the bad ones that didn’t turn out very well for him. And Cliff was a lot deeper thinker than most people knew. Although his original strict Catholic and later Episcopalian upbringing taught him to not question spiritual and religious things, he read a lot and though a lot about the mystery of life, at least until he had a good grasp of what his purpose was, clear enough to know he lived it doing his four F list and deserved a round of applause.

      This later regret that all the others had, reminded him of a silly 650-page book, called “Do What Matters Most,” written by an intellectual trying to live 10-lives all at once doing absolutely everything under the sun to learn, grow and improve into the best person possible. It only Cliff one sentence with four words to summarize what matters most—Faith, family, friends and fun. Those things didn’t really require any further explanation, except maybe fun. For Cliff, fun meant work and play. He knew other people might say he worked at a very average, un-fun job, but he knew better from the inside. He helped his 500 employees all learn how to be good employees and enjoy what they were doing in a seemingly mundane job of building tires. But it was where those tires took people that counted—to go to work, church, visit family and friends and go on vacation or just Sunday drives to minimize the stress of living.

    But, here is what the smile Cliff had on his face when he closed his eyes for good, was really about. Last year, one of the applicants for a million dollar grant from the trust, turned out to be Billy Carter the oldest son of Cliff’s estranged son Cameron. His grant, was to write a book to tell his grandfather Cliff’s story and collaborate with a step-sister, who just happened to be in the film business. Of course Cliff realized this was all his lost son Cameron’s doing, as a way of coming home, so to speak, and repair a horrible, irreparable rift that had occurred earlier. This was after Cameron came home from Vietnam as a drug, sex and adrenaline junkie not fit to live under Cliff and Anna’s roof and so he just took off to live a life of misery and was never heard of. Not even Emma could help restore this father-son relationship torn apart at the seams and gut wrenching for the whole family for all too many years. But now finally, years of pain and futile attempts to make things better, all faded away with the comfort of a loving and forgiving ending.

     And now on top of not having any remarkable regrets, and with relative assurances of his legacy being managed to succeed in helping other people help make a real difference for many others, like the paying it forward phenomenon, Cliff was truly ready to see what this eternal afterlife was really all about. Reading about what others had to say about it, couldn’t compare to the airplane ride he was about to take to the light. At the point of dying, he had no need to even try to explain things to himself let alone others. This was simply a time of blissful understanding and acceptance, that life and everything in it was just that and nothing else. That is why Cliff died with a smile on his face.

     The legacy Cliff left prospered and never stopped. Anybody who had a good idea of how to make a difference in the world and had the energy and drive to see it through from beginning to end, could apply for the money to do it, with the sole promise of paying back 10% from successful earnings. It didn’t matter what the project was, if it was credible, it would receive a chance. The trust managers and everyone who received a $500,000 to a $Million dollar grant, knew Cliff was smiling from some place. Even the local nursery received a grant to maintain the beautiful garden Cliff had started on his front yard, where all the hikers on the John Wayne Trail above his property would come down and comment on what a delight it was to see from the trail above. This trust just kept building upon itself from the investment interest and 10% paybacks which often turned out to be 100%.

     What a way to leave this life thought Cliff as he headed towards the light. No loose ends, including the returned love from Cameron, even if it was though his son Billy. Gracie remained at the foot of the bed until early morning, when the ambulance arrived. Bryce, who knew the details of the plan ahead of time, already had things lined up and so the story ends, or was it really just beginning?

     This is actually where our story begins—fitting together Cliff’s, Cameron’s and Sam’s versions of the future. Read on and figure out how you will determine the ending of this story.