The Power of Commitment

This is not the place to discuss the etiology of my psychological condition. I have been more or less lonely all my life. I never learned to relate well to people in groups. I do okay with one or two, but even then we must have some common interests–and I share few of the interests that occupy the time of most people. I am more comfortable with the outdoors and nature. From the time I was about ten until I was twenty-four, my primary interest was livestock. Soon after I learned that I was expected to attend college, I learned about Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College, and knew that would be my school. Studying their yearbook during study hall time in highschool, I learned they had a highly prestigious livestock judging team. Although I had always lived in town, it became my ambition to become a member of that team. Early in my freshman year, the Animal Husbandry Department–my major field–held a Freshman Judging Contest. I participated, completely clueless as to how to go about judging these twelve classes of cattle, sheep, and hogs–four of each to a class. At the end of the day, I ranked 125th out of 141 participants. Discouraged? Yes. But not enough to give up. I was committed to be a member of the team. The next chance came when I was a Junior. Now I could try out for the Junior Judging Team. Seventy of us showed up. All except me were from farms and had been on 4-H or FFA judging teams in highschool; several had been state winners. Mr. Bratcher, the retiring coach spoke to us that first day. He said any of us could make the team if we would do three things: 1. Take our girlfriend out for a coke and tell her we would see her again at the end of the semester (easy–my girlfriend was seventy miles distant and neither of us had transportation); 2. Settle for a grade of C in all our classes except Junior Judging (I didn’t like most of them anyway); 3. Spend all our spare time at the college livestock barns sitting on a fence studying what we saw in the pens (I had no social life anyhow). Most of the guys ignored Mr. Bratcher’s dicta; several dropped the class. The team entered three contests our junior year: Denver, Fort Worth, and Oklahoma City. I didn’t come close to making the team for those contests. By our senior year there were only about twenty-five of us still in the running. The senior team entered two contests. I didn’t make it for the Kansas City Royal Livestock Judging Contest. I was coming in about fourteenth in our workouts. As the time neared for Chicago’s International Livestock Judging contest I was running in tenth place most of the time. Once, on a hard, all-day workout I did come in second. In Chicago, the team won first place in the International Contest: a bronze bull, about two feet high and, maybe, thirty inches long. A picture of the bull with the 1954 Oklahoma A&M Livestock Judging team standing behind it, hangs in the Animal Science Trophy Hall today. My picture is included. The bridge that carried me from ignorance to the top of the livestock judging world was a bridge that several fellows, better prospects in the beginning, chose not to cross. Commitment was all I had going for me (except–big exception--support and encouragement from the young lady I later married).