Gabby_ A Story of Courage and Hope - Alison Hanson [40]
She told the graduates what happened to her when she was a few months into her new job in New York City: The phone rang and it was her father calling, saying he needed her to come home as soon as possible to take over the family tire stores. She’d have to resign from Price Waterhouse.
“This was completely unexpected and not at all in my cosmopolitan plans,” Gabby explained in her speech. “But inevitably, there comes a point in all of our lives where our role as the child begins to reverse with our parents. Our protectors now need protection. For some of us it comes while we are established in life, and for others it may come while we are young. But whenever that call comes, we pick up the phone and we respond. In my case, it meant packing up my heels and putting on my cowboy boots, getting back into the same old Ford pickup truck and heading back west.”
She explained that her return to the family tire business in Tucson was the first step in a progression. “I learned the tire business from the ground up and also started to manage the company’s philanthropic aims, the part that tried to give back to the community that had been so generous to us through the years.
“I started to see things about southern Arizona that were not perfect and needed to change. So I ran for office determined to make that change and put right the things that were wrong, to represent those who didn’t have a voice. And I realized then and there what my heart was saying: that for me, the highest calling in my own life was service to others. I have not looked back since.”
She told the young women at the graduation a little about her journey, her long list of possible careers, her enthusiasm for offbeat adventures. She hoped her story would encourage them to be restless and creative, to step outside the lines. “You are blessed to be living in a country that gives its citizens the freedom to bump around the scenery a bit, to try new things and make mistakes and stretch your talents and make adjustments and to find every rich and satisfying thing, and it will still be OK in the end.
“Remember what the authors of the Declaration of Independence said about the inalienable rights of each person, which are ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ Think of that! These words are one of the deepest expressions of who we are as Americans. This is the mission statement of the United States. I hope you will choose to make it your mission statement as well.
“Pursue your passion, and everything will fall into place. This is not being romantic. This is the highest order of pragmatism.”
The tire business was certainly not Gabby’s first passion. And yet she embraced her job at El Campo with a commitment rooted in her passion to serve her family. She didn’t know it at the time, but her decision to help her father would put the rest of her life in order. It was the tire business that sparked an awareness of her in the Tucson community, which helped lead her to the Arizona legislature, which enabled her to reach the halls of Congress by age thirty-six.
“We’re the buck-stretchers!” she’d say in El Campo’s commercials. She wasn’t the sixty-second philosopher her grandfather Gif Giffords had been. But she was telegenic and friendly; a natural with a pretty smile. By selling tires, she’d learn how to sell herself, and eventually, how to sell the issues, ideas, and values that would define her career as a public servant.
El Campo had about $11 million in annual sales when Gabby arrived, but the business was hemorrhaging, with significant losses every month. Her father, Spencer, was not in good health, and he was overwhelmed trying to manage twelve outlets and more than one hundred employees. He was admittedly burned out. Gabby’s first order of business was to tell Spencer that he’d need to retire. “I can’t really run the place