Love For His People: "Leadership Through Love" Chapter 1 - "A Gift For His Purposes" (Steve Martin)

Leadership Through Love

Chapter 1

A Gift For His Purposes

Growing up in Cedar Falls, Iowa, in the northeast corner of the Hawkeye State, was a destiny that I am most grateful for. This was a good town to continue my youth, after the first three farm years in Minnesota. Those days of course I remember little, if anything, of that Midwest state time.

Childhood home on Main Street in Cedar Falls, IA

While being raised by Dad and Mom Martin, along with the seven other kids in the family, back on 1116 Main Street, it didn’t seem like anything out of the ordinary to do my part of the kitchen duties, household chores, and to obey when told to “do it now or forget watching TV tonight” orders. That was the way I knew the typical life to be in the late ‘50’s and early ‘60’s.

Louis & Lila Martin family photo (1962)

Cedar Falls, IA.

This very training, as a young boy, along with the sense that the Lord was putting something special in my life, as a gift, I believed was to prepare me for what would come later down the road. I thought that destiny was to be a Catholic missionary priest to Africa. Forty years later though, it had resulted in more than twenty years of Christian ministry, not as the typical minister, but as an “add-ministry”, or better known to many, an administrator.

Being the second child in the family, the first son of three, mixed among five daughters, gave me many opportunities to learn some basic instructions in life, which then was used to bring growth to this gift the Lord had placed within me.

1972 family photo

As what I knew to be “normal” in large families at that time, I was called upon to take my turn in the nightly kitchen supper cleanup, as my sisters Sue and Mary and I rotated the regular chores after the dinner hour. For so it was always somehow written, on the wall calendar every day of the month, each of our names, listing who was to pick up the table and sweep the floor, who was to wash the dishes, and who was to dry and put away the cleaned pots, pans, silverware, cups, plates, and whatever else was used in service that night. Never mind about these “kitchen duties” being the work of the females – do it or forget about getting my weekly allowance of $0.50.

And so from the third grade until the eighth grade, I diligently labored in the Martin household kitchen, after we had eaten our family meal together. It was generally around 5 pm, on the dot, that we all sat down to eat. Dad would get home from his first job at 4:30 pm, from the local Viking Pump Foundry, and then, right after supper, was off to his “2^nd job”. This personal business was called Martin Electrical Services, his own proprietorship of wiring houses and other electrical service jobs for the people of Cedar Falls, Iowa. Feeding this family of ten took more than the regular 40 hour job, even with the additional ten hours of overtime each week he was allowed to do at Viking.

Viking Pump Foundry - Cedar Falls, IA

Early in my high school years I would earn some extra cash helping him, but after a while pulling on the white and black wires through the plaster and slat walls, and climbing around blown-in insulation above ceilings, wasn’t my idea of the “good life”.

In between the kitchen chores and the electrical apprenticeship, I was able to secure the Waterloo Courier newspaper route, just a few bike blocks from our house to the trailer court. I started with less than 30 trailers to deliver to, but after a few contests put on by the newspaper print company, once earning myself a portable cassette player (a big deal to me in 1968!) and other items too expensive to purchase on my own, the route grew to 62 Sunday deliveries, along with the daily delivery increase. Getting the afternoon paper to their door before they got home from work, and then making the collections on the weekends or after school for payment, kept me on the move.

Tracking down the bi-weekly collections, sometimes meaning two to three trips biking on my Schwinn bike, totally equipped with baskets over the rear wheel, to those “delinquent” customers to see if they were home, not only increased my leg power for the three years of middle school football and track teams, but it also increased the persistence necessary to make sure I got my money the people owed me. If I didn’t, so went my profit. When people moved out on me, and owed for a month or more, my appreciation for those who paid on time and didn’t allow their debt to grow became a strong motivator to have that attribute in my own life. As for the debtors, hopefully they repented of their wayward ways, and never did it to the next guy.

I also did my turn at Rolinger’s Restaurant, as one of the male waiters in the all-male employees local food establishment. Being able to give the cooks, the older boys typically in the high school senior class, a good, readable chicken and fries order, was very important. Or delivering the customer order having the cheeseburger basket, along with the orange shake, which was the hope of the owner to make him rich and famous. It didn’t.

Russ Rolinger, co-owner with his father Lou, the ex-boxer, seemed to always complain that McDonald’s stole his “Hi-Boy” idea and just re-named it the Big Mac. All in all, I grew in knowledge about further getting things done on time. “Hot food first” was the daily command from both Russ and Lou.

After a few years at this after-school and weekend job, I too became a veteran, and was able to start training the younger ones, who were just turning thirteen years of age, and freshmen in high school. The gift of management within was being groomed for the long haul.

When the $1.10 hourly rate in the restaurant business didn’t quite make the extra spending money that I wanted, or felt that I really needed, my job search took me to the Eagle grocery store in my senior year of high school. I had to quit the Columbus High School Sailors football team that I was on though, the very week before we were to play my home town team of Cedar Falls High School. But because I was at the Catholic high across town in Waterloo, I didn’t know any of the Tiger football players anyway, so the new job took higher priority. Sitting on the bench, my number 88 stuck between numbers 87 and 89 among the others who didn’t play much, helped convince me that football wasn’t the way I was going anyway.

1972 family photo

Sports had been good to me, especially baseball. In my junior year, in 1972, our spring baseball team made it to the state finals, losing 1-0 to the eventual champs from Mason City. It had been a good year – I set the team school record in triples and walks, playing center field most of the time. During a game my senior year, I played every position, after asking my coach Duke Dutkowski to let me have a shot at it.

1972 Columbus High School Sailors Baseball lineup

Waterloo, IA

State Championship Contending Team

1973 Columbus High Sailors of Waterloo, IA.

Coached by Duke Dutkowski (top right corner)

When graduation finally arrived in the spring of 1973, after being at the grocery store for less than a year, the night stock manager of the Eagles store asked me if I was interested in taking over the crew. He had seen “something in me” that both he and the general store manager, Phil Bailey, liked. I guess I pulled the pallets out in good order each night, and stocked a pretty good grocery aisle that caught their attention. Or maybe it was the “singing along with the night time radio DJ as loud as I could” energy, when things seemed a bit too quiet, that appealed to their observations. (But I doubt that. To this day, I tend to sing louder than most!)

Not wanting to live like a screech owl, coming out only at night, I graciously, but thankfully, declined the offer, and went instead a year later to work at the local Sartori Hospital in Cedar Falls as a daytime custodian. Scrubbing the scum away from the hallway floor baseboards and the cigarette-smoke buildup on the patients rooms ceiling grid lasted less than a year, but building diligence and character, no matter what the job entailed, would prove beneficial as the future positions opened before me. And it was a neat time hanging with the University of Northern Iowa football player, the team’s star running back, my co-worker, during his off-season.

Along the way there were those I watched and learned from. Everyone needs another one or two to show them the ropes. Usually it was the big brother of a friend, since I didn’t have a big brother of my own. Or the guy who had six months more experience doing what I was being trained to do at the time. Whatever the case, it seemed like a good thing to watch and see how a task was accomplished, and then try to find a quicker way of doing it myself. Time has always been a top priority to me. (The clocks around my home, office, and recreational garage will attest to that!) A step here or there would cut down on the physical load, and make the task get completed quicker than when others would do the same thing.

Since I always had the feeling that another was watching me, as was most often the case at home with my seven siblings, I always felt I needed to set a good example. And then I wouldn’t have to confess the sin of “setting a bad example” in the weekly confessional. This sense of responsibility started at a young age, and has been with me ever since.

When I was in the eight grade, I was given the opportunity to schedule the altar boys for the weekday, special events and Sunday Masses. I suppose Father Purtell saw that I paid attention in his catechism class, and thus asked me if I would do the task. It didn’t take too long to do a two-month schedule for each of the five Sunday Masses, but when it came time to do the funerals, which couldn’t be “booked” until the week before the event, not knowing when those were coming, proved a bit tougher. When I couldn’t find two sixth, seventh or eighth grade boys to serve Mass, I usually ended up doing it myself. (Not a good way to learn delegating!)

But as all things seemed to even out, when it came time to schedule the altar boys for the weddings, I most certainly scheduled myself as often as I could. For it just so happened that most of the bridegrooms, being happy as they were on their special occasion, would generally slip me a five dollar bill before departing in their decorated wedding car. And the Lord blessed me with many weddings at St. Patrick’s Church!

Making the best of the way things were, by doing that which I was being taught to do, continued to add to the natural and spiritual character being built within. Though always smaller in stature than my classmates around me, the Lord was using the natural training and instruction to build a “bigger” stature, which those on the outside didn’t always see.

He was preparing me for His greater purposes for the road ahead.

Steve Martin