If you will come along, today I would like to invite you to take a trip with me down memory lane. There is a special reason for this that I will explain a bit later.

After I dropped out of Arkansas A&M College back in 1958, I made my way to Little Rock, where I had family. After looking for a job for a few days, I went to work in the stock room of a local printer, earning $1.35 per hour. I stayed with this job for seven years and then took another job selling printing on straight commission. It was here that I went to work for my first, new era, “best friend” whose name was Bert Parke. Bert was very active in the Little Rock business community, and he began to promote me.

Over the next few years, I became chairman of the Little Rock Chamber of Commerce Membership Sales Team, chairman of the Speakers Bureau for the United Way, Justice of the Peace in Pulaski County, and several other organizations. He also took me on three Little Rock Chamber goodwill tours to Houston, San Antonio, and Denver. Here I really got to know many of the top people in our state’s capital city business community. In 1968 I decided to take the Dale Carnegie public speaking course. The instructor was attorney Bob Gannaway, who came to me two years later and invited me to go into business with him to distribute the Earl Nightingale Attitude Motivation programs.

At this point I was earning $25,000 a year selling printing, a lot of money in those days, but I saw an opportunity to help other people and to make speeches, so I accepted his offer. I might add, Bob was my second “best friend” who was like a second father to me. We worked with our schools, and that was the best time of my whole life.

During this time, I started a daily radio program and later a weekly newspaper column. Along came my third “best friend,” Dr. Dennis Schick, Executive Director of the Arkansas Press Association. He helped me get my column in papers all across our great nation.

Then one day after church, I bumped into my fourth, and very best “best friend” Doyle Cook. We were the same age, from the same county and had so much in common. We hunted together, played golf and fellowshipped with family together, and he asked me to introduce him to our Conway community when he ran for mayor. He lost, ha.

And two other “best friends,” numbers five and six, were Sen. Stanley Russ, who was Emcee for our Conway Bookcase Project banquets, and Dr. Denver Prince, who was my roommate for 11 days when we went with our church group to Israel.

Here is my point: all of these fantastic men are gone now, and I failed to tell them when they were living how much I loved and appreciated them.

There are three other “best friends” who are still living, and you can take it to the bank that I am going to tell them how much I love and appreciate them before they are gone. These men are Mickey Cox, my fishing buddy and master craftsman who built our bookcases; Cliff Garrison, former head basketball coach at Hendrix College for more than 30 years; and Judge Jim Baker, who wrote the Preface for my latest book. You can’t beat “best friends”and I love and appreciate them.

(Jim Davidson is an author, public speaker, syndicated columnist, and Founder of the Bookcase for Every Child project. Since its inception in the Log Cabin Democrat in 1995, Jim’s column has been self-syndicated in over 375 newspapers in 35 states. For a personalized copy of “Your Future Begins Today” send $20, which includes postage and handling, to Jim Davidson, 2 Bentley Drive, Conway, AR 72034.)

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