Playing the long game, one life at a time

Ever been asked to participate in a school mentorship program? Here's the story of two people who said yes.

Today’s story may be the ultimate example of the Good Government Truism, Always Play the Long Game.

In our corner of the world, local government, it pays huge dividends to think long term. From infrastructure planning to financing to strategic visioning, there’s no end to the progress we can achieve if we don’t get in a hurry, don’t obsess over the problem du jour. Looking out over an extended time horizon, setting a north star, and then taking incremental steps toward that goal is how you accomplish lasting change in a community.

It’s the same with people.

Let me show you.

Ulyses Sanchez started out life in small town West Texas. His father died when he was 3. His mother, having to raise three kids on her own, bounced around the state, looking for better opportunities. They wound up in Central Texas and things started to look up but, for Ulyses, along with his older sister and younger brother, they still carried the baggage of a family shaped by hard times and grueling work.

“We kind of had an upbringing of, if you don't like someone or someone treats you with disrespect, don’t back down from it,” he said. “Meet it with the same aggression. And that’s all I knew. That's really all I knew. 

“My sister was by far the toughest person I knew, and everyone was afraid of my sister. That’s what I wanted. I wanted to be that tough kid that no one wanted to mess with.” 

Education as a means to get ahead wasn’t a thing. No one in his family had ever finished high school. By the time he got to C.D. Fulkes Middle School, he was rapidly heading down the same dead-end street. He skipped school a lot, and when he wasn’t skipping, he was fighting or otherwise creating havoc in the classrooms and halls at Fulkes. Finally, one day a principal said, “Hey, I think you’d be a really good candidate for this mentorship program.”

Around that same time, Round Rock City Manager Jim Nuse was meeting with Round Rock ISD Superintendent Jesus Chavez. They were exploring the possibilities of working together on capital projects and other ways to save money for their shared taxpayers. During the conversation, Dr. Chavez brought up the ongoing need to recruit mentors from the community to meet with students over their lunch break once a week.

“Dr. Chavez said, boy, any help you could give us on this would be great,” Jim said. “So, I went over and talked to the lady in charge of it, a guidance counselor I think, and she said, ‘Oh, we have someone we think could really benefit from having a guy come in and be there for him.’”

So, Jim signed up, took the mandatory training, and began to learn a little bit about his mentee to be. Ulyses was having some difficulties in class, was very frustrated, “and quick to anger.” And he missed a lot of school. Basically, the kind of kid that winds up as a candidate for a mentor program.

For Ulyses, from what he could see about the mentor program, it looked a way to get out of class for a bit and play some ball outside the classrooms. Perfect.

Then he met Jim, his mentor. He was not impressed.

“I was so upset because I was like, what is this old guy going to do for me? And I just remember being really upset,” Ulyses said. “I remember seeing everyone get all these other guys, they’re outside playing soccer and doing all this stuff. And we’re sitting in a room, and he asked me about myself.”

(For the record, Jim was in his mid-50s at the time. Definitely not old.)

At the time, not having a father and his mom dating men he didn’t like, made Ulysses “have a real big aggression towards adult males. I did not respect any adult male.”

“So when I met Jim, I immediately went into like, I’m not going to respect this guy,” he said. “And he handled it in a way that I actually try to practice myself now: He met me where I was.”

Here is Jim’s recollection of meeting Ulyses.

“When I first met him, he was a little closed up. He was a little suspicious,” Jim said. “And so we talked a little bit. And one of the things that we talked about was, what do you want to do when you grow up?”

No one had ever asked Ulyses that question before. He hadn’t thought about it. His grandfather, one of the few men he respected, had been a Marine. So, he told Jim he might like to be Marine. Jim, meeting him where he was at, brought a couple of military veterans to share their stories with Ulyses over the next two weeks.

“The next (visit) he brought this Marine guy in, and this Marine guy had this interesting story and upbringing,” Ulyses said. “And I realized, like, oh, hey, I’m not the only guy that’s having this rough time at school. And this guy did something with his life. And sure enough, I was super happy. He brought me a book; I still have that book. And he just pretty much explained to me that I could be somebody if I just get my stuff together. And then, sure enough, Jim brought another guy, an Army guy. I remember that guy being really intense. And again, same upbringing. Some of these guys had rougher upbringings. And I was like, wow, this guy actually became somebody.”

Jim brought in a succession of men, mostly but not exclusively Latino, who worked in different fields. He introduced Ulyses to a successful small business owner, as well as a City Councilmember who was also a successful insurance company executive, and “just a bunch of different people with the same kind of upbringing (I had) and found a way to get past it.”

It was when Jim brought a couple of Round Rock firefighters to Fulkes that something clicked in Ulyses. They pulled up in fire truck, showed him all the gear and valves and hoses and everything else on those incredible vehicles, and even put him in bunker gear. And then they told him about their jobs in the fire service.

“I remember those two firefighters when they were explaining the job. It was almost like they had a big secret,” Ulyses said. “They knew that they had the best job in the world, and they were letting me into that secret. And that day forever changed my life.”

Jim saw it.

“Man, that kid lit up,” he said.

And so Ulyses got his act together, graduated high school with honors and breezed through the fire academy and was hired on with the first department he applied to.

Uh, no.

Life, as so often happens, happened.

Breaking the ‘family curse’

There were more lessons to learn. You don’t break out of dysfunctional cycles just because you had an inspiring visit with a couple of firefighters. Ulyses recalls a time in school when, for some reason unknown to him, an older kid wanted to fight with him. It was going to happen after the football game that night. Fortunately, he had his weekly meeting with Jim earlier that day.

“There was a kid that wanted to fight me, and all I knew was like, okay, well, I’m going to get in a fight later today. That's just how it is,” he said. “And I remember telling Jim that, and he was like, ‘Have you ever tried saying no?’

“And I remember the disrespect. I felt so disrespected. (I told Jim) ‘No. I would never say that. I can't do that.’ And he's like, what happens is you fight someone, then you got to go and fight someone’s cousin, and then you got to go fight someone’s younger brother and on and on. And I remember him telling me, how about you just say no?”

Sure enough, the high school student found Ulyses after the game. Words were exchanged. A circle formed around the combatants to be. If you’ve been in middle school, you know the drill.

“And I remember just being like, just hearing Jim’s words in my head, like, I should try it. Let me try it,” he said. “And I remember saying no. And then this guy was, like, looking at me like, what the hell? And it was like, the first time I’ve ever done that. And then that was it. Nothing happened.”

Naturally, Ulyses worried the other kids at Fulkes would make fun of him. Sure enough, word got around school the next day that Ulyses told the kid no. Some kids gave him a hard time. He admitted to them he told the older kid no, “but I told them, ‘I can still beat you up,’ that kind of thing.”

But that was it. He wasn’t ostracized or humiliated for saying no.

“That did change my life,” he said. “That moment right there, I realized, like, hey, I don’t have to be such an aggressive kid. I can say no to all this upbringing that I had that was putting me on that path. Like, aiming me on that path of just what my family was. I was heading that way, and Jim really changed it. I mean, even my mom, to this day, is like, that guy changed my life.”

For Jim, a pivotal moment in the relationship happened after Ulyses had missed a couple of their regular sessions. City Managers are some of the busiest people — if not the busiest people — in local government. They have multiple bosses, many of whom expect an immediate response to text messages sent at 10:30 Saturday night. It’s a true 24-7-365 job. So Jim let him know that was a problem.

“I kind of got on him about it,” Jim said. He told him, “I'm setting up my schedule so I can be here. So, if you're not going to be here, you need to call in. You need to do something. You really need to make an attempt to be at school, especially on those days.”

Of course, the day came when Jim couldn’t make it. They always met at 11 a.m. and he had an assistant call the school at 11:15 to let Ulyses know he couldn’t make it.

“And the next week (Ulyses) said, ‘Look, I am coming to school. I’m coming to school so you and I can meet, we talk, and we can do what we’re supposed to be doing, but if you don’t show up, what good is any of this?’”

“I got goosebumps right now remembering it,” Jim said. “And I said, ‘Oh, my God, you are so right. You are so right. We will make a pact right now. There’s going to come time when I may not be able to do it, but we will reschedule for a different day, and I will do everything I possibly can and I'll talk to the people who handle my schedule to make this time sacrosanct.’ And we did. I’m not sure he ever missed one of our meetings after that.”

Jim kept a plaque he got for his efforts.

The knucklehead kid keeps learning

A word that comes up often when Ulyses and Jim are talking about those days is Jim’s use of the term “knucklehead.” As in, don’t be one and don’t hang around other ones. Ulyses didn’t overcome his knuckleheadedness overnight, but he did make steady progress.

Jim stayed in touch with Ulyses, even after he moved on from Fulkes and out of the mentor program and into high school. Jim retired from the job in Round Rock and, hardworking guy that he is, became City Manager in San Marcos a short while later.

During one of their phone conversations, a serious problem had come up for Ulyses while he was in high school. Jim can’t recall the particulars, but it was serious enough that he made the hour drive from San Marcos to Round Rock to see him in person.

“I don’t remember what was hard, but he didn’t want to lose sight of what he’s doing, and he’s working really hard to do good in school, but it’s just hard,” Jim says. “I told him, ‘Yeah, it’s hard, but the hard stuff you put in now is going to make it easy for later on, and you’re not going to be some guy flipping hamburgers someplace, you’re going to be somebody important, you’re going to be saving people's lives and stuff.’” 

Another two steps forward for Ulyses. He did graduate high school, the first in his family to do so. That’s a massive success. But it’s not the end of the story. More challenges awaited, and there was more help and support beyond what Jim could offer.

Next week: What happens after high school on Ulyses’ journey to post-knucklehead success.

The Struggle Is Real

We debut a new feature with today’s newsletter: Good Gov/Bad Gov. As I trawl about the online seas in search of copy for this weekly missive, I find lots of nuggets about government done well, and a lot more on government done not so well. Some of the good stuff doesn’t merit a full post but is worth a shout out. As you know, there’s no shortage of the bad stuff, but some is more egregious than others. I’m saving the worst for you, dear readers.

We’ll start with the egregious.

Bad Gov

I found this one in The Free Press, one of my favorite Substack news publications. Specifically, it’s from TGIF, a weekly news round-up written by the incomparable and hilarious Nellie Bowles. From the Sept. 15 edition:

A modern classic from our energy secretary: I hadn’t spent a lot of time thinking about Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, but let me tell you a story. She wanted to show how great and easy it is to go on a road trip with an electric car, so she invited an NPR reporter along for the ride. The challenge: it’s not great and easy because we need way better EV infrastructure, and there’s never enough space at the charging stations, and it’s all super annoying. The second challenge: Granholm doesn’t want to admit that. The solution: she sent her assistant ahead in a gas-powered vehicle to block off a charging spot and wait for her to arrive, so it could seem easy. The hitch: people find this really annoying. One family waiting to charge their car (on a hot day with a baby in the vehicle) called the cops. My idea: the Biden admin could just admit we need better EV infrastructure instead of lying to us that everything is hunky dory? 

To which I say: Sigh. (For the record, I would share this if it happened in a Republican administration. Bad Gov is bi-partisan.)

Good Gov

The good people of Beaumont, Texas, have got responsible people running their government. The City Council made the hard but necessary decision to spend $123 million over five years to keep the water utility in good working order.

City Manager Kenneth Williams explained the why: “The City of Beaumont’s infrastructure is aging and it’s aging quite a bit.”

They made the announcement with a full-blown press conference, where they laid out all the particulars. Here’s the coverage from the local TV news station. Good for you, City of Beaumont!

Never take the acquisition, treatment and distribution of potable water for granted. Hah! you say. We’d never do that. I wish it were so. As do the good people of Flint, Mich., and Jackson, Miss.

Onward and Upward.