Stan Snow MDI Contributor
What legacy means to me – the legacy I was left and … the legacy I want to leave,
My dad left me a legacy of hard work, military service, 50 years of marriage, speaking your mind and caring not a wit what another’s opinion of you may be.
Raymond Lee Snow, my father, and his father, Maurice Raymond Snow, were physical men who worked with their hands all their lives and enjoyed active sports well into middle age. Grampa Snow was a minor league pitcher of some renown. It was written in the local press he would have gone up to the Big Show if not for the family responsibilities that limited his travel schedule. He served in the Army in World War I, coming home to work for the gas company, start a family and play baseball. He died a few years before I was born.
Dad grew up during the Great Depression, went to work delivering ice until he joined the Army, coming home to serve in the National Guard and work for the gas company with his father. Two days after his 28th birthday Pearl Harbor was attacked so he, along with his father and two brothers, went straight to the recruiting office to enlist in the war effort. Although his father was turned away, my father re-enlisted, joining his two brothers in the Army, serving in Africa, Europe, and the Pacific campaigns between them.
I never served in the military. I have been married and divorced twice. I went to college and have worked mostly in sales. I am nothing like my father.
I played all sports, including soccer well into my forties. I have learned the value of speaking my mind and have a reputation for doing so. People who know me well will attest that I care not a wit what others may think of me. I am my father.
I have a daughter and a son, and I am fiercely proud of both. I have spent their entire lives telling them stories of their grandfather they never knew, as my dad did with me. My son is in the Marine Corps, carrying on the military tradition. They are my greatest legacy.
My next greatest legacy would surely be the work I have done, and continue to do here in MDI. I believe all men deserve a men’s team. Most men carry a load of pain, and many have no idea what it means to be a mature masculine man in today’s world. Everything I do here is because I believe those men need men like us and they wish to be men like us, just like we did when we each first came here. I am committed to leaving this big circle better than I found it, something built to last for future generations of men.
Every day I see the mark made upon me, trail blazed by my father and grandfather. They taught me that I am my own man and have a responsibility to make my own mark and blaze my own trail in this world to benefit those who follow me. My daughter, Erica, 26, and my son, Tyler, 24, are a legacy I am proud to claim. I am equally proud of MDI and what we offer to men.
Which brings me to questions for the men. What is the legacy you were given? Most important, what is the legacy you wish to leave?