How we live affects future generations
By: Arnold Bornstein
To all our sons and daughters: We have asked you to inherit a world not of your making, to clean up the mess we leave behind, to succeed in our failures and to live in peace and with goodwill toward others.
We know your struggles, for we too are sons and daughters, and your children will continue the generation cycle.
There are countless sons and daughters who have lived on this planet, and have countless stories with common links to others’ life stories. Let me share two of those stories which should illustrate some of these common links because all parents have their own children’s stories to tell.
Our son Brian seemed to have a typical boyhood growing up on Long Island.
My fondness for sports helped spark his interest in athletics. It included Little League baseball, Pop Warner football and league basketball. He was small by football and basketball standards, and was a back-up quarterback in high school.
He played on the lightweight football team at Cornell, which competed against other Ivy League teams as well as the Army and Navy teams. The most thrilling sporting event I ever attended was watching him play against the Army at night under the lights at Michie Stadium at West Point.
Several years after his graduation from law school, we completed a New York City Marathon together.
His studies didn’t seem to come easily, but he did well because he plugged away at whatever he did. After Cornell, he attended the New York State law school and graduate school in Buffalo. In a combined program, he received both his law and master’s degrees in Business Administration. Today he is a regional vice president at American Investment Group.
At Cornell, he and a classmate started Collegiate Movers, trucking students’ belongings home at the end of the school year. At Buffalo, after an enormous snowfall, he earned some extra cash by selling "I Survived the Snowfall" T-shirts that he had printed. During summer vacations, he worked as a golf caddy and then as a lifeguard.
In another Buffalo snowstorm, he and classmates were driving home from a Bruce Springsteen concert and had to stop at a hotel because of poor visibility. While in the hotel’s lobby, he struck up conversation with someone he ran into: the Boss, Bruce Springsteen.
There is a photograph of a young Brian playing pinball. Standing near him is a girl named Debra. In a movie-script scenario, Brian and Debra later became husband and wife.
Their daughters inherited some of Brian’s talent and interest in sports. Ten-year-old Sydney is an outstanding competitive swimmer, and 6-year-old Alexa attends advanced gymnastic classes and plays soccer. Brian is assistant coach of Sydney’s basketball team.
Our daughter Lisa seemed to have a typical childhood for a girl growing up on Long Island.
When she was young, we had a blackboard and chalk in our basement and plenty of paper and pens. When I played school with her, she was always the teacher.
During her high school years, she was a cheerleader at football and basketball games, and for a while she coached cheerleading at Manhasset High. In junior high school, she developed an interest in ice skating, eventually participating in competitive figure skating and an instructor.
Lisa decided to become a real teacher after graduating from Cornell and realizing she didn’t like advertising that much. She went back to school and received her master’s degree from Queens College. She has been teaching kindergarten for a number of years in the Manhasset School District on Long Island.
Lisa periodically runs into former students, former cheerleaders and sometimes parents. She has touched many lives and it’s heartwarming to see and hear the bond that exists between them.
Last summer, we took a cruise with Lisa to Bermuda and in the ship’s dining room, she encountered a former kindergarten student or hers who is now about 13 years old. The girl had had an extremely rough childhood, losing each parent to sudden and horrific deaths. She had been raised by her great aunt, who was accompanying her on the cruise.
Lisa hadn’t seen the girl since she moved, and they hugged each other and had a lengthy and quiet conversation with tears in their eyes. It was easy to see that Lisa made a difference in the girl’s life.
Life hasn’t been that kind to Lisa either. At 24, she developed Type 1, or Juvenile, Diabetes, meaning her pancreas has stopped producing insulin. Every day is a personal battle of insulin injections and regulating blood sugar levels.
She also shares my fondness for running, and we once completed the Long Island Half Marathon together. Once when running by herself, she was hit by a car and suffered knee damage that resulted in surgery and nerve blocks. Once Lisa recovered, she returned to running regularly.
Lisa always bounces back. She and her brother Brian share a profound appreciation of the joy of living, and the gift of life.
To all the sons and daughters out there, the future is yours to shape.
Arnold Bornstein is a resident of Greenbriar at Whittingham in Monroe.

