Myra Borshoff Cook's acceptance speech for the Central Indiana Business Hall of Fame
Thank you.
Thank you Brie and Shea
Congratulations to David, John and the Kelley family.
It’s an honor to be included in this year’s class of laureates… to be part of such a distinguished group … and I deeply appreciate Junior Achievement’s recognition for me, my family and my partners and colleagues at Borshoff. Indeed, whatever I’ve been able to achieve in my career would not have been possible without the love, confidence, encouragement, support and talent of my families: Middleton, Borshoff, Cook, Johnson, Matthews, Dzwonar and Irsay.
I especially want to thank my family members who are here tonight. My son Tom, my daughter Amanda and the spirit of their father, Tom Borshoff. My mother, Grayce, sisters Jane and Liz, brothers Jim and John and the spirit of our Dad, Vance Middleton. My Cook family: Sally, Mary and Jim, Dan, and the spirit of their mother, Amy Cook Lurvey. And, of course, my partner in life, the yin to my yang, my husband, Frank.
Also here tonight are my partners at Borshoff: Erik Johnson, Susan Matthews and Jennifer Dzwonar, along with several other members of our senior management team, many of my clients and close personal friends who came tonight to support Junior Achievement and share the evening with me. Thanks to all.
Those who know me will tell you that I’m rarely at a loss for words…though it took me several attempts to craft my message for tonight. I kept coming back to a book my Dad gave me for Christmas in 1955 – the year I was eight.
It’s a Doctor Seuss book called On Beyond Zebra, the story of a young man learning the alphabet who proudly says about the letters at the book’s beginning, “I know them all well…I know everything anyone knows. From beginning to end. From the start to the close. Because Z is as far as the alphabet goes.”
His friend counters, “You can stop, if you want, with the Z. Because most people stop with the Z…but not me. I’m telling you this cause you’re one of my friends, My alphabet starts where your alphabet ends.”
“My alphabet starts, he says, with this letter called Yuzz. It’s the letter I use to spell Yuzz-a-ma-Tuzz. You’ll be sort of surprised what there is to be found, Once you go beyond Z and start poking around.”
He then takes his young friend on an adventure, learning new letters like Wum, Snee, Floob, Zatz, Yecck, Vroom – each with a unique creature whose name requires one of these on-beyond-zebra letters – characters like Wumbus, Sneedle, Zatz-it and Floob-Boober-Bab-Boober-Bubs.
That book entertained me as a child – in fact, I nearly wore it out …but I still have it – along with every book my Dad gave me when I was growing up. This rhyming fable about a boy who’s not content to stay within the bounds of convention impressed on me – I believe – some subtle messages that helped shape me as an adult.
I never thought much about the Seuss book until I began to look at the messages I received as a young girl growing up. This book – with its comic characters and rhyming sentences – gave me a message about adventure, courage, testing limits and learning something new every day.
I believe that some of these very messages helped form my behavior as an adult – my risk-taking, my out-of-the-box thinking, my curiosity and love of learning.
Who knows what might influence a child? Who knows what lessons children learn from the stories they hear or read or from the honored traditions in their home. What unspoken messages do we give when we give a book to a child every year like my Dad did for us? We just don’t know how these messages might affect the young people in our lives.
I must admit I’ve been thinking about this more regularly lately, since I became a grandmother for the first time – my grandson, Thomas Cole Vance Borshoff, was born last October 9th.
So I urge you to actively interact with the children you know or come to know. Not just your children or grandchildren… your nieces and nephews, your neighbors, the children and grandchildren of your friends. Talk with them; ask them questions; tell them stories.
Encourage them to explore the place called On Beyond Zebra – that place where imagination is valued, where learning happens every minute of every day and where you might meet someone unlike anyone you’ve ever met before.
So you see!
There’s no end
To the things you might know
Depending on how far beyond Zebra you go!
Thank you.