By Roy Exum

When the politician Albert Gore was chosen as the winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, it served as a fitting tribute from the entire world for what he has done to alert us about global warming. While I don’t have enough of a passion to sit still through his documentary, I still applauded his selection.

At the time he was chosen, there appeared in the news a picture of an old, stooped woman from Poland who we learned had been a finalist for last year’s great honor and not until yesterday did I learn that Irena Sendler died about six weeks ago. Please allow me a belated condolence.

Understand, this isn’t to detract from Albert Gore’s choice, nor is it to belittle the Nobel Peace Prize in any possible way, but to confuse Irena Sendler as the “loser” to the former Tennessee Senator would be a grave tragedy and I’ll bet that if Albert Gore had been given the choice last fall, he would have waited to be duly honored until she could have been most-fittingly applauded.

Irena Sendler, who was only a social worker in Warsaw when the Germans occupied Poland in 1939, was the woman who single-handedly rescued over 2,500 Jewish children from the infamous Warsaw Ghetto. She would literally talk parents into trusting her with their most prized possessions on earth before the Nazi war machine could kill them.

Then, because she could move in and out of the Ghetto several times a day under the guise of providing humanitarian aid, she would smuggle the children out so they could be “adopted” by Polish families until the war was over. She and her underground provided new names and identities for the Jewish children and only Irena knew their whereabouts.

She would carefully write the names on cigarette papers, both the real name and the aliases, with the idea of reuniting the families when the horrors would end, and she kept the names in some jars that were carefully buried in a nearby garden.

She was ingenious in her methods. She even trained a dog to bark so it would stifle the cries of a scared child when they passed a German checkpoint. She used the city sewers, underground tunnels and all sorts of routes to spirit the children to safety.

Eventually she was caught and brutally tortured but, when the Germans found there was no way to break her, she was taken to be killed. The underground paid a huge bribe, and her life was miraculously spared by a guard who knocked her unconscious, threw her from a truck, and later said he had shot her.

She then lived in secrecy, daring not even attend her mother’s funeral, until the end of the war and then she dug up the jars and reunited the children with their families. Many of the parents had died in the concentration camps and gas chambers but Irena Sendler got almost all of them back to extended members of families, so great was her personal vow.

Curiously most have never heard her story, about how she was never again able to walk without crutches after the way the Germans torturers had crushed her feet and legs, and maybe her own distain at being hailed as a hero was the reason.

“Every Jewish child who survived due to my efforts has justified my existence on this earth but it is no cause for praise,” she once said. “We who were rescuing children are not some kind of heroes. That term irritates me greatly. The opposite is true. I continue to have qualms of conscience that I did so little … this regret will follow me to my death.”

In recent years, as many of the children she saved began to speak out, she couldn’t overwhelm her legend. Irena Sendler was actually awarded the Order of the White Eagle, the country of Poland’s highest decoration and … yes, she was a runner-up for last year’s Nobel Peace Prize before she died quietly on May 10, 2008, of pneumonia at the age of 98.

I felt you should know that, even in a belated way.

royexum@aol.com

By Roy Exum

At this weekend’s U.S. Open golf tournament, the 13^th hole at the beautiful Torrey Pines course outside of San Diego is over one-third of a mile long. Earlier this week I was of the mind that something that ridiculous had no place in the game of golf.

But a gentle stream of circumstance changed that on Friday and, as I sat with my buddies and watched the second round of the tournament from the other side of the country, I couldn’t help but marvel when Tiger Woods reached the pin in three strokes for an eagle.

We’d been talking about Tiger earlier, some saying he was hurting the sport because it is now “a one-man show.” Tour sponsors are said to be balking at investing millions in any tournament if Tiger doesn’t play and the TV announcers have reminded us on every hole that this is his first tournament since knee surgery after the Masters.

Worse, the cameras seem to follow Tiger’s every move and, to the purists who adore watching the game itself as the leaders jockey about and juggle the lead, it sometimes feels like his presence has somehow diminished the overall luster rather than enhance it.

So here we are on Friday, with Tiger coming into play after ending Thursday’s opener at one-over, and, with his round beginning on No. 10, he picks up two quick bogeys before the stunning eagle brought him back to square in a tumultuous start.

That 13^th hole plays 613 yards long and, what’s worse, the first shot has to carry about 240 yards or you have to hire a mountain climber to find it. So Tiger, undaunted by the pair of bogeys, hits his driver 356 yards and then his second shot flew 262 yards more to settle about seven feet beyond the pin. Then the putt was as easy as it looked. “I just cut a five-wood,” he would later say of his second shot.

He had four bogeys total on his first nine holes. He was, as he recalled, “just hanging around, just hanging around” for things to kick in and – as if to answer his critics – he then shot a stunning 30 on the last nine holes to prove anew he is the greatest golfer in the world.

He birdied four of the first five holes he played after making the turn, his scorecard looking like this: 3-3-3-3-3. I’m talking about Torrey Pines, the U.S. Open. Oh my goodness. So as dawn breaks in La Jolla, Tiger is just one stroke away from leader Stuart Appleby.

He’s tied for second with Sweden’s Robert Karlsson and Rocco Mediate at one-under and Mediate summed it up best when he said, "My friends or someone will ask, 'Who's the favorite.' Well, of course, he's the favorite," Mediate said.

"A lot of people said, 'Well, he's not going to win because he's had, what, a thousand weeks off.' He's different. When I talk about players or golf, he's not included because he's up there," Mediate grinned, pointing up toward the sky.

I can see how people are anxious for others to do well, how it isn’t as much fun when one guy wins all of the time, but I also think Tiger is due a tremendous amount of respect because his goal, if you will, is the same as every other golfer’s. It is to win.

His last nine holes on Friday were absolutely thrilling and even he said afterwards, when the press corps asked how he could have played any better, “It was nice.

"I just kept patient; I was just trying to get back to even par for the tournament. I was playing well enough to do it, and all of a sudden, (the putts) started flying in from everywhere," he said, mindful that during his 3-3-3-3-3 string all but one was from over 15 feet.

Who among us can criticize that? Sure, the tournament is far from over and there will be some great golf at Torrey Pines in the next two days but if you are among those who think Tiger is hurting golf more than he’s helping it, Friday’s Open stands as vivid proof that is just not the case.

royexum@aol.com

By Roy Exum

I sell houses for a living and, as of late, it has been a tough profession. The market is flat and not many people are buying and a lot of my buddies are having to scramble.

But the other day I ran into an old friend and she was crushed; she’d just found out one of her closest cronies had bought a house from somebody else and there is not much worse that can happen when you are down. So as I gave her a hug and told her there would be other fish to fry, I told her about the greatest salesman I ever knew.

If you think the real estate market is fickle, the beer business is tougher because the competition for market share and customer loyalty is ever more intense. When Bob Beasley was the Budweiser distributor here, I was with him one time when he shared a trick I’ve never forgotten.

We walked into a crowded bar and Mr. Beasley told the bar tender, “Give everybody in here another bottle of whatever kind of beer they are drinking and tell them it is compliments of Budweiser.” Well, if you don’t think that didn’t get people’s attention you are wrong.

Now, down through the years I’ve seen other distributors “sample” a saloon, where they’d pass around buckets of their particular brand, but Mr. Beasley had a different tact. He knew better than most that if you love people they’ll love you back and I bet he caused more beer drinkers to switch to Budweiser than anyone else who ever lived. The way he did it was with kindness.

You don’t see that much anyone. When some incredulous soul would ask Mr. Beasley why he’s just bought him a beer from one of his competitors, the silver-haired Beasley would wink and say, ”I want you to enjoy it but sometime try one of mine because I think you’ll like it.”

Inside he might have been dying because his brand wasn’t selling like it should but rather than getting mad or upset, his lesson was that you can attract a lot more bumble bees with honey than you can with vinegar and, time and time again, it worked.

When I get word one of my friends has bought a house from somebody else, it hurts you if you’ll let it but the better trick is to share in their new-found happiness and vow to work a little harder. I told my shaken friend the other day not to dare let on she was mad but, instead, tell her friends how delighted she was that they’d found a house they liked. Getting mad only makes you tired.

Sometimes you must act the opposite. There is a delicious story swirling around the Internet about the Budweiser truck driver who was rightfully incensed when he saw some Mideastern types who ran a convenience store in California laughing about the 9/11 tragedy right after it happened.

So he called the main office to say he refused to stock the shelves and that he was bringing back the truck and turning in his keys when the sales manager told him, “No you’re not! You go in there and, in the nicest way you know how, you tell them we are not selling our product there any longer and bring back every bottle and can with you!”

When the Miller Lite driver heard the story as they ate lunch together, he hopped in his truck and drove over, emptying the shelves. He did it nicely, politely, but before he was through, up drove Coca-Cola and several others. Within a week or two the laughing boys were nicely and politely out of business.

When you sell and are paid solely on commission, it may be the hardest lesson you’ll ever learn but kindness is undefeated. If you’ll work a little harder, and figure out a way to be a little cleverer than the next guy, it’s just like Mr. Beasley said a long time ago, “ … some time try one of mine because I think you’ll like it.”

royexum@aol.com