Cream Always Rises to the Top

Years ago, you could buy milk that was pasteurized or homogenized. Back in those days, milk only came in glass bottles … milk cartons had not been developed yet. Many people would buy the pasteurized milk since it was cheaper then the homogenized milk. Do you remember pasteurized milk? In a glass bottle, you could see a layer of cream above the milk. Before you opened the milk bottle you had to shake it up vigorously to mix the cream with the milk. When you would put it back into storage and let it sit long enough, that cream would always separate back to the top, with the milk underneath it.

Pasteurized milk is very much like human behavior. If you take someone with hidden talent and give them the opportunity, eventually their talent will rise to the top – just like with pasteurized milk.

Carole and I made a decision that we would not move our children once they were past the eighth grade. I had been in a position where I had seen families move around frequently and saw the influence it had on their children’s confidence and education. I turned down several promotions because it would have violated the trust our six children had placed in us to watch out for their well-being and education. Perhaps it hindered my advancement, but in the long run it all worked out.

We had about a five-year window between our first four children being out of high school and before the last two entered high school.

When the window opened, I went to the President of the company and told him I was ready to move if it would advance my career goal of being a Division President before the age of 50. He told me he would “put it in his hip pocket,” and at some point would get back to me. About two years later, we were on our way to Atlanta, Georgia, where we lived until I retired.

One of the obstacles we expected to encounter was the education of our two youngest children. We were sure that we would have to put our children in private school, but thought we would try the public school first. After one year, our daughters did not want to leave their school and go to a private school. Believing that the “cream always rises to the top,” we kept them in public school. We made the right decision.

Our daughter Elizabeth graduated with honors in her high school class. She went on to receive her degree from Penn State and achieved a middle management position with TBS Broadcasting, later to become Time Warner. She is now a stay-at-home mom with her two small children and a full-time Creative Memories Consultant with 17 consultants working under her.

Daughter Anne graduated high school as the “Outstanding Student.” She went on to Penn State and started to work as a summer intern in 1992 for Newt Gingrich before he became the Speaker of the House of Representatives … the rest of her career is told by the Former Speaker in the forward to this book. She is now a Senior Vice-President of Fleishman-Hillard in Washington, D.C. and specializes in the health care field. She has co-authored a book with Newt Gingrich entitled Saving Lives and Saving Money.

Not bad for two products of the public school system.

The moral of the story is that people often do not reach their full potential, but if you give them enough time and instill in them some self-confidence, eventually their talent will come out.

Just like pasteurized milk, an individual’s “cream will always rise to the top.”