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After John Gardner's presentation on “Self-Renewal” to THE WESTERN JOURNAL OF MEDICINE Editors' Meeting, (*) Joseph Murphy, MD, Special Editor for Wyoming, asked the former Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, “Where are you in your life's cycle?” Dr Gardner, who is 80 years old, answered, “When Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr, was in his 90s, he was asked a similar question and said, `I'm like a race horse cantering along after the race is over, cooling down.' Well, I'm nowhere near cantering! I'm still in the race, pushing the world.” race, pushing the world.” John Gardner, who received his undergraduate degree from Stanford and PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, taught at the college level for several years before he joined the Carnegie Foundation. As president of Carnegie Corporation and Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, he began to “push the world” toward education and in 1964 received the country's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He has also pushed it toward political reform by founding Common Cause, toward grass-roots political action by founding the Urban Coalition, toward leadership training by founding the White House Fellows program, and toward volunteerism by founding the Independent Sector (a coalition of for-profit and not-for-profit organizations and foundations). His books, including Excellence, Self-Renewal, No Easy Victories, and On Leadership, have pushed readers to new understanding of themselves and of organizations to higher levels of creativity and energy to get important work done. His current research focuses on discovering and defining the characteristics of healthy, vital communities. His call to “keep on keeping on,” indeed, to push the world, leads to constructive change. Active people become effective people, infused with the energy and optimism that good hard work inspires. I think you will find this paper as invigorating to read as it was to hear.
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