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| Signing books at the Arlington Hotel in Hot Springs after a convention speaking engagement. |
Last week I spoke to
the Sertoma ( service to mankind) Club in Springfield. They are a group of 40 or 50 who work
to help boys and girls clubs of the area, and they were surprised to hear that
I have a ranch for underprivileged kids where they can come and stay free for a
week or a weekend. Several of
those men work with groups of children and vowed to use our place this summer.
I have never made a big thing of
speaking to groups, but I have been a public speaker as well as a writer for
decades, speaking in several states and once in Canada. I have spoke in huge beautiful cathedrals
and little country churches; in grade schools, high schools, small colleges,
big colleges...at wild game dinners, at ducks unlimited banquets, at various
kinds of conventions and sport shows.
It
is easy for me, I have done it so much that I never even prepare a speech or
talk, I just try to add some humor to what I have to say, with a few minutes of
seriousness about whatever I feel God wants me to say. Groups are so different… so you have to
adapt to each situation.
A
few years back, I was asked to come to a town on the northeastern border of
Missouri and speak to a church.
When I got there it was a giant cathedral that I absolutely was in awe
of. I had never even been in such
a place. Then Gloria and I were
asked to speak in Plano Texas to a church that ended up being several hundred
people in a huge community building.
I spoke for 40 minutes and then signed books for more than an hour. They provided a place to stay and gave
us a pair of beautiful matching jackets.
I would have driven the whole distance just for those jackets.
I
spoke to a convention in Hot Springs, Arkansas a few years back that was in the
Arlington Hotel, and they put us up in a room right across from the room where
Al Capone always stayed when he came there. The room was just as it had been back then, set aside as
something of a museum site. I
never knew what that convention was all about, but they paid me well, and
again, I signed books for an hour or so.
The
following day, Gloria and Sondra Matlock Gray, who was my editor at the time,
wanted to go to the horse races.
Sondra’s husband and I bought three two dollar tickets for three races
and we didn’t win anything, but I swear this is true…Sondra, who had never been
to a horse race, picked three straight winners, and her two-dollar bets won her
about thirty dollars. She didn’t
bet on the fourth race, but picked the winner anyway. If she had bet two dollars on that race she would have
collected about 20 dollars more.
It was one of the most unbelievable things I have ever seen.
About
five or six years ago, due to my book on duck-hunting experiences, I was asked
to speak at a Ducks Unlimited Banquet in Oklahoma City. I should have known, from what they
were paying, that this would not be like speaking to DU banquets in small towns
of the Ozarks. Gloria and I got there the day before and they had us staying in
one of the fanciest apartments I have ever seen. At that dinner, there were
about two hundred members of the richest people I have ever seen, all in expensive
suits and ties. Imagine how I felt
that night, walking out before them in boots and jeans and a new ten-dollar sports
shirt purchased at Wal-Mart.
I mainly want churches, schools, and civic groups to know that I will speak at any time, any place to any size group, especially if they are trying to raise money, and while I once was paid for doing it....when I was young and broke with a family to support, I now speak anywhere-- free.
Speaking
to ANY group of any size is easy for me, and I recall the times when I have
helped raised a lot of money for good causes. Speaking at a big church in Kansas one summer, I helped
raise enough money to buy more than a hundred pairs of shoes for Indian
children on a couple of reservations in Kansas and Nebraska. Once ten years or so back, I spoke at a
Mt. Grove Baptist church in Missouri and that night, we raised 981 dollars,
which was spent to buy coats for poor kids in the county. At another church in
Kansas, I finished speaking and turned it over to the pastor, and he asked if
there was anyone in the crowd in need that night. A young man in a wheel chair came forward and said that he
wanted to become a Christian.
Maybe nothing I have ever done equals the results of that 40-minute talk
that night.
Those
are the reasons I will go anywhere, anytime, and speak to any group. I enjoy it, and it is easy for me to do
it. I’ll end this with a story about 7 or 8 Baptist ministers who got the idea
to have a big “Outdoor Sportsmen” dinner to try to bring in men of the area,
hopeful they would start coming to one of the churches in the area. They would have a free wild game
dinner, give away tickets for a drawing which furnished all kinds of hunting
and fishing equipment and in particular a nice 500 dollar shotgun. I was to speak at the event.
It
was cold that night, and the wild game, cooked and served outside, was just as
cold when folks lined up to eat.
Then they packed the church, and a group of musicians that were suppose
to play for 30 minutes liked what they were doing so much they played for
almost an hour and a half. Then a
minister talked for a while and they announced that after I spoke they would
have the drawing. At that time it
was a past 11:00 p.m. Those men
were really restless and they didn’t care about listening to me.
I
confined what I had to say to about three minutes and then the drawing took
about another hour. I remember
that the preachers and others involved in putting on the event all had tickets.
One of the minister’s sons won the set of books I had donated. Unbelievably, one of the ministers won
the fifty-dollar Bass Pro Shops gift certificate and another one ended up
holding the ticket for the shotgun. I think maybe not many of those folks who
came that night ended up joining any of those preachers at Sunday services.
If
you want information about my books or my outdoor magazine, just call me at 417
777 5227.
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