RIP Mr. O'Neal

Former Elgin High principal, community leader dies at 68
By Larissa Chinwah Daily Herald Staff
Published: 12/31/2009 12:00 AM
Ron O'Neal, a veteran educator who worked his way up the ranks from a teacher in a small Illinois town to become the first black principal in the state's second largest school district passed away Tuesday in his Elgin home. He was 68.

Funeral services will be held at noon Saturday at the Second Baptist Church, 1280 Summit St., Elgin. Visitation will be from 10 a.m. until noon.
O'Neal will be buried at Elmwood Cemetery in Centralia, Ill.
Friends said O'Neal was known for his dedication to students, as well as the Elgin community, paving the way for other African-American educators and administrators.

"One thing I always remarked about was that no matter the event - whether it was before school, after school, or in the evening - he was there," said Elgin Mayor Ed Schock, who worked alongside O'Neal in Elgin Area School District U-46. "You wondered if he was ever not at school."

O'Neal taught school at Lincoln Elementary School in Centralia, Ill., before taking the position of principal at Sheridan Elementary School in 1970, becoming the first black administrator in U-46. He later became principal at Larsen Middle School and ended his career as principal at Elgin High School in 2001.

His wife of 38 years, Carolyn O'Neal, described her husband as a very dignified man with lots of pride.

"He was a hard worker at anything he did," she said. "Any job he was undertaking that he thought was worthy was worth him doing the best he could."

O'Neal held others to those high standards, too, including his three children. "Our kids didn't have a choice," Carolyn O'Neal said.

Robert Gilliam, who worked with O'Neal in U-46, said O'Neal stressed the importance of education through his contributions to scholarship funds and devotion to students.

When asked to contribute to the St. James Church scholarship fund, O'Neal would cry poor in jest, but always come through with a very generous donation, Gilliam said.

"Ron was a very generous man who gave a lot of time and money to help students go to college," said Gilliam, an Elgin City Council member. "He was top notch and will be hard to replace in the community."

O'Neal is survived by his wife, three children, five grandchildren and a number of nieces, nephews, family and friends. In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to Provena St. Joseph Cancer Care Center in Elgin.

Planning your day

There are some good reasons for NOT planning.
Like...
...planning limits my freedom.
...putting out today's fires takes precedence.
...I don't have time to plan.

I think those are good reasons, but we all know that living like that tends to allow us to drift along rather than live on purpose.

Planning takes about 10 minutes of solitude each day. You can do it before bed or in the morning. Some folks arrive at work a few minutes early to do it.

Daily planning means,
1- Reviewing your long-range goals.
2- Evaluating the time available vs. the tasks.
3- Setting specific goals for the day.
4- Anticipating obstacles.
5- Prioritizing your tasks.

Most people prioritize by looking at the list of tasks for the day and placing an A, B or C next to each one. Then numbering the A's from most important to least important.

Check them off as you complete them (boy, that feels good). At the end of the day you need to do something with those that weren't completed. Most will be moved forward to the next day. Some will simply be deleted as "not that important after all."

Completing your most important tasks means that your behavior is in line with your values. You are finally living the life you intend to.

I can't stress enough the daily solitude and planning. Just reading your long-range goals each day reminds you of your purpose in life. And actually accomplishing part of one or two of those goals each day is real progress.

That's how you LOP.

Making plans

So, you have your values to guide you, and you have a pretty good idea of the long-range goals.

Now, you need to set mid-range goals that put the "flesh and bones" on each of those goals.

*On a piece of paper write your value statement that relates to the goal.
*Below that write your long-range goal.
*Then write the details of the plan to get there. One line per event. The more detail the better because that will make your daily tasks write themselves.

The keys to effective planning are:
1. Supported by your governing values.
2. Time dimensioned.
3. Clearly and specifically defined.
4. "Owned."
5. Realistic.

There is a certain amount of self-talk involved in living life "on purpose." You need to envision yourself as successful. It's important to see yourself as a person who has control of your life through goals, planning and discipline.

Self-esteem is built through controlling the events in your life, being productive as a result, and thus having even more self-esteem. It's a cycle that spirals upward as you see your goals turn into accomplishments.

Nathaniel Brandon, author of The Psychology of Self-Esteem said: "One of the most important aspects to consider is the relationship of self-esteem to productive work."

To review:
1- Event control (daily tasks)
2- Productivity
3- Self-esteem
4- Back to step 1

The truth is, all of us have many accomplishments behind us. We may not have been great planners, but we accomplished them just the same. Planning and goal setting highlight our progress and encourage even more productive lives.

Just a thought about planning. We sometimes set goals and plan events over which we do not have control. Keep in mind that you control your own behavior. Be sure to check your events and make sure they are something you can control.

Have fun making a detailed list of events. If you can imagine it in enough detail, you can achieve it.

Setting the course

Let’s return to the other end of the planning process; the beginning.

Here we plan the journey. It’s fine to make a to-do list and get things done, but real planning means completing tasks that contribute to a greater goal. So how do you figure out what those greater goals are?

It begins with your values. Ask yourself the question, “Who am I? What are the most important elements of my existence?"

There are some exercises that may help you with your values. One such trick is to write your own eulogy. What do you want people to say about you at your funeral? Here are some examples:
He was such a devoted husband and father.
She was a fine musician.
He could fix anything.
She was so good with people.
He has a way with words.
She was a renowned engineer in seven states.
He loved his country and was a war hero.
She unselfishly cared for her parents for years.

Most of your values will be works in progress. In other words, they express the person you want to become. But they need to be your own, not written down just because someone else expects it of you.

Just the same, don’t sell yourself short. These are values you must work at to accomplish. But believe in yourself. Dr. M. Scott Peck said, “Until you value yourself, you will not value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.”

Once you know who you want to become, work on the how and when. These are your long-range goals. Pick four or five. If you want to be a “renowned engineer in seven states” you will need an engineering degree.

Your long-range goal would be something like, “Electrical Engineering Degree, University of Utah, June 2012.”

This is quite a statement. It alone requires you to do some research about schools, pick one, get a general idea of the additional coursework you will need, and set a deadline.

Choose carefully, for you will get it.

Events - Major and mundane

For lack of a better term, we use the word “event” to indicate the actions we take each day. These are tasks we perform that, taken together, amount to real progress in life.

Nothing gets done by simply dreaming of grandiose goals. Somewhere along the way that vision gets translated into tiny steps each day.

I watched Apollo 13 the other night. It called to mind the millions of small tasks that combined to put a man on the moon. If you’ve ever mapped out a project you know there are several step involved in even the smallest project. Just imagine all the steps and timelines involved in a space shot.

Our lives are made up of small events that add up to a finished goal. Take something as insignificant as making a batch of cookies. There are perhaps twenty steps involved in making cookies. When the recipe calls for a teaspoon of salt you simply reach in the cupboard for the container.

If you are out of salt, the project comes to a halt. Perhaps when you bought that container of salt two years ago you weren’t thinking about that particular batch of cookies at the time. That doesn’t matter; you had the salt when you needed it. But the important thing is that in a past event you did something that enabled you to complete the project today.

You need to start thinking in terms of tasks or events that make up your day. When YOU control the events of the day, and when those events are selected as part of a plan to move your life forward toward your goals, you are living your life “on purpose.”

And great things are accomplished when you control the events in your life.

Of course, when you spend the day putting out fires and doing the tasks dictated to you by inertia, you will reach your goals only by chance.

Planners are much more than to-do lists, for they strive to help you remember and achieve your goals. They do this by making the vision real through accomplishing the tasks that lead to meaningful goals.

More LOP

So, why all this purpose of life stuff right now? Well, so we can make improvements in 2010. This is a great time to reflect...and set some goals.

Maxwell Maltz was a successful plastic surgeon who was puzzled by some of his patients. They would come to him for a nose job and he would give them exactly what they asked for. Six months later the patient would come back depressed and looking for more body work.

He learned that the plastic surgery wasn't what they needed at all; they needed help on the inside. Their self-image was of failure. They were looking for a quick fix. What they really needed was to know that they could improve their lives by recognizing their potential and using it to their advantage.

Dr. Maltz wrote a great book about it all decades ago. It's called Psycho-Cybernetics.

One of the principles in his book is that man is goal-oriented. He compares us to a guided missile. It is programmed for a specific target. Without the guidance it would be guided by the wind and gravity, landing who-knows-where.

We need goals and direction as well. We need vision and purpose. And re-thinking 2010 is a great exercise right now.

Some classic Maltz
Remember you will not always win. Some days, the most resourceful individual will taste defeat. But there is, in this case, always tomorrow - after you have done your best to achieve success today.

Self-image sets the boundaries of individual accomplishment.

Self-improvement is the name of the game, and your primary objective is to strengthen yourself, not to destroy an opponent.

Take the trouble to stop and think of the other person's feelings, his viewpoints, his desires and needs. Think more of what the other fellow wants, and how he must feel.

The "self-image" is the key to human personality and human behavior. Change the self image and you change the personality and the behavior.

To change a habit, make a conscious decision, then act out the new behavior.

To think, when one is no longer young, when one is not yet old, that one is no longer young, that one is not yet old, that is perhaps something.

We are built to conquer environment, solve problems, achieve goals, and we find no real satisfaction or happiness in life without obstacles to conquer and goals to achieve.

We must have courage to bet on our ideas, to take the calculated risk, and to act. Everyday living requires courage if life is to be effective and bring happiness.

You can always find the sun within yourself if you will only search.

You make mistakes. Mistakes don't make you.

Accept yourself as you are. Otherwise you will never see opportunity. You will not feel free to move toward it; you will feel you are not deserving.

Close scrutiny will show that most "crisis situations" are opportunities to either advance, or stay where you are.

For imagination sets the goal picture which our automatic mechanism works on. We act, or fail to act, not because of will, as is so commonly believed, but because of imagination.

If you make friends with yourself you will never be alone.

Low self-esteem is like driving through life with your hand-break on.

Man maintains his balance, poise, and sense of security only as he is moving forward.

Often the difference between a successful man and a failure is not one's better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on his ideas, to take a calculated risk, and to act.

Our self image, strongly held, essentially determines what we become.

Your most important sale in life is to sell yourself to yourself.

LOP

In the world of texting sometimes a mnemonic device can be both a memory aid and a time saver. So, here goes.

L.O.P. stand for Life On Purpose. Got it?

I took the old Franklin Planner course 15 years ago and it helped me survive a busy work schedule, the activities of the kids, the school board and being bishop. It's more than just a calendar if you use it right.

That's where LOP comes in. When you know what you want to do with your life, planning makes it possible to get there.

It seems obvious that anything worthwhile takes planning and step-by-step execution for it to actually happen.

For example, if you want to be an engineer, you have to get a degree. "Get a degree" is a fine goal, but it lacks the details you need to turn the goal into daily action steps. This isn't complicated to understand but it is very difficult to carry out with all the distractions in life.

Breaking it down a little, you'll need to enroll in some engineering classes...classes that require prerequisites.

Then you need to get decent grades in those classes, which means that you have to invest time and energy in books, studying and attending class. If the grades don't come easy to you, you'll need to invest extra effort to compensate.

If attending class is a problem due to illness or lack of energy, you'll also need to make plans for exercise, sleep, and meals.

And one thing I learned from LOP is that when you say "Yes" to something you almost always are saying "No" to something else. In other words, you can't have it all, at least not at the same time.

Saying "Yes" to earning an engineering degree means saying "No" to a fair amount of hanging out, gaming, snowboarding...

You're on your own when it comes to discipline, but a planner helps to remind you of your goals and the progress you've made.

Tech note: I tried the PDA versions of planners but found them less rewarding. First you have to turn it on, then find the program, then the menu. With paper you open your book and check it out.

Another point with paper is that it is a visual reminder of the tabs that contain your goals and the steps involved. I found with a PDA that I didn't refer to the big picture nearly as much as I did with paper.

You're going to have four or five major goals going at once. Some you'll work on daily and others once a week or so, but all of them are important to you. You "make time" for all of them with a planner. You can decide which ones are most important.

To a lesser degree, you can decide that you'd like to put one thing off because you aren't in the mood, then go back to it until you can check it off. (This notion doesn't work well for procrastinators, but if you are diligent in checking things off and carrying them forward to the next day if not completed, eventually guilt will kick in and apply some pressure to get back to the important stuff.)

More on LOP later.

Good-bye, Grandpa Havlik

We just got word that one of our favorite (former) neighbors passed away recently. Frank Havlik, Grandpa Havlik to some of our children, was 98 years old when he died November 20th. I'll bet his wonderful wife Lil was happy to see him! Here is a link to the obituary: http://www.legacy.com/dailyherald/Obituaries.asp?Page=SEARCHRESULTS.

He was born in Czechoslovakia and worked his way up to factory foreman at Illinois Toolworks in Elgin and retired more than 30 years ago! We used to love hearing his great storytelling about things that happened in his life. After Lil passed away, he hung in there and did volunteer work at the ECC Bookstore and never missed the fish fry at the American Legion Hall.

When he was in his early 90s the doctor suggested he work on muscle toning. So he joined a local fitness center and loved being the center of attention as the oldest one there. They even asked him to be the social chairman there to welcome people so they would want to come back. We were happy when a newspaper article was published heralding his efforts.

Rachel and Clarissa used to make it a point to stop by the Havlik house on the way home hoping for a little candy and to my knowledge were never disappointed. Frank was sad when Clarissa grew up and didn't have occasion to walk past his house any more. We still enjoyed caroling there at Christmastime and dropping off jars of homemade soup and other food whenever we could and brought him over for meals once in a while.

A couple of years ago, he moved to Arizona to be closer to his daughter, so we've been missing him for a while. But he was a fine man and we are grateful to have known him.
SH