There was a time when if you expected to be “known” for something you actually had to “do” something. If you wanted to be known as an actor you had to act well enough and in front of enough of an audience so that people would recognize your name. If you wanted to be known as an athlete you had to excel in some sport, and be good enough at it that people talked about you.

At some level all of us can pretend to act a little and pretend to be an athlete a little, but nobody is going to know us as actors or athletes unless acting or sports becomes our whole reason for being. If every waking minute of our lives is focused on either participating in sports or acting, and if we have a of talent for it, and if we work our butts off doing it, maybe, just maybe we could become known for our endeavors in one of these fields.

My friend Dwayne Gutridge fits into that category. Dwayne is known as the Father of the Drag Radial class. He started it, lived it, breathed it, promoted it, designed rules for it, brought companies in to sponsor it and in general, became known for his total commitment to Drag Radial.

Dwayne doesn’t just talk about the Drag Radial class, he races in it. Dwayne is a doer. Dwayne has gumption.

Ah, a word that we don’t hear too often anymore. It’s an old word. If you don’t know what gumption means, look it up.

Here is a question for all of us to ponder. What are we going to be known for or remembered for when it’s time to sign out? What have we done in our lives where we have contributed a total 100% commitment to something that is going to be the one thing that most people will remember about us? Something to think about, eh?

Here is a hint. It has nothing to do with duplicating something that someone else has done before. The world is full of “copy cats” with little originality to offer. It has nothing to do with education. The world is full of educated derelicts. It has nothing to do with “our jobs”. We do whatever we do because we get paid for it. How many of us would do what we do for free? Not many I’ll bet.

It has more to do with the 100% commitment. The thing we did where we put our all into it, where we have given everything we had to give. We didn’t hold back; there was nothing more to give. Going at 90% is easy. Going at 100% is not.

Here’s a story about a woman from the South who had gumption. She went to college to become a writer, but soon dropped out because of poor grades. She got a job working as a journalist on an Atlanta newspaper. In here spare time, she started to write a novel. She had a story to tell, but really didn’t think that the public, other than a few people in the Atlanta area, would be interested. The actual writing came a little at a time, over a ten year period. She told very few people about her book. She didn’t think it was very good, anyway and refused to send it to a publisher. She did, however, put everything she had into the book. A 100% commitment to telling the story she had to tell.

By pure accident, a publisher from New York found out about the manuscript and after much pressure, was able to get her to submit the pages, the only copy that she had.

The publisher found the story “interesting” and agreed to publish the book, much to the total surprise of the author. At no time did this woman ever think about quitting her “day job”. In fact, she never thought of herself as an author nor was she interested in ever writing another book. As she later said, “I put 100% of my being into writing this one and I have no more words to give.”

My friends in Georgia must know by now that the author’s name was Margaret Mitchell. She only wrote one book in her lifetime. The title was “Gone With The Wind” and it became the largest selling novel of all time and eventually translated into 29 different languages.

“Gone With The Wind” is not a book about the Civil War, though the story takes place in that time frame. It’s main character, Scarlet O’Hara, is someone who would not let anything stand in her way. She could not, would not admit or accept defeat. According to the exact words of Margaret Mitchell, Scarlet O’Hara had gumption.

Margaret Mitchell is known for writing the Great American Novel, the only book she ever wrote. She gave everything she had to give in that one book. It sounds like she had gumption, too.

Sounds a little like Dwayne Gutridge doesn’t’ it?