Rise up a genuine leader Who is driven by moral character and integrity Who commits to truth and responsibility Who models personal discipline and accountability Who earns respect by giving it Who is humble in self-imperfections and gracious in others’ Who nurtures trust and collaboration
Rise up a genuine leader Who is we-oriented, not me-oriented Who articulates vision with clarity and infuses pride in purpose Who disables barriers to people development Who confronts social ills with positive solutions Who seeks understanding and resolutions in contentions Who fosters creativity and inspires hope
Rise up a genuine leader Who can undo chaos and create order Who is composed instead of clamorous Who promotes diversity of viewpoints in unity of purpose Who invests in people and worthy dreams Who is transparent, trustworthy, and teachable Who upholds faith in a better future and spurs actions toward it
Rise up a genuine leader Who values people and ideas over profit Who knows virtue sustains character, but its absence destroys it Who is considerate instead of caustic Who brings competence with candor Who discerns realities with compassion and directs resolutions with care Who influences people to mutually elevate lives, institutions, and ideals.
Rise up a genuine leader Who is attentive to needs of the people and builds their spirit Who overcomes personal ego, arrogance, and unethical behavior Who rejects conflict mongering Who is consistent and persistent in value-added contributions Who equips and empowers other leaders Who builds an enduring legacy of transformational results
In popular culture, the concept of faith is often derided as a superstition of ignorant people.
But I’d like to advance the notion that faith is required for living successfully every day. And we need not be bashful about it!
After all, what is a plan but the expression of faith in something that does not yet exist?
In order for things that are apparently impossible to transform into things that are solidly real, faith is the PRIME ingredient.
(On the other hand, under the guise of “being realistic,” and often embraced by the willfully ignorant, doubt is the full-stop barrier to realizing any preferred future at all.)
For success in any endeavor, be genuinely faith-full!
Helping train our emerging leaders is always rewarding – both now and in the future! Day 2 of the intensive Pennsylvania Recreation and Park Society’s Leadership Academy included sessions on successful communications and creating collaborative relationships with key stakeholders, a working lunch, but also a few moments for a Class of 2024 selfie!
The Council of State Executive Directors met this week in Park City, Utah. The annual gathering focuses on trends and best practices of association management, and mutual issues in the recreation and park profession.
But we are more than just colleagues. We are a gregarious, fun, engaging (and exhausting!) bunch who continually and passionately invests in each other. This is my greatest gang of professional associates and personal friends – my collective, got-your-back brain trust. I appreciate and love them all.
The Special Olympics PA provides year-round sports training and competition in Olympic-type sports for children and adults with intellectual disabilities, giving them opportunities to develop physical fitness, demonstrate courage, experience joy, and participate in a sharing of gifts, skills, and friendship with their families, other Special Olympics athletes, and the community. It’s one they look forward to all year.
And on Friday, thousands of athletes, coaches, families, and friends met at Penn State University for their annual Summer Games. It is the largest statewide competition, attracting more than 2000 athletes and 750 coaches.
It was a real joy to volunteer at the Games, along with several of my co-workers. We were assigned to the Track staging area, helping the athletes get checked in and lined up for their races: 100 meter walk, 200 meter run, 800 meter run and walk, 5000 meter run, and the pentathlon 400 meter dash.
If you’ve never interacted with such pure-hearted people as those who compete in the Special Olympics, seek it out: you’ll be enriched from the experience!
I have now lived just as long as Leonardo Da Vinci, and longer than Walt Disney, Abraham Lincoln, Marie Curie, Martin Luther King Jr, Jim Henson, C.S. Lewis, and so many other accomplished men and women I admire—and I can’t help comparing what I’ve done with my life to date.
But that’s not what I should be measuring, is it? I may not have produced a similar depth and breadth of accomplishments, but…
Have I nurtured my own gifts and talents?
Have I well-stewarded the resources I’ve been accountable for?
Have I contributed my best to my tasks, responsibilities, goals, and dreams?
Is my conscience clean, despite my failures, mistakes and shortcomings?
Have I extended grace to those who have disappointed or wronged me?
Have I been a positive influence to those who know me?
Have I loved my family to the utmost, and lived my life with integrity?
If so, I’m ok with that.
And any comparisons with others’ accomplishments are useless.
Supportive relationships bring vitality to reality. We are very grateful to our friends and family who have stood by us during some of our most challenging times. This year, we were able to publish our story of raising our youngest son on a high functioning sliver of the autism spectrum. As the first student in the school district diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, he became the blunt instrument of change it required but didn’t know it needed.
Each phase of life can be a stepping stone to progress. From the distinct advantage of countless wayfinding steps more than 20 years in the making, we’re now able to tell the tale of our passage. But at the time, we hadn’t a clue to the route, or the fuss we would create.
Words of faith determine the journey’s end before I arrive. In October this year, we celebrated our 45th anniversary. We couldn’t have imagined most of what our lives have become, but we know Who holds our future, and that faith has both carried us through and worked out all things for our good.
Intentional steps bring opportunities that alter destinies. In February, Philip obtained a position as a Research Engineer, after the persevering quest of 7 years and 840 job applications. We helped move him to Webster, NY and unload the truck during a winter squall off Lake Ontario with -10° windchill and near-whiteout conditions!
A strong sense of purpose overrides the pain of fulfilling it. The bold statements in this post come from several of the chapter openings in Stepping Stones: our pathfinding adventure with Asperger’s. In it, we share how we hadn’t planned to be pioneers in an arduous journey—but that’s where we have found love, courage, hope, faith, learning, humor, growth, failure, trial, and triumph—everything that rounds out a life well-lived.
Only by overcoming challenges to my progress do I advance toward it. Stepping Stones is a trail guide of hope for all the parents and caregivers of children who: appear to have advantages, but somehow do not; want to be happy and fit in, but largely cannot; yearn to be treated respectfully, but usually are not.
I affirm the worth of my potential and progress toward a favorable future. Despite advances in diagnoses, therapies and other accommodations, many systemic inequities against the neurodivergent remain to be dismantled. This book introduces the concepts required to continue organizational change. And to all parents and caregivers of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, this true tale offers pragmatic guidance, self-help encouragement, and real reason for hope.
Ignorance imprisons the mind, but learning liberates the spirit. Philip wrote the last chapter of the book, recounting the life lessons he learned in grad school and in securing a full-time job. He also created the back cover artwork and others in the book. Produced by solving and plotting the results of hundreds of millions of polynomial equations, and then stacked and colorized, he’s named this type of mathematical art “polyplots.”
Sit in peace. Stand on principle. Soar with purpose. Stepping Stones is available in print or ebook through our website timandcarolherd.com, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and other booksellers.
We believe in the message our little memoir contains, and we’re trying to reach as many people as possible. We are available for speaking to groups and for book signings. If you are an active Amazon customer, you can post a review, regardless of where you have purchased the book.
We offer this story of our experience to the great range of parents, caregivers, therapists, and support networks—as well as those who are on the autism spectrum themselves—as our like-missioned, kindred spirits. And we thank you for your support.
It’s been ten years since I resigned my job to keep my integrity, spent 17 months unemployed, and lost all my money.
And I still don’t regret it.
At the time, I was the chief executive to lead and administer my organization’s comprehensive operations. But a pattern of destabilizing behavior by the Board chair undermined my authority and community relations, unsettled two organizations, hindered the ability to attract and keep good associates—and ultimately severed the trust between us.
Without recounting the agonizing year-long details, I can report that my choices narrowed to two: I could defer to the Chair’s autocratic takeover and abandon my responsibilities, my conscience, and my integrity; or I could resign to keep what was truly in my control.
Because I resigned, I was not eligible for unemployment compensation. And at age 57, I discovered ageism first-hand as I applied unsuccessfully for more than 45 positions over the next 17 months, for which I was well-qualified.
It was truly a hard time.
But as I’ve learned, “Hard is ok.” Hard times are prime growth times—but only if I so choose. My attitude and my decisions remain within my exclusive control (unlike my circumstances!), and do inevitably influence my eventual outcomes.
What I confirmed is that my character is refined in crucibles, and my resilience ripens in distresses—but only when I sustain my faith in a better future.
Do I regret having to go through this? I am sorry it happened.
However, for its surpassing opportunities and eventual superior future, I am very grateful for the experience.
I have a standing personal rule: Always Bring a Book!
Whenever I break it, I’m inevitably sorry.
Books are important to me: in them I find distilled wisdom, practical instruction, and engrossing entertainment. They customize my intellectual, psychological, and spiritual development; they build my technical and relational capabilities; they expand my leadership and service; they refresh my mind and spirit.
In 2022, my wife, son and I wrote a book about the challenges, lessons and adventures in raising our youngest son with Asperger’s Syndrome, which will be published this coming year.
I try to read widely. Not all my choices pertain directly to my job, or my personal interests. Invisible Women opened my eyes and mind to systemic male-based data bias. Even fiction, when it represents a divergent point of view, can add to my useful stores of knowledge. Case in point for this year: The Personal Librarian, based on the true story of a black woman passing as a white woman in the employ of J.P. Morgan in the early 1900s.
The complete list follows, but here are my personal citations for those I’ve found most captivating, memorable, or practical in the following categories:
Work-related:CEO Excellence; Critical Thinking; Extreme Ownership Biography: Frederick Douglass; An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth History: The First Conspiracy: The Plot to Kill George Washington Iconic/Classic:Travels with Charley in Search of America Fiction:Where the Crawdads Sing; West With Giraffes; The Personal Librarian Science:Humble Pi; Brilliant Maps for Curious Minds Societal:Invisible Women; Untrustworthy Thriller:Boar Island Humor:The Definitive Biography of P.D.Q. Bach Spiritual: The Hole in Our Gospel by personal friends:Super Powers and Secrets; Crushed and Marred; Stand; People Connectors
Creativity, Inc: Overcoming the Unseen Forces that Stand in the Way of True Inspiration, Ed Catmull
Humble Pi: When Math Goes Wrong in the Real World, Matt Parker
Super Powers and Secrets: A Year of Holidays, H. Kaeppel
Crushed and Marred: A Year of Milestones, H. Kaepple
Stand: A Year of Firsts, H. Kaeppel
The Itty Bitty Book of Nonprofit Fundraising, Jayme Dingler
The Insanity of God: A True Story of Faith Resurrected, Nik Ripken
Golden Girl, Elin Hilderbrand
Flashback, Nevada Barr
Trees & Forests of America, Tim Palmer
Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, David W. Blight
Sold on a Monday, Kristina McMorris
The Hole in Our Gospel, Richard Stearns
Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! Adventures of a Curious Character, Richard P. Feynman
The Gift of Asperger’s: One Family’s Persevering Adventure of Hope, Humor, Insight and Inspiration, Tim Herd, Carol Herd, and Philip Herd
A Time for Mercy, John Grisham
Historic Acadia National Park: The Stories Behind One of America’s Great Treasures, Catherine Schmidt
Brilliant Maps for Curious Minds: 100 New Ways to See the World, Ian Wright
Girl Behind the Red Rope, Ted Dekker and Rachelle Dekker
Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age, W. Bernard Carlson
The Escape Artist, Brad Melzner
People Connectors: Elevating Communication for Educators, Terry Sumerlin
The First Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill George Washington, Brad Meltzner and Josh Mensch
We Seven, by the Astronauts Themselves, Carpenter, Cooper, Glenn, Grissom, Schirra, Shepard, Slayton
What Happened to the Bennetts, Lisa Scottoline
The Definitive Biography of P.D.Q. Bach, Professor Peter Schickele
Wait, What? And Life’s Other Essential Questions, James Ryan
High Country, Nevada Barr
Hard Truth, Nevada Barr
Eight Days in May: The Final Collapse of the Third Reich, Volker Ullrich
Endangered Species, Nevada Barr
An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth: What Going to Space Taught Me About Ingenuity, Determination, and Being Prepared for Everything, Col. Chris Hadfield
Blind Descent, Nevada Barr
Immanuel’s Veins, Ted Dekker
Thinking Like Your Editor: How to Write Great Serious Nonfiction – and Get it Published, Susan Rabiner and Alfred Fortunato
Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, Caroline Criado Perez
The Lost Key, Catherine Coulter and J.T. Ellison
Burn, Ted Dekker and Erin Healy
The Whole Town’s Talking, Fannie Flagg
Acadia National Park, Bob Thayer
Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens
CEO Excellence: The Six Mindsets That Distinguish the Best Leaders From the Rest, Carolyn Dewar, Scott Keller, and Vikram Malhotra
Burn, Nevada Barr
The Murder of King Tut, James Patterson and Martin Dugard
Thinking in Pictures: My Life With Autism, Temple Grandin
Calling All Minds: How to Think and Create Like and Inventor, Temple Grandin
The Life You’ve Always Wanted: Spiritual Disciplines for Ordinary People, John Ortberg
Boar Island, Nevada Barr
Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Professional and Personal Life, Richard Paul and Linda Elder
The Rope, Nevada Barr
A Man Called Ova, Fredrik Backman
The Personal Librarian, Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray
Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALS Lead and Win, Jocko Willink and Leif Babin
Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community, Bonnie Kristian
Send: Living a Life That Invites Others to Jesus, Heather Holleman and Ashley Holleman
West With Giraffes, Lynda Rutledge
Dr. Rick Will See You Now: A Guide to Unbecoming Your Parents, Dr. Rick
Travels With Charley in Search of America, John Steinbeck
