Doug Wallace: Inspirational Stories of Childhood Poverty

The Project: Students studying sociology at a northeasrtern university were asked to read the memoir, “Everything Will Be All Right“, as a class assignment. They were asked to use their sociological imaginations to study the behavioral patterns of children born into generational poverty. Upon completion of the class, they were asked to submit questions to the author. 

The professor then picked a select group of questions from the students and sent them to me. If you have read my memoir, this post will be interesting to you. If you have not, I encourage you to read it anyway because it will provide great insight into the culture of generational poverty. The memoir is a true story about growing up poor in the rural south.

The Memoir is about the Wallace family, growing up in generation poverty in the rural south. The picture below contains images of the family as they appeared in 1971.

Below are the questions and my responses:

Question: You say later in the book that your  experiences were not by chance and that you believed in grace and faith. Do you believe that if you came from a wealthy family and everything was handed to you on a silver platter that you would be equally successful?

Answer: That’s a good question and there is no way to know for certain how things would have turned out if I had been born into a middle or upper class family, but let me try to answer that question:

First, here is some background: Over the years I employed many people. Some stayed with me for my entire career and many others came and left.  At the time I sold my company, I had over 300 employees. Finding good employees was a constant problem for my firm as well as other law firms during that era.

Out of every one hundred people I employed, perhaps one or two shined so brilliantly that everyone around them knew they would be a great success story. This experience tells me that most people, regardless of their socio-economic background, will choose to put their personal lives ahead of their careers.  Not that there is anything wrong with that.

I believe that every person, regardless of their background, has some motivation to succeed, but not everyone has the education or the training or the willingness to make that happen.  

This brings me back to your question: Do I believe that I would have been equally successful if I had been born to a wealthy family?  My answer is, probably not.

I believe that the deprivations and indignity of poverty, plus the experience of dealing with a constant crisis, instilled in me a sense of urgency, that time was short.

From the moment I joined the Job Corps, I felt the urgent need to push myself as hard as I could to insure that I would not live a life of poverty. I was acutely aware that one mistake could cost years of wasted opportunities.

During my business career I was able to use my street knowledge, coupled with my belief that “everything will be all right,” to boldly pursue ambitious goals, whereas a person who was more comfortable with their circumstances (middle or upper classes) may have been afraid to take the risks.

I also wonder if I would have had the epiphany experience if I had been born into wealth. I can’t understate the positive influence of that event. 

2. Question: Do you believe that things do just happen by chance sometimes, or that everything happens for a reason?

Answer: If I understood your question correctly, you are asking me if I believe that things happen because of destiny or by chance. There isn’t a philosopher or scientist, since the beginning of time, who hasn’t tried to resolve this question.

Faith in God and also the power of choice have been major tenets of my belief system since the age of twelve.

I believe that faith in destiny can be so powerful, that it directly influences the choices we make–that which we call our free will.

Faith in destiny and free will, in my opinion, are both mystifyingly intertwined, such that destiny influences free will as mightily as free will influences destiny.

In answer to your question, I believe that through the power of choice we have the ability to overcome any setbacks that chance circumstances might throw at us.

3. Question: Did you ever want to further your Tae Kwon Do skills?

Answer: No. I have been in more fights than I care to admit. The lesson I took from Tae Kwon Do is that exercising patience and self-discipline is far more beneficial to the body and mind than perfecting the art of fighting.

That being said, I am very grateful for having acquired one of those handy skills that you never want to use. 

4. Question: During your travels did you ever come across or find a woman that you thought was the one, only to have to leave her when your furthered your journey?

Answer: Wow! I don’t think anyone has ever asked that question.

My answer is that I was far too busy with my career in my pre-law years to get involved in a serious relationship with anyone. I can honestly say that I never left  “the one” or anyone that closely resembled “the one.” Personally, I believe marriage vows are meant to be permanent.

I am married to “The One” and I pray to God that she continues to love me for the rest of my life.

5. Question: What skills do you think you learned from living in poverty that you don’t think you would have learned if you lived in a middle class life?

Answer: There are a few lessons I learned from poverty–most of them were not good. I’ll focus on the good ones.

I learned that I needed to be constantly running scared. When I say “running scared,” I am not talking just about personal safety, but also about how I went about looking for a job or managing my personal finances, or running my business.

I was afraid of debt, so I refused to borrow. Even today I have zero debt.

I was afraid of poverty, so I obsessed about outperforming any and all business competitors.   

But the most important lesson I learned from poverty was the value of time itself.

So many of my friends and family members wasted time, allowing years to go by, one after another, without making plans for the future.

I have a personal philosophy about time–if by the age of 26 you haven’t created a solid plan for your career, you are likely to be disappointed in the outcome.

6. Question: Have you found any other mantras that help you overcome hard moments in your life?

Answer: In my opinion, the power of a mantra is dependent upon the context in which it is delivered to you. In some instances there are multiple layers of symbolism associated with a mantra. In others, it is just a word they use to meditate.

In my case the delivery of the mantra was so powerful and so supernatural, I never once considered the need to have another.

7. Question: What kept you motivated and positive in your journey despite the incredible amount of negativity put in your way?

The short answer is the epiphany experience. When you believe you have a Higher Power looking over your shoulder, it’s so easy to stay positive.

If I had to choose one more thing that kept me positive, I would say it was that I was very good at setting achievable but very challenging goals for myself as it relates to my business career. I set both short term and long terms goals, adjusting them upward each year.  

8. Question: Was it the desire to prove your childhood principal wrong?

Answer: Not really. Throughout my journey of escaping poverty, there were so many people who tried to undermine my intelligence, either overtly or in my own mind. I was constantly encountering people who tried to lower my expectations in life.

I have to admit, however, that the principal’s comments, among all those who tried to lower my expectations during those early years, was particularly stinging because it came from a mentor.

For children born into generational poverty, the teacher is usually the first mentor we encounter from the middle class. The principal is the highest mentor.

But it would be inaccurate to say that the principal’s comments motivated me for the next forty years.

9. Question: Your story is very inspirational but has any of the traumatic experiences of your childhood still affected you or your family today?

Answer: Definitely. It’s hard to escape the inescapable. You learn to live with it, but the damage is never far away.

My wife, for example, does not understand how frightened I am for her when she is away from me, be it shopping or knitting class. The same goes for my children and grandchildren when they visit.

I am perhaps over sensitive regarding issues of security for myself and my family. For example, I always face the entry doors in restaurants, always making sure that my back is not vulnerable, constantly aware of what is happening in my surroundings, and doing my best to be prepared for that unwanted chance encounter.

I refuse to engage in shouting arguments with anyone. Whenever I’m at a place where I hear others arguing, I cringe, my muscle tighten, and my mind goes back to those early years when my father was battering my mother.

I’m proud to say this has some benefits. My wife and I have never fought–ever. Whenever one of us gets frustrated, we just say, “I love you.”

10. Question: How is your relationship with your family now?

Answer: I’m assuming you are referring to my relationship with my family in TN.

There is a mindset that prevails among victims of generational poverty; if any family member makes it out of poverty, as a general rule, they will never be fully accepted back into the family unless they share, and that means sharing equally, all the fruits of your labor. Of course there are exceptions, but they are few.

Sadly, that is the way with certain members of my family. If I do not give in to their demands for money, then they are angry at me. Whenever I give them money, it is never enough.

Then they get mad at me because I didn’t give more. I have spent literally hundreds of thousands over the years trying to help several family members out of legal troubles, or to get their utilities turned back on, or to purchase replacement automobiles, etc.

Rarely did I get a simple “thank you.” I was not asking for a “thank you,” but for me it was a character issue.  A lack of gratitude is perhaps the most serious character flaw a person can have.  Sadly, it has become far too common among the poor these days as more and more become dependent upon government entitlements.

I am not alone in this experience.  I am told that this is a common phenomenon for victims who escape poverty.

Over the years, I met several people who have experienced the same thing. I think the subject is worthy of a full discussion in your classroom. Perhaps your class could help me with that question. I would love to hear the ideas of your classroom.

11. Question: Was it difficult to see your brothers stay in the cycle while you broke free?

Of course it is. But it is not as simple as that. Not everyone suffers equally when it comes to the effort of escaping poverty. Some make it out while others sink into the depts of poverty whereas food and shelter are in doubt.

There isn’t a magic moment in which I flipped the switch and suddenly I was financially independent while the rest of my family was stuck in the cycle of poverty. For example, there are some members of my family who have made it out of poverty and into middle class and they have happy families. Other family members are living in the deepest of poverty, which is not all that different from my early childhood.

Escaping poverty is more like an evolving, painfully drawn-out process during which a person tries to do everything reasonably possible to lift themselves out of poverty, as well as helping certain family members also escape poverty.

Even when I was still in law school, I was doing everything I could possibly think of to help certain members financially. After law school I began to achieve some financial success and I was able to help the most suffering of my family members and particularly my mother. Purchasing my mother a home was one of the first major investments I made after becoming an attorney.

As I grew older and more financiallly secure, I offered to help pay for the college expenses of my brother’s children. At one point, I offered assistance for my brothers to set up a small business. At times I paid their recurring bills like utility bills and monthly rent. All the while I encouraged them to save up some money for their own financial security.

During this time, I was actively engaged is family discussions about what was happening in my life and theirs, and doing my best to encourage certain family members to plan for the future.

At some point in time I began to realize that certain family members, particularly my brothers, were going to struggle harder than others. The fact that they had prior criminal records only complicated things even more. 

Months went by in which certain family members were confined in jails or prisons. After they were released, they were forced to pay heavy fines ordered by the court, plus monthly probation fees. I paid most of those fines and fees. I thought jail time would teach them a lesson. It didn’t.

As decades went by, I agonized over whether to step in and rescue them one more time. But my experience was that money given to them was never spent wisely. I offered cash alternatives, like paying the landlord or the utility companies directly. There always seemed to be some excuse that cash, not cash alternatives, was the only solution.

At some point in time, I became indifferent to the consequences of their bad behavior. That is to say, I had enough.

The sad thing is that I never got closure. It is what it is and there is nothing I can do about it.

12. Question: Did you ever try and make them see how life could be beyond the cycle of poverty?

The answer is, yes, I tried very hard for a long, long time. If you have studied the behavior of the various socio-economic classes, then you know that there is a huge difference between the behavior of generational poverty victims and that of the middle class.

Consider the common behavioral pattern of children and adults born into generational poverty:

1. Many family members are unable or unwilling to follow through with commitments they have made;

2. Many family members allow setbacks to destroy their aspirations, causing them to become impervious to hope;

3. Many family members routinely fail to make things right after discovering they have committed a wrong;

4. Many family members continuously behave outside social norms, but at the same time they are offended when you attempt to suggest a better way;

5. Many family members boast about small successes, but scoff at the idea that bad choices had anything to do with their big failures.

6. Many family members frequently pursue unrealistic goals without adequate preparation, resulting in one failure after another;

7. Many family members reach for a quick, big success, a big solution, which more often than not involves something that is illegal, and when their plans fail, they call you up to ask for legal fees to pay their attorney, so they can get out of jail;

8. Many family members quit job after job whenever the going gets tough;

9. Most family members spend their early years working a miscellany of low wage jobs, until one day they are no longer employable, and then they apply for government benefits;

10.Many family members persists in hanging around others who behave exactly as they do.

After decades of financial support, role modeling, and offering encouragement, I can honestly say that I have largely, though not completely, given up.

13. Question: Do you feel responsible for any of your siblings now?

Answer: Absolutely not. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t worry about their future.

14. Question: How did it make you feel when, because of your brother, you lost your apartment?  

Answer: Well, for one thing, it made me realize that I had to start thinking about my own reputation within the community. It also made me more determined to make things right, which is why I volunteered to move rather than wait until I was asked to vacate.

Regarding my younger brother, I understood that it wasn’t entirely his fault. He was still a very young man and I still believed, at that time, that I could help him understand that he needed only to change his behavior and it would change his life.

15. Question: Were you okay with him continuing to live with you after that event?

Answer: Of course.  Though I was disappointed with my younger brother’s behavior, I wasn’t ready to give up on him. I got along very well with my brothers during that period of time, except when they were drinking and misbehaving. I felt I could be a positive influence upon them, so I was okay with my brothers as roommates. 

The breaking point in my relationship with my younger brothers is when they gave up on continuing their education and began to fall back to the routine of accepting a miscellany of low wage jobs.

I’ll never forget the day I made the decision to part ways with my brothers. I didn’t put this in the book because I felt I had already made my point. But, this is a specific incidence I’m referencing.

I had just finished a long and hard day at the office. I was tired. When I walked into our apartment after dark, both brothers were noticeably  intoxicated. The faint smell of marijuana was in the air, the room was dingy with cigarette smoke, empty beer cans were scattered everywhere, and the music was blasting. It was apparent that they had been lounging all day, both of them having failed to show up for work that morning. To me, it seemed the stage had been set for a confrontation.

Immediately after I walked into the door, they turned the cassette player on a popular song of that era, a hit number by Jonathan Edwards called, “Sunshine (Go Away Today). They began singing loudly to the lyrics:

Sunshine go away today

I don’t feel much like dancing

Some man’s gone he’s trying to run my life

He don’t know what he’s asking

He tells me I better get in line

Can’t hear what he’s saying

When I grow up I’m gonna make it mine

These ain’t dues I been paying.”

As they were singing the lyrics, they changed their voice inflections and increased the volume when the lyrics came to the line, “some man’s gone he’s trying to run my life.”  I was devastated by the whole experience, and that was when I realized that I had lost any perceived influence over my brothers.   

16. Question: Throughout the latter part of the book you mentioned a lot of the spirituality and God as a source of inspiration and motivation. How would your life have changed if you never had that run in with the  spiritual being at 12 years old?

Answer: I honestly believe I would be living in abject poverty today if it were not for the epiphany experience. Based upon my behavior and all the bad choices I was making at the time, it is possible that I could be dead today were it not for the epiphany experience.

The immense Love that I experienced that night is extraordinary–it is supernatural. That kind of experience never goes away. It stays inside you forever. Even during those times when I was doing stupid things as a teenager, there was an inner voice that pulled me back from the brink of a possible disaster.

17. Question: Would you have made it as far as you did?

Answer: A better question is, would I have been in jail or dead today were it not for the epiphany experience? There is no way I could have made it to where I am today without the epiphany experience.

18. Question: How did you have the strength to keep this strong belief afterward?

Answer: The only explanation is the powerful delivery of the epiphany experience itself. This was a supernatural encounter that forever changed my life. Love and faith became major tenets of my belief system from that day forward.

I needed no strength whatsoever to hold on to my strong belief that “everything will be all right,” because the loving Spirit was always inside me. I received a gift that night. A gift that can never be taken away nor ever forgotten.

No words exists in our vocabulary to explain exactly what happened to me that night. Suffice to say that there is a Higher Power out there and it is “Love.”

19. Question: Did you ever lose sight of hope?

There were times in my life when my future looked bleak, but I never lost hope. During those times I would silently pray. My prayer was my mantra, Everything Will Be All Right.  

20. Question:. You were able to stand up to your father, man to man, in the middle of the book. As you have gotten older, has the relationship between you two changed or has it stayed the same?

Answer: The answer is, I never had a relationship with my father. He was not a nice man and he did some horrible things to me and my family.

I did see him, years later when I already had a family of my own, while I was attending Bracy’s funeral.  My father attempted contact.  I did not, could not, reciprocate.

He died several years later and I did not attend the funeral.

21. Question: Looking back at all your struggles and hardship you endured, do or did you ever consider the “what if’s” of life?

Answer: Of course, who doesn’t?  I believe that hind sight is always twenty-twenty and the “what if’s” are inevitable whenever we make bad choices in life.  

22. Question: Like what if you had gone along with your generation and their irrational thinking?

Answer:  Well, I’d probably be an aged out, brain damaged, hippie, reminiscing about the good old days when a person could build a fire on the beach, a time when health was not the primary concern, and when HIV did not exist and free love and unprotected sex was an acceptable form of behavior.

23. Question: What if you had taken Jack’s offer of being adopted?

Answer: I have never regretted rejecting Jack’s offer, though I do regret how I responded to the offer.

But, looking back on it, I don’t think things would have turned out too well for me or for Jack’s family. I was a troubled teen from the ghetto, ignorant of the ways of the middle class.  

They were a very nice older couple who had no experience in dealing with impoverished teens. Who knows how much misery I might have caused to this family?

Mamma Pearl is an example of a woman who knew how to handle troubled teens. I don’t think Jack or his wife were ready to deal with the baggage I would have brought to their door steps.  I think I made the right decision for both of us.

24. Question: Or what if you had not have the strength to run your father out?

Answer: Honestly, I think my mother would be dead today.

I have letters from my brother Bracy, which I did not mention in my memoir, written during the time I was in the Job Corps. My father showed up unannounced and drunk at my mother’s house one night. To quote my brother, “He beat her so bad I thought she was going to die.”

I replied to my brother, asking him to send a message to my father; “You do that again and I will come back to Nashville immediately. One of us will die.”

25. Question: Did you tell your children about all the hard times in your life?

The first time they knew the details of my past was just a few weeks before the book was published. I sent each of them an autographed copy with a personal message.

They knew I was raised in poverty, but they had no idea of the hardships or the violence. When they visited my mother during their early years, they were visiting at the house I had purchased for my mother, so they had no idea about her background either, except whatever information she may have chosen to share with them. It was my children who pushed me the hardest to write the book.

26. Question: If so, was this before or after the memoir came out?

Answer: After the memoir came out.

27. Question: Did you ever confront the principal that told you going to college and law school were unrealistic goals?

Answer: No, I would never do that. As I mentioned earlier, he was not the only person who tried to lower my expectations. After the book was published, several members of his family (he was long ago deceased) contacted me to tell me what a good person he was. Stewart County is a small community and even though I didn’t mention his name in the book, everyone in that county knew who I was talking about.

To me, it just proves that we all have to be aware of our behavior at all times. You never know when someone near you is going to write a memoir and mention your name. Your past has a way of catching up with you, even after you leave this world.

28. Question: If you could change anything that you experienced in the past, what would you change?

Answer: This question was asked several times during my book tour. If I could change anything about my past, it would be that my father didn’t drink.

29. Question: Do you regret anything you did in your life?

Answer: Of course, I have many regrets. Mostly, I deeply regret that I was unable to help my siblings pull out of poverty.

30. Question: At what point in your life did you feel the strongest, and knew things would only get better?

Answer: I ran scared throughout my entire business career, never once feeling secure. On the day I sold my company, I celebrated because I knew that I had finally reached financial independence. Everything, indeed, will be all right.  On that day, I was my strongest.

Having said that, I still run scared every single day.  Decision-making is a part of everyday life that I always take seriously. I must exercise and eat the right foods to insure my body is healthy. I must keep a watchful eye on what is happening in the economy. I am at my strongest right now, but that doesn’t mean I am complacent. 

31. Question: Making transitions in life are complicated, but each time you moved to a different stage in your life you conquered each circumstance with great courage and strength. What advice would you give someone who is sluggish to confront when they are in compromising predicaments?

Answer:  Spend every waking hour running scared. Never become complacent. At the very moment you feel you are on top of the world, that is the very moment you are on a downhill slide.

Hate no one.

Keep a watchful eye on those who consider you an enemy.

Stay on top of your game at all times. Never let your guard down. There is always someone who is ready, willing and able to knock you off your pedestal.

Your definition of “compromising ‘predicaments’” is your own.  A ‘predicament’ can be defined in so many ways:  “I shouldn’t have said I would go to that party or that date”, or “I need gas, and I know I shouldn’t, but I will steal some, just this one time.”

Look to the dictionary, if you like, to define “compromising predicaments.” I prefer that you look to your moral conscious. You already know what you need to do.

32. Question: In the book, when you were in college, you talked about how you were a part of a different social class than the other students. Then,you mentioned that a vast majority of these scholars were working from the middle on up and you were starting from the bottom. What were you aiming for as a college student; to fit in with or to outshine the crowd?

Answer: Neither. During that period in my life I lacked the communication and behavioral skills to fit in with or outshine the students at Eau Claire.

I certainly wasn’t capable of outshining anyone either academically or socially. I was totally unprepared for the whole experience of living on a college campus.

I was physically in Eau Claire, but make no mistake about it, my language and behavior had not left the ghetto.

Over time I began making steady improvements at all levels, but I was drafted before I could become completely and comfortably socialized with the college crowd.

What most people do not understand is that it takes many years for victims of generational poverty to become fully socialized into the middle class.

33. Question: What push was stronger in your life, the push to get out of poverty or the push to take your mother out of poverty?  In other words were you more focused on getting yourself out first, or your family?

Answer: I wasn’t all that sharp during those early years, but I did figure out that I had to make it first before I could pull my mother out of the projects.

As it turned out, that would happen approximately six years after I was discharged from the military.

In answer to your question, I spent my entire career running away from poverty.

34. Question: Why do you think poverty still exists in the U.S. when it is a rich and developed country?

Answer: Well, poverty rates today are at record levels, despite the fact that our government has spent well over a trillion dollars over the years. My point is that whatever the government is doing today clearly is not working.

In my opinion, the problems of poverty are far too complex for our government to solve.

Handing out taxpayer’s money without condition seems to be the new norm in anti-poverty programs. In doing so, we are actually interfering, perhaps unwittingly, in the natural order of things.

The government entitlement programs, in my opinion, create a dependency that is not healthy for society as a whole. The dependence denies recipients the most important of human qualities–pride, dignity and gratitude.

Recipients are not given an incentive or the ability to give back to their communities.

Our government has created an entire class of people who lack the intangible qualities that make human beings unique in this world– our ability to adjust to changing circumstances, good or bad.

All of us face an overbearing hardship at some point in our lives. Learning to bounce back from a devastating setback is part of being human.  Sometimes it is necessary to endure a struggle in order to recover from a  setback.  The “wanting” is what inspires people to do great things.

Having said that, I have traveled around the world and I have seen people who are suffering unimaginable hardships. There are so many people who die from hunger every day because their government does not care. Given a choice of choosing between a bad government that creates a dependent class, or a government that doesn’t care, I will choose our present system of government.

35. Question: How should we help the poor in our country? Any advice?

I believe we have to start by reforming our entitlement programs for the poor. By that I mean a total reform of all benefits including unemployment benefits, welfare,  food stamps and cash equivalents.

Poverty victims do not wish to remain in poverty. But, they lack the behavioral and language skills to make it in a job market managed by a middle class society. In most cases, poverty victims lack the job skills to achieve upward social mobility.

For those adults living in poverty, I believe our taxpayer’s money would be better spent on education. Give them voucher’s for vocational schools, and give them vouchers for child care. Take away the food stamps, welfare and cash equivalents and redirect those funds to teaching adult poverty victims how to develop specific job and planning skills.

The overwhelming effort in the war on poverty has to start with the baby. America has to first prioritize our entitlement allocations toward educating parents how to provide the child the proper nourishment and language skills to make it in the mainstream society.

I see no reason why government programs cannot partner with churches, private charities and community leaders to prevent overlap, and to insure a common goal of educating the child from birth to the day they graduate from high school. 

Further, no child should be denied the opportunity for a higher education just because they were born into poverty. With all the money we are handing out to adults in poverty, and getting back nothing in return, I think society would be far better off to invest in the education of our children and teens. I think the payback would be enormous.

Consider this, the Job Corps spent four months helping me learn the basic behaviors of the middle class. That was a small government investment in one person. Since that day I have paid multi-millions in federal taxes alone. That doesn’t count the enormous sums I have paid in state and local taxes. Now I would say that was a very wise government investment.

In answer to your question, I believe that poverty rates are so high because our entitlement dollars are not invested wisely. Our political leaders need to look at entitlements as an investment in America’s future, not as a handout. As a nation, we need to re-focus the overwhelming majority of our entitlement funds (I think we should call them investment funds) in the education of our impoverished children and teens.

36. Question: What are two words that can sum up your experience? One for your past and another for the present time.

Answer: Traumatic. Fantastic!

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