TRIBUTE TO THE KOREANS

by Dr. James W. Jackson

Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

In order for an historical atrocity to become a positive and teachable experience it is necessary and sufficient to accurately recount the incident for those who follow. Few practices in history are so devilish as the false and purposeful revisionism of factual matters. I want this short story to highlight a little known occurrence in history, and honor the character and culture of the Koreans during a sad and dark time of their history.

In my early travels to northern Russia, and especially as I made my way across the Caspian Sea to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Afghanistan, I continually met up with some of the most dedicated and compassionate expatriate doctors, nurses, and teachers I had ever met. They were intently focused on their pursuits and willing to put up with the most severe and inconvenient circumstances. They were driven. They were Korean, and I soon began referring to them as my “Seoul mates.”

I had met and worked closely with John Kim and Dr. Choi of Messengers of Mercy,centered in Chicago. Kim had traveled with me to Afghanistan and Albania, and had introduced me to a Korean husband and wife medical team, Dr. Jae Doo Shim and Anna. They had found a piece of property, bought it with their own money, personally designed and built a two-story clinic. “We never knew where we would ever get the necessary pieces of equipment or the necessary supplies to run this clinic … but then God sent Project C.U.R.E. to help finish our dream.” I asked John Kim, “Where are all these excellent Korean doctors coming from? They are absolutely the best!”

Project C.U.R.E. was being requested to help many Korean medical and ministry organizations working in Central Asia: Daniel Kim, CEO of The Young Nak Foundation from Seoul, Korea, CAFÉ (Central Asian Free Exchange), and the doctors Joshua Koh and Herbert Hong, representing the IACD (Institute of Asian Culture and Development). I slowly began to understand that Project C.U.R.E. had landed in the middle of an incredible miracle story of love and international compassion. All those Korean doctors and organizations had heard the distinct call for help from the dim shadows of their lost kinfolk just as soon as the old Soviet curtain of secrecy and silence had come crashing down. The very call had emboldened them, and had ignited their passion to help their betrayed and violated brothers and sisters. Nothing makes a person as strong as when he hears the call for help.

The brutal invasion and occupation of the Koreans by Imperial Japan resulted in many of the Koreans escaping into Russia. The Koreans were diligent workers and good businessmen and became successful landowners and farmers. During the 1917 Russian revolution, most of the Koreans sided with the Bolsheviks. But, as Joseph Stalin and the Communists began to steal the revolution away from the Bolsheviks, the landowning Korean entrepreneurs were seen as untrustworthy by the comrades who lusted after their productive farms.

By 1926, Koreans represented more than a quarter of the rural population of the Far East Vladivostok, Russia, region. A secret plan of ethnic cleansing was adopted under the idea to resettle the Koreans, “on suspicions of disloyalty to the Soviet Union.” The propaganda claimed that it was to stop any possibility of penetration of Japanese espionage. Joseph Stalin’s plan of systematic population transfer moved into high gear between September and October, 1937, moving over a quarter million Koreans to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in Central Asia. Orders called for an immediate removal of the Koreans, to be totally completed within ninety days.

Orders called for the Koreans to be transported by railway trains of about fifty carriages each, with twenty-five to thirty people per carriage. Travel to the undisclosed destinations took between thirty and forty days. To accomplish the quicker time schedule of movement, people were simply crammed into the cattle cars without heat or other provisions. Multiplied thousands of the Koreans never even survived the trip. One survivor wrote of his arrival at an unknown destination, “Each family dug a hole to live in. We made a Korean ondol (heated floor). We burned bushes for heat. There were no trees or charcoal. We lived that way for two or three years.” Many Koreans were placed far from each other in isolation to prevent contact with each other. Thirty-four thousand Koreans were placed on the desolate outpost of Ushtobe, Kazakhstan, with no food and no shelter, and were forced to survive on their own for almost three years. Thousands died of starvation, sickness, and exposure during the first few years in Central Asia.

Project C.U.R.E. was working right where most of the displaced Koreans had ended up during Joseph Stalin’s murderous transmigration scheme. Now, the Koreans had lost their own identity and even spoke only Russian.

One such Korean family I met, that had come to Uzbekistan to help, represented the Good Samaritan Medical Aid Foundation. Dr. Chong Soo Kim had started out his medical career in Seoul, Korea, as a neurosurgeon. In 1971 he traveled to Indiana University Medical School and certified as a U.S. anesthesiologist. But, in 1994, Dr. Kim heard about the plight of the Koreans in Central Asia and decided to take his family and go to Uzbekistan. They sold everything they owned and he walked away from a good job paying well over $300,000 a year.

Dr. Kim was met by the harsh realities of Uzbekistan. Offering medical service was a way to establish a relationship with the local people. But there were problems with the local authorities.

There was a great shortage of medical training in the Tashkent Oblast, so Dr. Kim began offering medical classes where he would teach Western medicine. Most medical textbooks in Uzbekistan were over twenty years old and written in the Russian language. Dr. Kim started teaching out of American textbooks. That required the students to learn English. Dr. Kim’s daughter moved from Evansville, Indiana, to Tashkent to help teach the students English and Korean. 

Dr. Kim had been able to purchase an old Soviet kindergarten school in the city of Almayk. When he purchased the old facility, the buildings were terribly run down and the gardens consisted of only weeds. He used his own money to repair and remodel the facility into a very delightful clinic site for the city. All he needed now was for Project C.U.R.E. to come and fill the building with pieces of equipment and medical supplies. We not only furnished his facilities, but went to the local government hospital in Almayk and sent needed supplies and pieces of equipment to them as well!

As I continued to work with the heroic Koreans in Central Asia after the fall of the dismal Soviet system, my heart would at times nearly burst with compassion and pride for the thousands of Koreans who responded to the urgent call for kindness, justice, and righteousness. In my quiet moments I would think:

Show me your hands, are they scarred by compassion?

Show me your feet, have the rough trails left them bruised?

Show me your heart, has it been broken in love for your wounded brothers?

I salute my Korean friends!

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson. 

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com

CHALLENGES (PART II)

by Dr. James W. Jackson

Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved. Helen Keller

Once Dr. Singh had meticulously inched his way across the downward moving Himalayan glacier, there was no thought even given to whether we would turn back or go on. Dr. Singh and Dr. Wangmo pressed forward to get me to the Spiti Valley, and more immediately, off Rotung Pass and the sixteen-thousand-foot Kunlom Pass. Between the passes we stopped amid the gigantic boulders of the bleak valley at a crude bridge that crossed the Chandra River. Some friends of the Singhs ran a “dhabz,” or roadside café, out there in the middle of no place. They weren’t out there to make a lot of money from the tourists, because there just weren’t very many silly people out there visiting Mr. Roger’s neighborhood. But the old weather-worn Hindu couple felt that someone needed to be available with food, fresh-brewed black tea, and matches for the “at risk” travelers going that way. By then, the frigid temperatures had plunged and the blue plastic tarps that served as the roof flapped furiously at the timbers to which they were tied. The walls were piles of stacked stones. There were no window openings, just one doorway in the front made of another flap of blue plastic tarp.

 When the crusty old man saw how I was dressed, he quickly pulled off his coat and made me put it on. He told me I would need it in Kaza and to just return it on our way back down the mountain. The soup they served to us was dark green in color and thick in consistency. I could make out that beans were included in the ingredients, but as to what else I could not tell you.

The hot, strong, black tea was also thick and sweetened like syrup, but it felt good as it ran its course from my mouth to my empty stomach. While the old man kept the fire going inside his stacked-stone stove, the old woman rolled out corn chapattis on a flat rock with a round smooth river rock and fried them on a piece of flat, blackened iron balanced atop the fire.

We finished our lunch, thanked our gracious hosts, and resumed our journey. As we continued to gain altitude in our Gypsy 4x4, we moved from the bleak tundra landscape to mountain elevations that contained absolutely nothing but dark brown and black volcanic gravel. As we drove across one rock slide area of about a quarter-mile in width, Dr. Singh explained to me that they were probably the most dangerous areas on the mountain face. “You have to travel across them if you traverse the face of the mountain. You can’t go above or below them because some chutes were thousands of feet in length up the mountain,” explained Dr. Singh. But the idea was to never stop while going across a rock slide chute. Even if there was an obstacle in your way, you must never get out of the auto. The driver must always be behind the steering wheel and keep moving. The rock slide areas were extremely unstable and just the movement of the wheels could be enough to set the slide into thunderous motion down the endless mountain.

It had turned completely dark as we rode on. We had to make it to Kaza, simply because there wasn’t any place else to stop and stay the night. Finally, Dr. Wangmo gave out a squeal of delight. We had just passed where they used to live and had their clinic. Even though there were no street lights or welcoming signs, we had entered the town of Kaza, where we would spend the night. It was 9:45 p.m. and all the lights were out. The doctors Singh and Wangmo were very good friends with the people who operated the only “hotel” in Kaza. Dr. Wangmo ran in and awakened the owner and his wife. They came out to greet us and hurried us to the frosty kitchen to fix us some more black tea.

When morning came, I could hardly believe how happy the doctors were. They just kept talking about how important it was for me to travel to Kaza and the Spiti Valley. It was cold outside and I was glad for the musty borrowed coat. The view of the snow-clad Himalayan peaks was breathtaking. But the immediate surroundings of Kaza were pretty bleak and brown in color. Nothing grew there of its own accord. The people in the Spiti Valley were considered lower on the Indian caste system. We had crossed over Old Tibet the night before, and we were only two miles from China. Doctors Singh and Wangmo had lived there with the people for over six years, and the townspeople were thrilled to see them, and excited that in the future there might be access to increased medical care.

After a breakfast of chapattis, rice, and black tea, we left the hotel. It was a bright and crisp morning and hard to believe that only days before I had been in the sweltering heat of 120 degrees in Delhi. We had to retrace every bump and rock and flowing waterfall we had crossed the day before. 

With it being dark as we entered Kaza, I had missed a lot of the grandeur. Just outside the town, plastered tightly against a rugged stone cliff, was an ancient monastery. Later, His Holiness the Dalai Lama would be there to teach and pray for world peace at the key monastery. A lot of people would make the pilgrimage to Spiti Valley for the occasion.

The old Tibetan valley floor in Spiti was higher than any of the mountain peaks in Colorado. During the daylight drive back, I marveled at the road we had passed over the night before. In many places the road had been chiseled out of the granite face of the mountain and just hung there totally unprotected and without the hint of any guardrails. We stopped long enough along the Chandra River at the “dhabz” to return the coat, and had some more tea and a couple of biscuits with the old couple. As we approached Kullu Valley, I asked Dr. Singh how many times over the years he had crossed those two passes on his way to Spiti. “Well over 500 times,” he said. “Well over 500 times but never, ever, in the month of May.”

Yes, we were able to successfully help deliver urgently needed medical goods to the doctors Singh and Wangmo on the northern borders of India, and as Robert Frost once penned, “Courage is the human virtue that counts most—courage to act on limited knowledge and insufficient evidence. That's all any of us has.”

However, in dealing with the subject of challenges, I have personally decided that next time I am confronted with such a significant challenge, I will first try to expand my limited knowledge and insufficient evidence of the challenge, and especially try to stay away from moving glaciers on the face of twenty-thousand-foot Himalayan mountain peaks.

(The full version of this story taken from Dr. Jackson’s TRAVEL JOURNALS from around the world will be published soon)

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson. 

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com

CHALLENGES (PART I)

by Dr. James W. Jackson
Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

You should never underestimate the challenge you are facing or your ability to deal with it. Challenges seem to have a way of discovering, as well as developing, latent inner strengths and abilities that had been hiding within you prior to a particular adversity or challenge. When I was growing up, a fellow named Art Linkletter had a television show where he used to say, “Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.” I think he was on to something.

The blind author and intuitive philosopher, Helen Keller, once reminded us, “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” I remember a life threatening situation I encountered in the rugged Himalayan Mountains of northern India that didn’t just challenge me, but nearly frightened the Scotch-Irish machismo out of me.

I had been requested to travel from Denver to Frankfurt to Delhi, then transfer onto Jagson Airlines to be delivered to the Kullu Valley in the far northwest corner of India. My destination was a city called Naggar, where I was to assess the Shamballa hospital and several clinics that had requested donated medical goods from Project C.U.R.E. With all of the airline transfers, they had successfully lost every bit of my luggage, and I left Delhi with only the shirt and pants I was wearing, and a familiar but empty promise, “We will locate your luggage and forward it to you right away.”

My hosts in the Kullu Valley were Dr. Jatinder Singh and his Hungarian-born wife, Dr. Wangmo. They were a delightful couple having come to serve the neglected Himalayan people of Northern India, Tibet, Southern China, and Kashmir. The warm welcome I received from the doctors and townspeople of Naggar and Ghordor had moved me to tears.

After completing the assessments of the hospitals and clinics, doctors Singh and Wangmo asked, “Don’t you people ski a lot in Colorado? We have a bit of time right now, would you like for us to show you our ski area up on Rotung Pass?” I hesitated. I had borrowed a denim shirt and an ill-fitting pair of pants from Dr. Singh that morning because I still had no luggage. “I don’t think I am prepared to visit a ski area with only a thin pair of pants and a light shirt. Do you think I am dressed properly?” “Oh, yes,” they chimed in, “we will not get out of our Gypsy 4x4. We will just go to the top of the pass and let you see; then we will come back down. You will be fine.”

It was May 17. Rotung Pass didn’t usually open until late June or July, but the road up to the gate of the pass had just been opened. The people from all over blistering hot India wanted to go play on the left-over glaciers and wade in the cold streams. The narrow military road up the pass was crowded with old buses, taxis, and dilapidated cars, puffing and chugging in the high altitude. People coming from as far away as Delhi and Hyderabad, who had never touched or seen real snow before, were competing to get to the glaciers to play. It made no difference that there were no ski lifts, gondolas, or rope tows. The crowds just wanted to touch cold snow.

It was a beautiful day. The doctors insisted we stop and buy fried bread and onion sandwiches and Coca-Cola from the maverick vendors. While we were eating, the temperature began dropping quickly. The doctors told me that when they first came to the area they had started their medical work on the north side of the Himalayas. “You just drive down the other side of the twelve-thousand-foot Rotung Pass, along the high valley floor, and go over a sixteen-thousand-foot pass called Kunlom Pass and down into the Spiti Valley in old Tibet.

“Dr. Jackson,” Dr. Singh excitedly announced, “we need to help our friends over in the Spiti Valley, and since you only send things after you personally assess a facility . . . we will never be closer to them than we are right now. We could hurry and be in the Spiti Valley, spend the night there, meet our friends, check the facilities, and be back to the Kullu Valley by tomorrow.”

“But,” I inquired, “how do you propose getting by that military guard standing at the gate? He is not allowing anyone to get through and go down the other side of Rotung Pass. Furthermore, I only have a thin shirt and a pair of your pants with legs that are too short.” “No problem,” was the reply. “The Gypsy 4x4 is warm and we will be inside until we arrive at Kaza in the Spiti Valley.” With that, Dr. Singh jumped out and ran over to the soldier guarding the gate. He returned with a smile. There hasn’t been as much snow recently and just today some trucks have been over the pass to take supplies into the Spiti Valley.” The guard had recognized Jatinder Singh as a doctor and had given us permission to go.

About halfway down Rotung Pass we encountered a slight problem. A glacier had slid across almost the entire roadway. We stopped and sized up the situation. Dr. Singh felt that as long as he could keep his downhill set of tires on the gravel roadway, the other set of tires could run up onto the glacier pack and we could pass by safely. Dr. Singh had to keep a good balance to the movement of the 4x4. He couldn’t go too slowly or he would lose his momentum and we would be stuck on the upper side in the snow. And he couldn’t go too fast and run the risk of putting the 4x4 into a slide off what seemed to be a never-ending drop from the downside to wherever the bottom was twelve thousand feet below.

The first fifteen yards went quite well. Then the road base on the downhill side gave way. We had been hoping to count on the road base as our security, but the glacier melt had run underneath and softened the base. Suddenly, I felt the right rear corner of the 4x4 swing downhill, and the left front corner where I was sitting (since India’s cars all had right-hand drive) began to get higher and higher in the air. Dr. Singh let off the gas and we sat perched teetering on the edge with the front left tire three feet off the ground. Everything was in slow motion and I fully expected the 4x4 to just slowly roll on over down the side of forever. I admonished Dr. Singh and Dr. Wangmo to move very gently and try to exit on the uphill side, being careful not to get beneath the auto in case it should roll on over.

Once we were safely out, we had a better chance to consider our plight. The wind had built up measurably and caused a teeter-totter effect on the auto. I told the doctors that our very best chance was to wait for a large India truck to come up the hill from down below and hook on to the front of the 4x4 and gently ease us back onto the glacier and roadway. Dr. Singh, an athletically modeled Indian, wasn’t going to wait for anything. He took off running down the road to seek help. We watched as he took shortcuts down the mountain face, dropping from one road to the next road level instead of running the full distance of the switchbacks.

While Dr. Singh was gone, we discovered that there weren’t going to be any big trucks coming on the road past us. We were on a by-pass road and the trucks were going on a different military road. By that time, the clouds were moving down from the summit and the wind was acquiring a sharp bite to it. I started looking for some shelter on the bare face of the twelve-thousand-foot mountain pass. What would I do if we were required to spend the night with no food, fire, or protection?

Returning to the Gypsy 4x4 for warmth or protection would not work. About the time I would get tempted to consider crawling back into it, the wind would come up and the 4x4 would start rocking and teetering, and the front left wheel would go higher. The Gypsy could tip in the wind and go plummeting down at any second with absolutely nothing to stop it. The wind continued to pick up, forcing the clouds down from the top of the mountain to where we were, making a cold fog.

Dr. Singh had run downhill far enough to find a road workers’ camp. He grabbed six workers there and flagged down a truck driver. The truck eventually got to us, but there were at least two immediate problems. The truck could not get any closer to the 4x4 than about fifty yards because of the soft roadway and the piled snowpack. The other problem was that if we weren’t careful, the vibration from the big truck could get the glacier moving again across the roadway. The moving glacier would simply sweep us all off the face of the mountain.

Several of the men went carefully to the lower corner of the 4x4 and gently pushed up. As they lifted, other men stacked rocks below the wheel. They repeated that process until they had built a base. I was on the front corner of the vehicle trying to add my weight to the leverage. Without a hydraulic jack or a pry bar or a long, wooden pole or any other scientific advantage, the Himalayan mountain men picked the vehicle up about six inches at a time until it was once again level.

The road workers who were chopping at the snow had by then cleared about three or four feet of the glacier for the entire fifty-yard length. Then it was time for Dr. Singh to try his skill at driving the rig back along the ledge to the other side of the glacier.

Experience is not what benefits a person; rather, it is what that person does with the experience that makes the difference. I have learned not to necessarily pray for an easy life, but to pray for wisdom and strength to handle the life dealt to me. What would wisdom suggest we do to get off the face of that treacherous, freezing, Himalayan Mountain?

                                            (Continued next week . . . January 22, 2013)

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson. 

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com

FOLLOW YOUR HEART

by Dr. James W. Jackson

Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

Jacob Petrovic was my friend. I knew him by his Americanized name, “Jim Peters.” He knew his life was limited and didn’t want to waste a single moment living someone else’s dream. He had dreams of his own, courage enough to follow his heart, and sufficient confidence to trust his seasoned intuition. Jim wanted to return to the unstable federation of Yugoslavia, but the civil war, the bloodshed, and violence made the political climate throughout the Balkans extremely tentative.

 Ralph Waldo Emerson once advised, “Beware what you set your heart upon, for it surely shall be yours.” For over fifty years Jim had his heart set upon returning to his birthplace in Belgrade, Serbia. Jim was sitting in the audience where I had just delivered a presentation on my recent trips into North Korea and Iraq. He approached me: “You have been to Bagdad, Iraq; Havana, Cuba; and Pyongyang, North Korea; have you ever been to Belgrade, Serbia, in Yugoslavia?”

 “No,” was my answer. “Why not?” was his rapid response. “Because Project C.U.R.E. only goes where we are invited,” I answered. “Then would you go to Belgrade if you were invited?” Three days later the two of us met in my office to discuss the possibility of traveling together to arrange for needed medical goods to be donated to the hurting people of Yugoslavia.

This was not the first time Jim Peters had followed his heart where there was no pathway to lead. But he had learned early that wherever you go it is necessary to go with all your heart, because the intuition of the heart has reasons that even reason does not necessarily understand. Jim had escaped Yugoslavia in 1944. Germany had wreaked havoc on the Balkans during the First World War. Then, during World War II, Germany, Italy, and Russia had exercised their special cruelty on the area.

Young Jacob Petrovic and his brothers were part of a prominent Belgrade family. They had joined up with the resistance movement to try to protect their homeland from the Nazis and Communists. When Allied pilots from America or Britain got shot down over Yugoslavia, the resistance group would try to get to the pilots first, and through dangerous and clandestine strategies eventually return the pilots back across the enemy lines to the safety of the Allied troops.

Jim and his friends had been able to save the lives of over 200 American and British pilots. But, eventually, the Gestapo closed in on them and they had to flee the country without even saying goodbye to their families. The soldiers had surrounded the family home. They were in the process of breaking down the doors to capture Jim and his brother with orders to bring them in as prisoners or shoot them on the spot if need be. Jim and his brother sought the help of a school girlfriend who was also in the opposition movement. She successfully hid them in her house. That night they escaped. They were able to slip from her house, jump fences, and run into the nearby forested hills. It took over two years for them to complete their escape by working their way eventually to Switzerland. Jim continued to follow his heart.

While in Switzerland, two of the American pilots whose lives they had saved, searched for them, miraculously located them, and brought them to America. They landed in New York in 1947.The very first day they arrived they found jobs and went to work. The pilots, whose lives had been saved, sponsored Jim and his brother through Columbia University in New York. Both graduated with MBAs in 1949.

Jim’s world was becoming as big as the dream of his heart that he was following. His talents were quickly recognized, and he was soon hired as an international representative for Singer Sewing Machine. From there he was able to leap-frog into an international position with RCA, and eventually, he moved to Denver, Colorado, and became the Senior Vice President for Samsonite Luggage in charge of all international business. After fifteen years with Samsonite, he retired and worked as an international consultant for Mattel Toys. He and his wife continued to make Denver their home.

But the burning desire of Jim’s heart was still leading him. He was going to go back to his homeland, and with the help of Project C.U.R.E., take help and hope to his relatives and needy countrymen. During all the years of his absence he had kept up on the events taking place in the Balkans. But as we tried to put the travel plans together we ran into difficulty. The U.S. had cut off all diplomatic relations with Yugoslavia. We were then forced to try to secure the necessary visas for our passports by going through the Yugoslavian Embassy in Toronto, Canada. That required our working directly with the Slobodan Milosevic officials.

Eventually, we were able to work our way through the international bureaucracy of Canada, NATO, the U.S., and the warring factions of the Balkans, and receive our proper paperwork. Only twice had Anna Marie cried when she dropped me off at the airport terminal. Once was when I first went to Baghdad, Iraq, and the other time was Sunday, July 16, when she dropped me off to leave for Belgrade. "When I see you walk through those airport doors I never know if I will ever see you again.” Then she apologized for crying. At the airport was where the rubber really met the road. There were no outside pressures making us do what we were doing with Project C.U.R.E. We received no money. It was truly a love gift to God. We were both totally a part of that gift.

Once we were settled into our hotel in Belgrade, Jim Peters wanted to walk and show me some of the history of Belgrade. He showed me where his boyhood friends used to live, and where he used to work, and the office buildings where his prominent family members ran their businesses. When we got to one intersection, he stopped and pointed out the old bank building where his father was once an influential officer. Just across the other street he pointed out where he spent his last night in the city of Belgrade in 1944.

Jim Peters had followed his heart. He had not let time, or the noise and static of others’ opinions, or inconveniences, drown out the inner voice of his own heart. He had found the seed that had been placed in the citedel of his own heart and nurtured it into a beautiful, living flower. That beautiful vision and lofty ideal had now become realized. Jim and I traveled a couple of different times together to Yugoslavia and spent enough time together in Serbia, Kosovo, and Montenegro to make all arrangements necessary to send millions of dollars’ worth of donated medical goods to hospitals and clinics all over that part of the Balkans. Jim had followed his heart.

Don’t waste your time living someone else’s life; live out the beauty of your own calling. Let your heart guide you. Your heart usually whispers . . . so listen carefully!

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson. 

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com

PEACE

by Dr. James W. Jackson

Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

My weary eyes have seen too much war and genocide, too much evil manipulation and dying. I have taken my turn at the entrance of the Sandeman Hospital in Quetta, Pakistan, near the border of Afghanistan, and watched the hundreds of injured and sick lined up on the sidewalks with family members holding the heads of the wounded in their laps, and an intravenous contraption in their hands. There was no more room for the injured in the hospital.

I have listened to the words of the Marxist leaders in Africa, who were routing the frightened people from their villages to the newly formed refugee camps: “You don’t have to kill all these fish; you just have to get them to the lake and then drain the lake.”

I stood in the neighboring country of Uganda as the Rwandan radio stations screamed, “Pick up the machete now! We will have jobs, power, wealth, and homes as soon as every Tutsi in our blessed homeland is dead!”

I was born before the U.S. became involved in World War II. I was in grade school when the war ended. As kids, our time after school was spent going around the neighborhood on our bikes looking for discarded gum wrappers and foil candy wrappers. We would carefully peel the aluminum foil from the paper part of the wrappers. and put the foil into rolled balls of aluminum. The schools held contests to see who could collect the largest ball of “tin-foil.” What we had collected would then be turned over to the U.S. military in order to build peace machines, so that we could win the war.

After the war was over, it was announced that they were constructing a huge building in New York City called the United Nations. We were promised that there would never be another war again. Everyone who had a dispute would simply come to the building and discuss their problems and agree on a proper solution. Instead of collecting any more “tin-foil,” we put our efforts toward collecting “buffalo nickels,” and our class sent them to New York City to build the magnificent building with a flag of every country in the world in the front of the building. It seemed like we sent a lot of money, but we knew it would be worth it to always have peace.

It was hoped that peace would be a gradual process of changing people’s opinions and slowly learning how to tear down old barriers and quietly constructing new ways of thinking and new structures. It was hoped that the power of love would overcome the love of power, and there would always just be peace everywhere. They said that the old way of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” was really ridiculous, because the end result would be that everybody would end up blind and toothless. So, peace was better.

Once we were informed that peace now lived in the big building in New York City, we began asking ourselves where war lived . . . what made it so awful and terrible? Was it possible that the awfulness lived inside us? Was it likely that war really grew out of the desire of certain individuals to gain an advantage at the expense of others? Had we forgotten the desire to make other people of our world better off?

We all watched the experiment of the UN take place in New York City. Albert Einstein reminded us, “Every kind of peaceful cooperation among men is primarily based on mutual trust and only secondarily on institutions such as courts of justice and police.” There seemed to be a certain kind of futility in the thinking that the sheep could talk about peace with wolves. Peace had to be more than just the absence of war. It had to be a virtue, a state of mind, a spirit of kindness, justice, and righteousness on this earth.

Teddy Roosevelt had instructed us that, “Peace is normally a great good, and normally it coincides with righteousness, but it is righteousness and not peace which should bind the conscience of a nation as it should bind the conscience of an individual; and neither a nation nor an individual can surrender conscience to another’s keeping.” That is why the slogan “peace at any price” won’t work. I have discovered while observing human nature in over 150 countries of the world that this particular doctrine of peace has done more mischief than any other espousal afloat. It has promoted more wars and strife than any of the notorious and ruthless conquerors. It has undermined and nearly destroyed the dignity and equilibrium necessary to the welfare and liberties of the world’s fragile cultures. If you can’t find peace within yourself, you will be frustrated to look for it elsewhere. It is always good to remember that peace won by compromise of principles will always be a short lived solution.

Before her death, Mother Teresa pointed out to us, “Everybody today seems to be in such a terrible rush, anxious for greater developments and greater riches and so on, so that children have very little time for their parents. Parents have very little time for each other, and in the home there begins the disruption of peace of the world.” Thankfully, that dysfunctional cycle can be reversed. You can find and experience peace within yourself, peace within your family, and you can become a person who lives at peace with others. That inner peace can take root as you effectively embrace it regardless of all the dysfunctional circumstances. You will find the effects of that peace multiplying exponentially in your own life as you experience the joy of providing that peace to others. Blessed are the peace makers.

Probably, the most difficult thing you will experience in embracing and practicing your new life of inner peace is the readjustment of your heart and your head in order to calmly and gratefully accept the gift of peace that God wants to give to you. I like to think of it as an attitude of spiritual hospitality. “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid” (John 14:27). I am bone-tired of seeing and hearing the cacophony of strife and conflict throughout this otherwise resplendent world, and have concluded that to be at rest with God is to experience true peace. It comes from the inside and alters all things on the outside. The world is a beautiful place, and we can do something positive about the discord.

My prayer for you for the coming new year is that you will not lose your inner peace for anything whatsoever; that a calm spirit will trump every ounce of disquietude, even though your whole world seems upside down. Let your heart reach out to others in love, warmth, and encouragement and expect God’s peace to surround and protect you. Be assured that whatever happens to you is less significant than what happens within you. Happy New Year!

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson. 

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com