Madam C.J. Walker

   Today I want to tell you about an inspiring entrepreneur named Madam C.J. Walker. I am a big believer in the American dream. Here in America someone can be born into poverty and work their way to prosperity. This country has flourished because of capitalism and a free market that enables even the poorest to make a better life for themselves. Today there are many who criticize capitalism in America. They say it is unfair because there are some people who do not have as much as others. They feel that everyone should have an equal amount of wealth, that it is unfair for someone to be wealthy when there are many living paycheck to paycheck. In an effort to equalize the amount of wealth from individual to individual they in turn take away our freedom. They create a sense of entitlement. They make the people lazy.
    America did not become great because of anything the government has done. Too many people look to the government for answers to today's problems. The heart of America is not the government. Nor is it Congress or the President. The heart of America is the people. The people, with the help of God, built this country and they didn't do it by looking to the government for answers. No, they got out of their homes and went to work. A lot of the greatness of America came from good old fashioned hard work. Unfortunately, the work ethic in America today is pathetic. If someone has a problem they ask what the government will do to fix it. If someone can't find a job they ask the government to give them unemployment benefits. If someone can't buy groceries they ask the government for help. Imagine what would happen if people started figuring out ways to solve their problems without government help. Imagine an America where people didn't depend on government support for their everyday needs.
   I want to give you an example of the type of people that make America great. Madam C.J. Walker was the first self made female millionaire. That may sound impressive enough but the details surrounding her story make it even more meaningful.
   Madam C.J. Walker's actual name at birth was Sarah Breedlove. Her parents were slaves but she was  fortunate to be born on December 23, 1867 about four years after the Emancipation Proclamation. She was the sixth child, first to be born a free American. Both of her parents had died of yellow fever by the time she was six years old. Sarah moved in with her older sister and her husband. Her brother-in-law was a drunk and dealt cruelly with her. Looking for a chance to escape she married a man named Moses McWilliams at the tender age of 14. After three years of marriage they had a daughter together named Lelia McWilliams. Two years later Sarah's husband died and she was left without a husband to support her or her daughter.
   She moved to St. Louis where her three brothers lived and owned a barber shop. She got a job as a washer woman making barely over a dollar a day. But Sarah didn't want her daughter to grow up like this. She wanted her to be able to go to school and get a formal education.
   This is the pivotal part of the story. Sarah was a poor African American woman. There were not many opportunities for black women during those days. Even a white woman, who would have greater social  acceptance, would not even think to own a business. Women were still not allowed to vote. Most African American women were excluded from America's most prestigious universities, corporations, professions and government positions. The doors were not open for Sarah Breedlove. But she had a problem: She wanted to make more money. She wanted to send her daughter to school. She wanted to provide a better life for her family. She could have just accepted that this was how her life was meant to be. She could have looked to the government to help her out. But instead she chose to fight. She chose to not give up on herself and her dreams.
   Hair care during the 1900's was not very advanced. Many women were experiencing hair loss at an early age. An unhealthy diet, harsh products in soaps and poor hygiene practices were common causes for their hair loss. Most women only washed their hair once a month generally because most American homes lacked plumbing and electricity. Many African American women like Sarah would divide their hair into sections and wrap string tightly around each section and twist them to make their hair straighter. This put a lot of strain on their hair as well. Sarah developed a severe scalp disease that caused hair loss. She prayed for God to give her a way to keep from losing her hair. One night she had a dream where she was told ingredients for a hair cream. She got all of the ingredients and started using the cream. Miraculously her hair began to grow back. Her family and friends began to notice and asked for her to make them some of the cream. She realized that there was a huge demand for this product as many women were experiencing these same issues.
   Sarah began to learn about hair care from her brothers who owned a barber shop and she became a commissioned sales agent for an African American hair care entrepreneur Annie Turnble Malone. Taking her newly acquired knowledge on hair care, she moved to Denver Colorado to begin working on her own hair care products. She began her business on a capital of $1.25. Her product was called, "Madam Walkers Wonderful Hair Grower." She also sold Glessine and Vegetable Shampoo. She sold  her products door to door and did demonstrations at local churches and lodges.
   About this time she married a newspaper advertising salesman named Charles Joseph Walker. She took his name and gave herself the distinguished title "Madam," a name of dignity and respect. Charles was able to give Madam Walker advice on advertising and promoting her business.
   Madam Walker began to train other African American women in hair care and sales. She called them "beauty culturists." In 1906 she put her daughter Shelia in charge of the mail order side of the business which freed up her and her husband Charles to travel the country expanding the business.
   In 1908 she opened a beauty college in Pittsburgh to train hair culturists. She named the college Shelia College after her daughter.
   By 1910 Madam Walker was making $7,000 a week and had 5,000 sales agents all dressed in white blouses and long black skirts working for her throughout the U.S. She moved to Indianapolis, Indiana due to its favorable economic conditions. There she made her headquarters,built a factory, a hair salon, another beauty school to train her sales agents, and a laboratory to help with research for her hair products.
   In 1913 she got a divorce. When asked about it she said, "When we began to make $10 a day, he thought that was enough, that I ought to be satisfied. But I was convinced that my hair preparation would fill a long felt want. And when we found  it impossible to agree, due to narrowness of vision, I embarked on business for myself."
   Her business began to expand beyond the U.S. reaching Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, Panama and Costa Rica.

Madam C.J. Walker's mansion in New York

   In 1917 Madam Walker convened her 1st annual conference of the Madam Walker Beauty Culturists in Philadelphia. At the conference she gave prizes to the women who had sold the most products and brought in the most new sales. She also strongly promoted generosity and gave a prize to those who had contributed the most to various charities in their communities. She taught black women how to budget so that they would be able to start their own businesses.
   Madam Walker began to have health issues. The busy lifestyle that she lived was giving her problems with her blood pressure. Her doctor told her to slow down but she didn't listen. She died at the age of 55 on May 25, 1919. At one of her speaking engagements she said, "I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of the South. I was promoted to the washtub. From there I was promoted to the kitchen. And from there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations. I have built my own factory on my own ground!"
   Another time when asked about the secret to her success she spoke, " There is no regal, flower-strewn path to success, and if there is, I have not found it, for whatever success I have attained has been the result of much hard work and sleepless nights. I got my start by giving myself a start. So don't sit down and wait for the opportunities to come. You have to get up and make them for yourselves."
    One of her sales agent wrote in 1913, " You opened  up a trade for hundreds of colored women to make an honest and profitable living where they make as much in one week as a months salary would bring from any other position that a colored woman can secure."
   When she wanted a better life, she found a way to do it herself and in the end she not only made a better life for herself but also improved the lives of many other women. It's stories like that of the life of Madam C.J. Walker that have made America thrive. The American dream is not that we are all rich and have a good job and have everything that we want. The American dream is that it is possible, and the key word here is possible, for you to have  good income and have the job you want and the education that you need. The American dream is that you can do anything that you set your mind to. But it is all up to you. Nobody can fulfill your dreams for you.
 

Frederick Mayer

   The story of Frederick Mayer is one of great courage and tact in the face of torture and death. Mayer was a Jew born in Germany on October 28, 1921. During the early 1930's anti-Semitism was on the rise. Even with Frederick's father's distinguished military career the family still felt threatened by the Nazis. So they decided to emigrate to America. They arrived in 1938, one year before World War II began in Europe.
   Even in New York City the now seventeen year old Mayer had to deal with anti-Semitism. At one of the twenty jobs that he worked while he lived in New York, one of his bosses made an anti-Semitic remark. I suppose that was the straw that broke the camels back. Mayer knocked him down and immediately quit his job.
   It was the attack on Pearl Harbor that changed the course of his life as it did for so many others. Eager to serve his country and fight against those who were persecuting his fellow Jews, he enlisted in the United States Army. While training in Arizona, Mayer crossed the "enemy" line and "captured" various officers including brigadier general. Mayer's general said, "You can't do that. You are breaking the rules." To which Mayer replied, "War is not fair. The rules of war are to win." 
   Frederick Mayer was trained in demolition, infiltration, raiding, sniping and hand-to-hand combat. He was fluent in German, French and Spanish. These capabilities caught the eye of the Office of Strategic Services, predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency. After he joined he was assigned to Operation Greenup.
   Operation Greenup was a mission of espionage behind German lines. Mayer along with two other men, Hans Wynberg and Franz Weber were to scout the area of Austria's heavily fortified 'Alpine Redoubt'.
    Mayer and his two companions were to be parachuted near Innsbruck, Austria. But all of the flat areas were occupied by the Germans which posed a problem for a safe landing. Fortunately there was a frozen lake between two peaks that could be used as a landing sight. They found a pilot willing to fly them there. He said, "If they are crazy enough to jump there, I will be crazy enough to take them there."
    On February 26, 1945 they made the jump into the thick Austrian darkness. I imagine they could not see the ground very well as they fell from the night sky. What a thrill. I'm sure there was a lot of adrenalin pumping through their veins. What if they missed their landing point? What if the lake was not frozen all the way? What if they were to bust through the ice and freeze to death? I'm sure all of these and many more questions were racing through each of these men's minds. 
   The three men landed safely on the edge of a glacier. They were able to retrieve all but one of the boxes of supplies that were dropped. As fate would have it, that was the box that held their skis. So on they trudged, at 10,000 feet elevation they slowly made their way down the slope in waist deep snow. 

Frederick Mayer in the German uniform he
 used to infiltrate the German barracks. 

   Once they reached Innsbruck Mayer posed as a German officer who had been grazed in the head with a bullet while serving on the Italian front. The Germans were sympathetic towards him and they would talk to him about many things. He stayed in the barracks for several months. Any information he uncovered was immediately radioed back to Hans Wynberg. While he was in the barracks he found out important intelligence on German troop movements, he spied on war factories and even tracked the whereabouts of Mussolini and Hitler. Mayer was able to relay all of this information back to the Americans which in turn enabled the U.S. military to bomb 26 Nazi military trains and block Brenner pass which was a key passage used by the Germans to move supplies across the Alps and Nazi occupied Europe. He also had a detailed description of Hitler's secret bunker complex in Berlin. It was in fact so detailed that when Allied troops examined it after the war it was exactly as Mayer had described.
   After three months in the German barracks, Frederick Mayer had to come up with a way of returning to the Americans without detection. He decided to become a French electrician that was fleeing from the advancing Soviet forces. Unfortunately, Mayer was tipped off by a black market racketeer who had past dealings with Mayer. He was promptly arrested by the Gestapo. Mayer spoke only in French, keeping with his story as the fleeing electrician. The Gestapo were not hearing what they wanted to hear. They began to torture Mayer to get the truth out of him. 
   Mayer was placed in a dark room and was subjected to severe beatings. They also held his head underwater and broke some of his teeth from stuffing a pistol into his mouth. Still Mayer would not talk. So they stripped him and cuffed his hands in front of him. Then they pulled his arms over his head and bent his knees which forced him into a constricted fetal position. They shoved the long barrel of a rifle into the tiny gap behind his knees and then lifted his naked, rolled-up, beaten body and placed him in between two tables and there he hung. Then one of the larger officers brought in a raw hide whip. he began to beat Mayer's body without mercy, putting all of his weight behind each lash. With each crack of the whip Mayer was asked, "Where is your radio and your radio operator?" At last Mayer began to speak in German and he confirmed that he was an American, but he refused to betray his mission and insisted that he worked alone. 
   While all of this was happening there was another American named Herman Matull who was also being interrogated by the Gestapo. When he was shown a picture of Mayer's swollen, beaten face and asked if he knew the man he replied that Mayer was a big shot in the American command and if he was shot the Americans would come and kill every man who had mistreated him. He went even further and claimed that because Mayer was so high ranked that he could only be interrogated by the Gauleiter Tyrol Vorarlberg, Franz Hofer. Fortunately, Matull was a very good liar and the Germans believed him. 
    Franz Hofer believed that the fall of the Nazis was inevitable and he had been waiting for a chance to surrender to the Americans in favor over the Soviets. In his mind this presented the perfect opportunity. He invited Mayer to dine with himself, his wife and the German ambassador to Benito Mussolini's government, Rudolph Rahn. Rightly suspicious of the devious Germans, Mayer believed that this was just another tactic to get him to tell where his radio was. But after talking with Hofer he began to realize that he wasn't interested in the radio so much as he was in discussing terms of surrender. They allowed Mayer to send a message to Allen Welsh Dulles the OSS man in nearby Bern. From there Dulles cabled it to the headquarters in Italy. His message read, "Fred Mayer reports he is in Gestapo hands but cabled, 'Don't worry about me, I'm really not bad off.'"
   On May 3, 1945 the American 103rd Infantry Division was ordered to take Innsbruck. As the troops drew closer to the city they saw a car with a white banner made out of a bed sheet approaching. As the car pulled to a stop a young man with a swollen face promptly jumped out of the car and introduced himself as Lieutenant Mayer of OSS and said that he was going to take the Major with him to accept the German surrender. Think of the irony of the situation. This German city surrendered to an American sergeant whom they believed to be of much higher rank, and who was also a Jewish emigrant from their own country. 
   The surrender saved thousands of lives that otherwise would have been lost in battle. After the surrender one of the Gestapo agents that had tortured Mayer was placed in that same cell that Mayer had been held in just a few days previous. Mayer went to see him and found him cowering in the corner of the dark cell. He said,"You can do whatever you want to me, but don't hurt my family." Mayer looked him in the eyes and said, "Who do you think we are, Nazi's?" 
   When once asked about his story and the obvious danger he was in Mayer replied, "I always figured you can only die once, I wasn't worried about it." This man had guts. He had the courage to return to a country that he knew hated Jews and where he was most at risk. He had the courage to live under a false name in the German barracks for three months. He had the courage to endure three days of torture without betraying his fellow comrades. He had the courage to not give revenge to the officer who had beaten him.
   The former director of the CIA William J. Casey said that Operation Greenup was by far the most successful of the OSS operations. Frederick Mayer was awarded the Legion of Merit and a Purple Heart by the U.S. government. 

Benjamin Tusten

  Benjamin Tusten was born on December 11, 1743 in Southhold New York. He was meant to be a farmer as was his father, Colonel Benjamin Tusten Sr. But because of his poor health he was sent to the academy to learn mathematics, Latin, and Greek. This education enabled him to join a more suitable profession. He choose medicine. 

Depicting Benjamin Tusten caring for the wounded.

   We see a glimpse of Benjamin's unyielding determination in 1770, a time when small pox inoculation was passionately opposed. The inoculation of small pox was only used as a last resort, a final chance for recovery. Benjamin recognized the potential usefulness of the vaccination.  In spite of the naysayers, he rented out four houses and filled them with people infected with smallpox. There Benjamin successfully immunized 800 people. Thus, it could be said that he saved 800 lives. The success of this "experiment" completely changed the popular feelings against small pox inoculation. 

   The year 1777 found Benjamin Tusten getting involved in the Revolutionary War. He was in favor of the war. He saw strongly the need for America to be independent from her mother country, Great Britain. He was appointed Lieutenant Colonel of the Goshen Regiment of Militia under General Allison. 

   In July, 1779 General Joseph Brant, a Mohawk chief that was commissioned by the British army, led a strong group of fellow Indians to raid a town called Minisack and the surrounding valley settlements. These raids were for the purpose of gaining supplies and demoralizing the colonists.   They burned over twenty buildings all the while killing and capturing civilians. Colonel Benjamin Tusten with his Militia of Goshen were called to go to their aid along with the Militia of Sussex County, led by Major Samuel Meeker. Altogether they totaled about 150 men. 

    A council of war was held to decide what to do about these Indians under the British flag raiding American settlements.  All but one called for immediate attack. They were ready for the glory of battle! They were typical Americans. They thought they could beat the living tar out of anyone. It didn't matter that they were out numbered two to one. While their bravery is to be admired, they acted hastily without weighing all of the factors. Benjamin Tusten was the only one to speak out against an immediate attack. He felt that the enemy forces were too strong for them and that they should wait for reinforcements from the Continental Army. After much argument, Major Meeker mounted his horse and with the wave of his sword said, "Let the brave men follow me: the cowards stay behind." So it was decided. The controversy ended and the march began. They marched through the night and moved into position July 22nd in the hills above the Delaware River. Ambush and destroy the enemy, that was their goal.  

Hospital Rock: where Benjamin Tusten tended
to his wounded men and where he was killed.

   As Brant's forces were crossing the Minisack Ford, Captain Tyler Bezelael III shot at one of Brant's Indian scouts. The shot made Brant aware of the colonist's presence. Conscious of the plot against him, he quickly outflanked Meeker's forces splitting them into two groups. Meeker was unable to regroup for a counter attack. He quickly realized his only option was a hasty retreat. This left Benjamin Tusten and his men of the Goshen Militia surrounded and outnumbered. 

   They fought bravely for several hours. After running out of ammuniton they resorted to hand to hand combat at which the Indians were far superior. Tusten was told by a wounded and retreating Colonel Hathorne to leave the battlefield and save himself. Benjamin Tusten refused to leave his dying men behind. Not long after, the lines were breached and they were run over. Benjamin, now wounded, was with his men on Hospital Rock tending to the wounded.  He was killed with a tomahawk to the head. The men of the Goshen Militia had killed only 7 Indians. It was a slaughter.  

The mass grave where the remnants
of the Goshen Militia are buried.

   General Meeker, the one who had called for all the brave men to follow him and the cowards to stay behind, left for home. Colonel Benjamin Tusten left behind his wife and five children. The battlefield was too far from home and to dangerous of a journey for the family members of those who died to find and bury the bodies. Not until 1822, 43 years later, was a committee established to search the battlefield for bones of the lost. They were buried in a mass grave.            Giving ones life for a cause is, I believe, the greatest act of devotion. That is the ultimate sacrifice. I can only hope that if I were to be put in the circumstances of Benjamin Tusten that I would make such a heroic stand as he did. He had the opportunity to go back home to his family. He was told to quit the battlefield. I'm quite certain it was not an easy decision he made deciding to face certain inevitable death. But Benjamin Tusten was a man of character. And for him that was the only choice. 
   I think if he would have chosen to leave his men behind, it would have been a more painful death. It would've dealt a strong blow to his soul. He would have forever carried the memory of leaving behind his men, hearing the deathly screams as he ran away. Knowing that he should have died there with them that day. I suppose that would cause a very long lasting pain. And yet I believe that Benjamin died in peace, knowing that he did his duty. He gave his life for his country. It is because of his sacrifice and many, many more that we live in such freedom. This country has become great because of people like Benjamin Tusten. People who answer the call and give their all until the very end, even if that end is death.