MOTIVATIONAL HINDI SHAYARI

MARY KOM

MC Mary Kom

Born
State
Spouse
Profession
Height
Educational Qualification
Children
Employed as
Interests

1 March, 1983
Manipur
K Onler Kom
Boxing (46 kg category)
1.58 m
B.A. IInd yr, Manipur University
Rechungvar Kom, Khupneivar Kom
DSP, Manipur Police Dept. (CID)
Martial arts and boxing

Mangte Chungneijang Mary Kom (aka MC Mary Kom) is from tribal community of north eastern state Manipur called as Kangathei Village, Moirang Lamkhai. Her interest in boxing was inspired by the success of Manipuri male boxer Dingko Singh.

Initially Mary Kom tried to hide her interest in boxing from her family, since it was not considered a suitable sport for a woman. She only got into this sport in an effort to provide some financial support to her family. After her victory as Best Boxer at the First State Level Invitation women’s boxing championship in Manipur in 2000, her career became public and she started competing at international level at the age of 18.

She also boarded on an international campaign that has brought her a series of gold medals and honors, only with a few setbacks. For instance, on her way by train to the selection camp for her first Asian Women’s Boxing Championships in Bangkok, Thailand, she had all her luggage and her passport stolen. Her parents asked her to come home immediately and the stress followed. But the experiences only motivated her to work harder and punch harder.

Women’s boxing was a very recent introduction, but she only wanted to excel. The first International gold rush finally began with the Second Asian Women’s Championship in Hissar and rest was history. Her once-skeptical father accompanied his trail-blazing daughter to the ceremony in 2003 at which she was the first woman ever to receive India’s prestigious Arjuna award for her achievement in boxing.

This clever lady’s ring strategy is to simply cramp the opponent so that they don’t get any chance to free their arms. She uses her short height as an advantage by making her opponent run a lot in the ring which eventually tires them and help her win.

Mary Kom works out five to six hours a day to stay fit and healthy. Coming from a poor family who struggled to educate her siblings, Mary Kom’s success as a world champion is a testament to her determination, perseverance and drive to succeed. She would further like to share her boxing experiences while grooming new sports talent in Manipur.

MARY KOM:

“I was initially an all-round athlete, and 400-m and javelin were my pet events. When Dingko Singh returned from Bangkok (Asian Games) with gold, I thought I should give it a try. Dingko’s success triggered a revolution of sort in Manipur and surprisingly I found that I was not the only girl who was drawn into boxing”

“I still remember I was castigated by my father who said with a battered and bruised face, I should not expect to get married. He was furious that I took to boxing – a taboo for women – and he did not have the slightest idea about it. But my passion for the sport had got the better of me and I thank my cousins who coaxed and cajoled my father into eventually giving his nod. I’m happy that I did not let anybody down”

“To be a successful boxer one must also have a strong heart. Some women are physically strong but fail when it comes to having a strong heart. One also must have the zeal and the right fighting spirit. We work harder than men and are determined to fight with all our strength to make our nation proud. God has given me the talent and it’s only because of sheer grit and hard work that I have made it so far.”

Want to bring changes in the law and order. “I am in the police force, but boxing keeps me busy. I have won an Olympic medal but my dream is not yet finished. It shall be fulfilled the day I do something in my department to fight crime”

“In the ring I can do anything, any style of boxing, movement or trick. But acting is very hard for me.”
Rarest, no-holds barred life story of the legend Iron lady MC Mary Kom– as it has never been told before. This movie will unveil never-before-told stories, peeling back layers of life tragedies hard work while unfolding the tale of triumph and survival. Theatrical, intimate, and unmatched, show played by Priyanka Chopra will reveal a true fighter behind the ring.

Academy

• Mary Kom initiated to run a free boxing academy at Imphal in 2006. And today it has more than 40 students, half of them day scholars, the other half boarders. Mary keeps the girls in her own home and has rented a house for the boys which is now has been gifted by the state government after she won her first championship.
• The idea behind the academy was to find talent among Manipur’s poor families, the underprivileged. She believes boxing has done wonders for her and is hoping the same for them. Mary Kom also works with the Manipur police and runs the academy with whatever she earns by endorsing Herbal Life and Sahara products.
• MC Mary Kom is on the way to start a boxing academy at a 100-acre housing project on the Yamuna Expressway. The academy claims to be the first of its kind in North India and is an initiative to endorse global sports.

Awards

» YFLO Women Achiever 2009-2010 (FCCI Ladies Organization)

» Sports Women of the year 2008-2009 (Sahara India Pariwar)

» North East Excellence Award 2009 (8th – 9th January 2010, Calcutta)

» Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award 2009 (29 August 2009, Rastrapati Bhavan, New Delhi)

» Param Poojaniya Shri Guruji Puruskar 2009 (RSS Jankalyan, Maharashtra Prant)

» Pepsi MTV Youth Icon 2008

» Indian Real Heroes Awards 2007 (CNN-IBN, Reliance Industries Limited, Mumbai)

» People of the Year for 2007 (Limca Book of Records) India at her Best

» NETV People’s Choice Awards 2006

» Padma Shri Award for the year 2005 (20th March 2006)

» Arjuna Award for the year 2003 (21st September 2004)

Kindness of strangers

Saving My Daughter

My husband was away for a few days, so I had my hands full in March 2005, looking after our home, a first-floor flat, and Banu, our one-year-old daughter. I was also adjusting to life in Pune, where we’d just settled. One day, between preparing lunch, I went to the bathroom. When I came out, I took one look at Banu and froze. She was on the floor, unconscious and frothing at the mouth, the small container of asafetida I had opened that morning lying empty next to her. I grabbed my daughter and ran out—she needed a doctor immediately. I knew there was nobody in the next-door flat, so I ran down and straight out of the building. The street was deserted. I reached the main road, barefoot and in my nightdress. Just then, an approaching red car stopped. “My baby needs a doctor immediately!” I blurted out to the young couple in the car. 

“Get in,” the man, who was driving, said. He then turned the car around and headed towards the marketplace. As I sat in the back seat, cradling Banu, aware that her limbs were growing cold, I told the couple what happened. When the car finally halted near the first doctor’s signboard we found, it was a pediatrician! Taking Banu from me, the man raced up to the clinic on the first floor. His wife and I followed. He quickly briefed the doctor, who then took Banu and asked us to wait outside. The lady sat next to me, comforting me and urging me to have faith. After 15 minutes, which seemed like hours to me, I was told Banu was fine. When I went in to see her, she called out, “Mamma!”

The doctor had washed Banu’s stomach out. An overdose of asafetida induces seizures in a child, but timely treatment prevented any real harm. When the doctor told us Banu could go home, the young man offered to drop us. When I refused, he pointed out something I hadn’t realized in the midst of the emergency: I hadn’t taken any money with me. The couple paid the doctor and gave me Rs100 for the auto fare home. 

I’ve never seen them again and I hope they read this and find me—I have a lot of thanking to do. 
Garima Srivastava, Pune

Caring Hands

On a cold morning in May last year, my husband Prem and I drove off from Leh, Ladakh, to Pangong Lake with four other tourists, all much younger than the two of us. The wet road slowed us down. hree hours on, midway through our journey, we had to stop behind a long line of vehicles. 

“The road ahead is blocked with snow,” said Norbu, our driver. “Even if we get to the lake, we cannot drive back in the dark—it gets too misty. We may have to spend the night there.” We were unprepared for this—no extra warm clothes, and the  risk of altitude sickness made me worry. I suggested we turn back, but the others refused. So Prem stepped out hoping to hitch a ride in one of the vehicles turning back. They were all full, but while he was out, Prem stepped deep into fresh snow, which filled his sports shoes and made his socks all soggy. Back in our tourist vehicle, his feet hurt and we were afraid of frostbite setting in. Determined to get a ride, I stepped out this time. One car with enough room passed by, but didn’t stop. Then a Maruti Gypsy with just the driver and a passenger took us in after I told them that my husband needed help. 

As we drove along, the man in the passenger seat in front twisted himself around, leaning over the back of his seat, and ordered Prem to remove his shoes and socks. Covering his cold, wet feet with a spare jacket, he reached underneath and started rubbing my husband’s feet. “Please, I’ll do it,” I insisted, but he ignored that and carried on the rubbing and kneading for some 20 minutes all through the long winding roads, until he was sure Prem’s feet were warm again. 

He told us he was Mohamad Ali, an engineer with the J&K government’s Roads and Building division, and that he lived on the outskirts of Leh. He was returning home after being stuck since the previous day on the other side of the snow-pile, which none of the tourist vehicles could cross. As we neared his home, Ali invited us to “whatever simple lunch was cooked.” When we declined, he asked the driver to drop us wherever we needed to go. Long before that, Prem’s feet were back to normal, thanks to an engineer’s loving heart and caring hands. 
Lata Kaku, Jaipur

”

Inspirational Life Quotes

“Just know, when you truly want success, you’ll never give up on it. No matter how bad the situation may get.” - Unknown

“Accept responsibility for your life. Know that it is you who will get you where you want to go, no one else.” – Les Brown

“I don’t regret the things I’ve done, I regret the things I didn’t do when I had the chance.” –Unknown

“Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.” - Joshua J. Marine

“Its hard to wait around for something you know might never happen; but its harder to give up when you know its everything you want.” – Unknown

“One of the most important keys to Success is having the discipline to do what you know you should do, even when you dont feel like doing it.” - Unknown

“Good things come to those who wait… greater things come to those who get off their ass and do anything to make it happen.” - Unknown

“Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, or worn. It is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace & gratitude.” - Denis Waitley

“In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.” – Bill Cosby

“Go where you are celebrated – not tolerated. If they can’t see the real value of you, it’s time for a new start.” – Unknown

Dont be afraid to stand for what you believe in, even if that means standing alone.. - Unknown

“The best revenge is massive success.” – Frank Sinatra

“Forget all the reasons it won’t work and believe the one reason that it will.” - Unknown

“I am thankful for all of those who said NO to me. Its because of them I’m doing it myself.” – Albert Einstein

“The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.” – Steve Jobs

“Life is short, live it. Love is rare, grab it. Anger is bad, dump it. Fear is awful, face it. Memories are sweet, cherish it.” – Unknown

“When you say “It’s hard”, it actually means “I’m not strong enough to fight for it”. Stop saying its hard. Think positive!” - Unknown

“Life is like photography. You need the negatives to develop.” - Unknown

“Don’t worry about failures, worry about the chances you miss when you don’t even try.” – Jack Canfield

“The pain you feel today is the strength you feel tomorrow. For every challenge encountered there is opportunity for growth.” - Unknown

“Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs.” – Farrah Gray

“The only thing that stands between you and your dream is the will to try and the belief that it is actually possible.” – Joel Brown

“Self confidence is the most attractive quality a person can have. how can anyone see how awesome you are if you can’t see it yourself?” – Unknown

“We learn something from everyone who passes through our lives.. Some lessons are painful, some are painless.. but, all are priceless.” - Unknown

“Being happy doesn’t mean that everything is perfect. it means that you’ve decided to look beyond the imperfections.” - Unknown

“Nobody ever wrote down a plan to be broke, fat, lazy, or stupid. Those things are what happen when you don’t have a plan.” – Larry Winget

“Three things you cannot recover in life: the WORD after it’s said, the MOMENT after it’s missed and the TIME after it’s gone. Be Careful!” – Unknown

“Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.” – Carl Bard

“When the past calls, let it go to voicemail, believe me, it has nothing new to say.” - Unknown

“Rule #1 of life. Do what makes YOU happy.” - Unknown

“Walk away from anything or anyone who takes away from your joy. Life is too short to put up with fools.” – Unknown

“Love what you have. Need what you want. Accept what you receive. Give what you can. Always remember, what goes around, comes around…” – Unknwon

“Just remember there is someone out there that is more than happy with less than what you have.” – Unknown

“The biggest failure you can have in life is making the mistake of never trying at all.” – Unknown

“Life has two rules: #1 Never quit #2 Always remember rule # 1.” - Unknown

“No one is going to hand me success. I must go out & get it myself. That’s why I’m here. To dominate. To conquer. Both the world, and myself.” - Unknown

The Night I Met Einstein

This Reader's Digest Classic of "My Most Unforgettable Character" offers a lesson in life—and music—from the most brilliant mind in the world.

By Jerome Weidman from Reader's Digest | November 1955

When I was a very young man, just beginning to make my way, I was invited to dine at the home of a distinguished New York philanthropist. After dinner, our hostess led us to an enormous drawing room. Other guests were pouring in, and my eyes beheld two unnerving sights: Servants were arranging small gilt chairs in long, neat rows; and up front, leaning against the wall, were musical instruments.

Apparently I was in for an evening of chamber music.

I use the phrase “in for” because music meant nothing to me. I am almost tone deaf—only with great effort can I carry the simplest tune, and serious music was to me no more than an arrangement of noises. So I did what I always did when trapped: I sat down, and when the music started, I fixed my face in what I hoped was an expression of intelligent appreciation, closed my ears from the inside, and submerged myself in my own completely irrelevant thoughts.

After a while, becoming aware that the people around me were applauding, I concluded it was safe to unplug my ears. At once I heard a gentle but surprisingly penetrating voice on my right: “You are fond of Bach?”

I knew as much about Bach as I know about nuclear fission. But I did know one of the most famous faces in the world, with the renowned shock of untidy white hair and the ever-present pipe between the teeth. I was sitting next to Albert Einstein.

The Stranger Who Changed My Life

The Stranger Who Changed My Life: The Taxi Driver and the Doctor

When a taxi driver asked one simple question, he transformed his family's future.
By Irving Stern from New York Newsday

For 28 years, three months, and 12 days, I drove a New York City taxi. Now, if you were to ask me what I had for breakfast yesterday, I probably couldn’t tell you. But the memory of one fare is so vivid, I’ll remember it all my days in this world.

It was a sunny Monday morning in the spring of 1966. I was cruising down York Avenue looking for a customer, but with the beautiful weather, it was kind of slow. I had stopped at a light just opposite New York Hospital when I spied a well-dressed man dashing down the hospital steps. He was hailing me.

Just then, the light turned green, the driver behind me honked impatiently, and I heard a cop’s whistle. But I wasn’t about to lose this ride. Finally, the man reached the cab and jumped in. “LaGuardia Airport, please,” he said. “And thanks for waiting.”

Good news, I thought. On Monday morning, LaGuardia is hopping, and with a little luck, I could get back-to-back fares. That would make my day.

As always, I wondered about my passenger. Was this guy a talker, a mummy, a newspaper reader? After a few moments, he started a conversation. It began ordinarily enough: “How do you like driving a cab?”

It was a stock question, and I gave him my stock answer. “It’s OK,” I said. “I make a living and meet interesting people sometimes. But if I could get a job making $100 a week more, I’d take it—just like you would.”

His reply intrigued me. “I would not change jobs if it meant I had to take a cut of a hundred a week.”

I’d never heard anyone say such a thing. “What do you do?”

“I’m in the neurology department at New York Hospital.”

I’ve always been curious about people, and I’ve tried to learn what I could from them. Many times during long rides, I’d developed a rapport with my passengers—and quite often I’d received very good advice from accountants, lawyers, and plumbers. Maybe it was that this fellow clearly loved his work; maybe it was just the pleasant mood of a spring morning. But I decided to ask for his help. We were not far from the airport now, so I plunged ahead.

“Could I ask a big favor of you?” He didn’t answer. “I have a son, 15, a good kid. He’s doing well in school. We’d like him to go to camp this summer, but he wants a job. But a 15-year-old can’t get hired unless his old man knows someone who owns a business, and I don’t.” I paused. “Is there any possibility that you might get him some kind of a summer job—even if he doesn’t get paid?”

He still wasn’t talking, and I was starting to feel foolish for bringing up the subject. Finally, at the ramp to the terminal, he said, “Well, the medical students have a summer research project. Maybe he could fit in. Have him send me his school record.”

He fished around in his pocket for a card but couldn’t find one. “Do you have any paper?” he asked.

I tore off a piece of my brown lunch bag, and he scribbled something and paid me. It was the last time I ever saw him.

That evening, sitting around the dining room table with my family,I pulled the scrap from my shirt pocket. “Robbie,” I announced proudly, “this could be a summer job for you.” He read it out loud: “Fred Plum, N.Y. Hosp.”

My wife: “Is he a doctor?”

My daughter: “Is he an apple?”

My son: “Is this a joke?”

After I nagged, cajoled, yelled, and finally threatened to cut off his allowance, Robbie sent off his grades the next morning. The fruit jokes continued for a few days, but gradually the incident was forgotten.

Two weeks later, when I arrived home from work, my son was beaming. He handed me a letter addressed to him on richly embossed paper. The letterhead read “Fred Plum, MD, Neurologist-in-Chief, New York Hospital.” He was to call Dr. Plum’s secretary for an interview.

Robbie got the job. After working for two weeks as a volunteer, he was paid $40 a week for the rest of the summer. The white lab coat he wore made him feel a lot more important than he really was as he followed Dr. Plum around the hospital, doing minor tasks for him.

The following summer, Robbie worked at the hospital again, but this time, he was given more responsibility. As high school graduation neared, Dr. Plum was kind enough to write letters of recommendation for college. Much to our delight, Robbie was accepted at Brown University.

He worked at the hospital for a third summer and gradually developed a love of the medical profession. As college graduation approached, Robbie applied to medical school, and Dr. Plum again wrote letters attesting to his ability and character.

Robbie was admitted to New York Medical College and, after getting his medical degree, did a four-year residency specializing in obstetrics and gynecology.

Dr. Robert Stern, the son of a taxicab driver, became OB-GYN chief resident at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center.

Some might call it fate, and I guess it was. But it shows you that big opportunities can come out of ordinary encounters—even something as ordinary as a taxi ride.

Irving Stern, 92, still lives in Brooklyn. Robbie—now Dr. Robert Stern—and Dr. Plum exchanged Christmas cards every year until Plum’s death in 2010. Dr. Stern is currently an OB-GYN specialist at Health-Quest Medical Practice in Fishkill, New York. His son is a cardiologist; his daughters are an endodontist and an attorney. “This may all be due to Dr. Fred Plum, whom I will never forget,” he says. 

Inspiring Stories of Famous People Who Achieved Their Dreams

The Manager Who Couldn’t Write

By Gary Sledge

What launched Amy Tan’s career was not a big break, but a kick in the butt.

AMY TAN

Before the million-copy sales of The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God’s Wife and The Hundred Secret Senses, Amy Tan was a writer. A business writer. She and a partner ran a technical-writing business with lawyer-like “billable hours.”

Her role with clients was largely that of account management — but this daughter of immigrants wanted to do something more creative with words, English words.

So she made her pitch to her partner: “I want to do more writing.” He declared her strength was doing estimates, going after contractors and collecting bills. “It was horrible stuff.” The very stuff Tan hated and knew she wasn’t really good at. But her partner insisted that writing was her weakest skill.

“I thought, I can believe him and just keep doing this or make my demands.” So she argued and stood up for her rights.

He would not give in.

Shocked, Tan said, “I quit.”

And he said: “You can’t quit. You’re fired!” And added, “You’ll never make a dime writing.”

Tan set out to prove him wrong, taking on as many assignments as she could. Sometimes she worked 90 hours a week as a freelance technical writer. Being on her own was tough. But not letting others limit her or define her talents made it worthwhile. And on her own, she felt free to try fiction. And so The Joy Luck Club, featuring the bright, lonely daughter of Chinese immigrants, was born. And the manager who couldn’t write became one of America’s bestselling, best-loved authors.

The Kid Always Chosen Last

By Lisa Miller Fields

Pudgy and shy, Ben Saunders was the last kid in his class picked for any sports team. “Football, hockey, tennis, cricket — anything with a round ball, I was useless,” he says now with a laugh. But back then he was the object of jokes and ridicule in school gym classes in England’s rural Devon County.

It was a mountain bike he received for his 15th birthday that changed him. At first the teen went biking alone in a nearby forest. Then he began to pedal along with a runner friend. Gradually, Saunders set his mind on building up his body, increasing his speed, strength and endurance. At age 18, he ran his first marathon.

BEN SAUNDERS

The following year, he met John Ridgway, who became famous in the 1960s for rowing an open boat across the Atlantic Ocean. Saunders was hired as an instructor at Ridgway’s School of Adventure in Scotland, where he learned about the older man’s cold water exploits. Intrigued, Saunders read all he could about Arctic explorers and North Pole expeditions, then decided that this would be his future.

Treks to the Pole aren’t the usual holidays for British country boys, and those who didn’t dismiss his dream as fantasy probably doubted he had what it takes. “John Ridgway was one of the few people who didn’t say, ‘You’re completely nuts,’ ” Saunders says.

In 2001, after becoming a proficient skier, Saunders embarked on his first long-distance expedition toward the North Pole. It took incredible stamina. He suffered frostbite, had a close encounter with a polar bear and pushed his body to the limit, hauling his supply-laden sledge up and over jagged ice ridges.

Saunders has since become the youngest person to ski solo to the North Pole, and he’s skied more of the Arctic by himself than any other Briton. His old playmates would not believe the transformation.

This October, Saunders, 27, heads south to trek from the coast of Antarctica to the South Pole and back, an 1,800-mile journey that has never been completed on skis.

Too Short to Dance

By Nancy Coveney

Couldn’t she smile? If only she were taller. They loved her kicking, but … Like thousands of other young women, Twyla Tharp came to New York City with big dreams. The self-described Indiana farm girl enrolled at Barnard College to get a degree in art history. But her real passion, her real obsession, was dance.

To meet the college’s phys ed requirement, she studied dance with the legendary Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham. Soon she was fitting her schoolwork in between two or three dance classes a day. A dream was born. But dance is not exactly a surefire, lifelong profession.

When she graduated in the mid-1960s, she auditioned for commercials and tried out for roles — but she just didn’t seem to fit in anywhere. She lacked the technical skills to be a ballerina, and she discovered in a big audition that she was too short for the Rockettes. They “loved my kicking and 52 fouett&eacutes on pointe,” she wrote in her autobiography Push Comes to Shove, “but couldn’t I please smile?” And she also learned she was “too small in every direction to work as a Latin Quarter show girl, but I still tried.” And Tharp wondered, Will I ever be a dancer? Do I have any business dancing? The only way to find out, it seemed, was to form her own troupe and create her own style of dance.

For five long years, Tharp and her troupe practiced virtually every day in the basement of a Greenwich Village church. Sometimes the janitors had to “throw them out” on Sunday morning. They worked for little pay and almost no recognition. Constantly, Tharp asked herself, Do you want to do this, or don’t you?

Forty years later, after choreographing over 100 dances on Broadway and in movies like Hair and Ragtime, after winning the National Medal of the Arts in 2004, Tharp still asks herself that question. And the answer is — yes.

“You’re Studying Dirt”

By Fran Lostys

Dr. Judah Folkman keeps a reproduction of a 1903 New York Times article in his archives. In it two physics professors explain why airplanes could not possibly fly. The article appeared just three months before the Wright brothers split the air at Kitty Hawk.

In the early 1970s, Folkman proposed an idea in cancer research that did not fit what scientists “knew” to be true: that tumors did not generate new blood vessels to “feed” themselves and grow. He was convinced that they did. But colleagues kept telling him, “You’re studying dirt,” meaning his project was futile science.

Folkman disregarded the catcalls of the research community. For two decades, he met with disinterest or hostility as he pursued his work in angiogenesis, the study of the growth of new blood vessels. At one research convention, half the audience walked out. “He’s only a surgeon,” he heard someone say.

But he always believed that his work might help stop the growth of tumors, and might help find ways to grow blood vessels where they were needed — like around clogged arteries in the heart.

Folkman and his colleagues discovered the first angiogenesis inhibitors in the 1980s. Today more than 100,000 cancer patients are benefiting from the research he pioneered. His work is now recognized as being on the forefront in the fight to cure cancer.

“There is a fine line between persistence and obstinacy,” Folkman says. “I have come to realize the key is to choose a problem that is worth persistent effort.”

The Kid Stays in the Picture

By Fran Lostys

He was no scholar, and his classmates teased him. Rather than read, the kid really preferred running around with a 8 mm camera, shooting homemade movies of wrecks of his Lionel train set (which he showed to friends for a small fee).

In his sophomore year of high school, he dropped out. But when his parents persuaded him to return, he was mistakenly placed in a learning-disabled class. He lasted one month. Only when the family moved to another town did he land in a more suitable high school, where he eventually graduated.

After being denied entrance into a traditional filmmaking school, Steven Spielberg enrolled in English at California State College at Long Beach. Then in 1965, he recalls, in one of those serendipitous moments, his life took a complete turn. Visiting Universal Studios, he met Chuck Silvers, an executive in the editorial department. Silvers liked the kid who made 8 mm films and invited him back sometime to visit.

He appeared the next day. Without a job or security clearance, Spielberg (dressed in a dark suit and tie, carrying his father’s briefcase with nothing inside but “a sandwich and candy bars”) strode confidently up to the guard at the gate of Universal and gave him a casual wave. The guard waved back. He was in.

“For the entire summer,” Spielberg remembers, “I dressed in my suit and hung out with the directors and writers [including Silvers, who knew the kid wasn't a studio employee, but winked at the deception]. I even found an office that wasn’t being used, and became a squatter. I bought some plastic tiles and put my name in the building directory: Steven Spielberg, Room 23C.”

It paid off for everyone. Ten years later, the 28-year-old Spielberg directed Jaws, which took in $470 million, then the highest-grossing movie of all time. Dozens of films and awards have followed because Steven Spielberg knew what his teachers didn’t — talent is in the eyes of the filmmaker.

Failing His Way to Success

By Janice Leary

Working in the control room of the salvage vessel Seaprobe at two o’clock one morning in 1977, Robert Ballard was jolted by a massive piece of equipment that crashed onto the deck just three feet above him. The ship shook with the force of an explosion. A drill pipe and its attached pod full of sonar and video gear had snapped and plunged into the Atlantic, abruptly ending the explorer’s test run to find the RMS Titanic.

“I lost a lot of credibility with sponsors, who had loaned the $600,000 worth of stuff” for the 1977 expedition. “It took me eight years to recover from that.” But recover he did, despite skepticism from other scientists, failed fund-raising efforts and other setbacks.

After the Seaprobe debacle, Ballard says, “I was back to square one. I had to come up with another way to search for the Titanic.”

He returned to active duty as a U.S. Navy officer assigned to intelligence work. At a time when the Cold War was still being waged, the marine geologist cut a deal with Navy officials. He would offer his expertise if they funded the development and testing of Argo, a camera-equipped underwater robot critical to theTitanic mission, and allowed him to use it for exploration.

The Navy sent Ballard and Argo on classified missions to survey Thresher and Scorpion, two nuclear submarines that sank during the 1960s. Those vessels lay in waters not far from the Titanic. After surveying the Scorpion in 1985, Ballard began looking for the doomed luxury liner. And two miles down, in the dark sea at 49° 56′ W, 41° 43′ N, he found it.

The oceanographer, who later found the German battleship Bismarck, the liner Lusitania, and other historic wrecks, has a simple philosophy. “Failure and success are bedfellows, so I’m ready to fail.”

Ballard’s current port is the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography, where he has launched an archeological program. Students will join him on his latest quest — exploring ancient trade routes in the Black and Mediterranean seas.

The Understudy

By Joseph K. Vetter

“Angie, I know you like to sing,” her father, a practical autoworker, told Angela Brown, “but you gotta have something to fall back on.”

Brown took her father’s advice. She got a degree in secretarial science before enrolling in Oakwood College, in Huntsville, Alabama. Her aim was to become a singing evangelist. But then the opera bug bit.

So after graduation she headed to Indiana University to study with legendary soprano Virginia Zeani.

Once, when Brown was plagued by self-doubt, Zeani challenged her: “If you want to be the next Aretha Franklin, go, you need no more lessons,” Brown remembers her saying. “But if you want to be the best Verdian soprano this world has ever seen, you must work.”

Work she did. Three times she competed in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. Three times she failed to make the final round in New York. Then, in 1997 at age 33, the age limit for sopranos to audition, she gave it one more try. She signed up at the last minute and didn’t even practice, figuring: “All they could do was tell me no, and that didn’t hurt my feelings anymore.” She had the strength she needed to fall back on if she failed.

She won. But making it to New York was just the beginning. Singers don’t spring into starring roles. It took her three more years to become a Met understudy. But waiting in the wings was fine with her. Finally, her time came. When the featured singer fell ill, Brown earned the chance to sing the lead role in Aida. AndThe New York Times proclaimed her debut a triumph. Angela Brown, soprano, who had prepared for 20 years, was an “overnight” sensation at age 40.