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“Amazing Grace”

Probably no one ever called her that in her first one hundred years. Orphaned at twelve, taken in by family and friends until she was adopted, Grace Groner worked as a secretary for forty-three years. She bought her clothes at rummage sales, never owned a car, and lived alone in a one-bedroom cottage. These days thirteen hundred Lake Forest (Illinois) College students have scholarships, internships, and studies abroad because of her. They call her “Amazing Grace.”

When she died in January, 2000, at age one hundred, Grace Groner left $7 million to her alma mater, Lake Forest College. She never sold the three shares of Abbott Laboratories stock she bought in 1935 for $180. When she died, after many stock splits and dividends reinvested, her initial investment had grown into a $7 million fortune.64

I recently listened to a professor sound off about “this generation,” in particular how they make no provision for the future. He stereotyped them as addicts to “instant gratification and instant communication.” His caricature was of a student wolfing down a Big Mac (instant food paid for with plastic money), text-messaging with the other hand (im chewing bm now), while steering the car with his knees. He would not expect any of them, like a Grace Groner, to set aside anything for old age.

Most of us admire the plodding, intentional game plan of a John McPhee, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, Princeton professor, and author of twenty five books. He says he hardly ever has cranked out more than one single-spaced page a day. “You know, you put an ounce in a bucket every day,” he explains, “before you know it you have a quart.”

Aesop’s ancient story about the turtle and the hare may be truer in our time than ever before. There is still something to be said for eschewing immediate pleasure for taking the long view; something to be said for the discipline and perseverance of the turtle, or John McPhee, or “Amazing Grace” Groner.