One Page Sketch of Some Strong Memories – not reflected in my CV

by Greg Kagira-Watson

 

Grew up happily on the outskirts of a small town in rural Oklahoma with horses, cattle and bee hives. Our horse pasture behind our back yard connected to my grandfather's cattle ranch and dairy farm.  Raised a pet crow that learned to talk and had his own obituary in the city newspaper.  Started a real school-newspaper with a staff, in the sixth grade that made news in the city paper. Won a city-wide high jump competition in a track meet.  Visited a Federal penitentiary with my attorney father & saw the electric chair.  Worked as a Page in the Oklahoma State House of Representatives.  Burned a marijuana field with the police, when my dad was assistant District Attorney.  Won a national science fair award for an electronics project in High School.  Dug ditches, with a shovel, for a construction company—one summer job.  Worked on the maintenance crew in a glass factory one summer.  "First chair" trumpet player in High School. Played competition tennis on High School team.  Skydived into the High School on the last day.  Had a 5 A.M. paper route in Dallas.  Won a national skydiving competition in college.


As a sophomore in college I came upon a group of students outside a 10 story dormitory and observed the mob-instinct quickly surface as they yelled “jump” to the disturbed young man on the ledge outside a 10th floor window.  Thank God I was not caught up in this hypnotic frenzy and maintained my wits about me.  When the man splattered his brains on the sidewalk right in front of us my fellow students were instantly able to regain their wits and realize what they had done.  They will always live with the question whether their lack of compassion—their complicit disregard for human life—encouraged the man who felt no love from them.  My roommate and others vomited on the spot.  A young girl who had been yelling “jump” threw herself on top of the man’s body as if to cover her dastardly deed.  Some time later I imagined what it must have been like at Kent State to see fellow students who had protested the Viet Nam war lay dead on the ground.  The Buddhist monks, seated in a full lotus position, who were burning themselves alive in the streets of Saigon to protest the war made more sense to me than the suicide I had just witnessed.  Both were avoidable.  I thought that the world was going crazy and I did not want to go.  I went back to my dormitory, immediately packed my bags, dropped out of college and began my search for the meaning of life—answers to the question of man’s inhumanity to man.  My happy childhood was over.


Not long after I had a "near death" religious experience that changed my life.
  Afterwards, studied comparative religion, the varieties of religious experience, and the psychology of religious experience.  Learned both directly and indirectly that the greatest danger to a man is his own “ego.”  Worked as a mail carrier for Warner Bros. in
California.  Met 5 well-known movie stars. Worked as a grocery-store stocking boy.  Was robbed and beaten to an inch of my life in the streets of San Francisco by a gang of youths while bystanders looked out their windows above the sidewalk as I yelled for help.  Summer work as a skydiver for a Water Ski Show in Wisconsin.  Fasted for two weeks to protest the Viet Nam war.  Dinned with richest and poorest in the world.  Walked 13 miles through the desert to the Benedictine "Monastery of Christ in the Desert" (Abiquiu, New Mexico) and lived there for three months as a non-Catholic, soul-searching and studying Teilhard De Chardin, et. al.  Served as tour-guide into remotest regions of Mexico and later as a tour-guide in Israel, traveling the entire country--30 days.  Worked as a hospital nurses' aid and a cab driver as steps in preparation to become an ambulance driver.  Carried a woman whose tumor weighed more than she did.  Alone, first time in ER ambulance, tended a murder victim who died in my arms, after being stabbed in heart with a butcher knife by his wife-- as he lay sleeping before breakfast.  Lived in a trailer on an Indian reservation while worked in Santa Fe hospital as a certified Emergency Medical Technician.  Was a Christian youth minister for "Partners in Prayer"—a inter-denominational church in Ft.Worth, recommended to me by my Presbyterian ministerbefore I became the first Baha'i in my Oklahoma home town, at age 22.  I may have been the first white person to have a black college roommate off campus in my "Southern" home town.  Saw a cross burned on a hill behind my house after hosting, in our home, the first publicly-advertised race-amity meeting in our small college townthough I think it was a prank. Though racially divided there was no physical violence in our town and we never really feared it. Credited with the capture of an armed robber in a restaurant in Dallas.  Sold cars to get a new, free, dealer car to drive.  Helped dig a grave by hand in a pauper's field, in Dallas, for a black woman too poor to afford a funeral.  While going to college simultaneously worked in a Burger King and as a night watchman for a Massachusetts trucking company while taking college courses during the day.  After learning to drive from truckers while I was on that night watchman job, I drove semi-tractor trailer trucks (“18 wheelers”) for three months in Texasas a college summer job.  Drove a motorcycle from Texas to Calif.  With the mechanic, rebuilt an engine in an airplane that I bought and then flew it across the United States. Trained as a midwife and facilitated two home births, and also those of my own two daughters with a physician in a birth center. After my wife was left quadriplegic from car accident I kept her at home and was nurse to her for three years.  Raised our one year old daughter by myself until I remarried four years later.  Sued the City of Lexington to keep that same daughter in high school and won pro se, setting new precedent for residency requirements in Massachusetts.  This inspired her to become an attorney.  (She graduated from law school in 2006.)  Re-married.

Owned a computer company for seven years.  Together with my wife, taught 2nd daughter to read as well as a seven year old, when she was two.  Was invited to debate Dr. Benjamin Spock on Boston TV.  Presented a overview of the Baha’i experience in international development (SED) at the United Nations on behalf of the International Baha'i communityLived and traveled in a motor home for a year, working as an educational consultant for the Council for Global Education, in Washington, D.C. Survived one airplane crash and two forced landings.  Climbed the tallest mountain in the U.S.  Visited the integrated schools in Northern Ireland and met political prisoners.  Appeared on CBS-48 Hours while serving as liaison between youth from Columbine High School and the United Nations of Youth at The Hague in 1999.  Lived in the home of a prosecutor at the World Court while he was preparing the indictment against Slobodan Milosevic, former President of Serbia.  Informally represented the Baha’i Faith, at the request of Bawa Jain, a leader within the Jain religion and organizer of the interfaith prayer vigil at The Hague Peace Appeal 1999.  Traveled around Africa with my Kenyan wife to some locations where children had never seen a white person.  Slept in a tent in the Tsavo with lions outside.  Taught epistemology and science in a rural Kenyan school one summer as a guest teacher. Studied alternative energy systems and built a solar/wind powered fresh water well. Witnessed adults’ lives become transformed as a facilitator of transformational learning – both secular and religious. Encountered the false dichotomy between intellect and spirit.  Obtained second masters degree in Education at Harvard in route to my doctorate there.  Bought 120 acres with a mountain range on a beautiful lake in the Adirondacks and started a commercial development project there.  Helped my father to die in Oct.2002 and delivered the eulogy at his funeral in the Presbyterian church where I grew up, preceded by a 200 slide PowerPoint presentation I created of his life.  Recruited an “A-Team” of filmmakers to make a film for PBS on “Education for Peace.”  Wrote a book on World Citizenship Education, based on my doctoral dissertation.  Served as the volunteer property manager of the Baha'i Unity Center in Atlanta.