Transcript of Keynote Speech by Joe Bonsall

Thank you, everybody. What a wonderful spirit exists in this room. There is a great spirit in here that I have felt since I first walked in. It's an honor to be here tonight. I don't know much that I can add to the wonderful things that Cal Turner has said - and the things this man stands for right here, Wally Amos.

I'm not going to go on and on with statistics, you've been studying that stuff all week and you're more well-versed on all of that than I am. But I did do a little research, and I learned that the government first became aware of the literacy problem in our nation during World War I, when so many of our young men signed up to fight in that great war. And I found out that so many men in subsequent decades left their school - to work, to go to war, to farm. And invariably, illiteracy started to become a problem in our country. I read also that the government tried a lot of different initiatives and is still trying. But the government can't do these things, only people can do these things. As I read my research, I read that during the Johnson administration, it was really the volunteer organizations that helped the most. And it stated in Compton's Encyclopedia that one of the first and most effective among these organizations was the Literacy Volunteers of America. And I said "yeah!"

So you are gathered here today in Nashville, Tennessee, not only Music City but in the heart of the volunteer state. There are some people in this state that bleed orange. And bleed it religiously. I've got the "pumpkin" tie on tonight. This is my wife's tie choice - my wife Mary Ann Bonsall. I love her dearly. She is Mother Mary in my books.

In 1835, Davy Crockett and his rag tag band of volunteers left all that they had in this state and went to Texas to help liberate Texas at the Alamo. They lost their lives. They gave everything. They were volunteers. And away they went - never came back.

I've been with The Oak Ridge Boys for 27 years! I sometimes think that my middle name is "of the." As in, aren't you "one of the?" There goes "one of the..." I think that might be �one of the?� I've been that for a long time, and I've been proud of it.

One night I was out on the road with The Oak Ridge Boys, and I was sitting in a hotel room in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was around Christmas time almost three years ago now, and I was homesick. I was missing my wife. I was missing my family and I was missing my cats. We had just been blessed with a brand new granddaughter. She's four now but was only a little over a year at the time. And as Andy was saying, what a joy that is to experience, a grandchild. Amazing thing. It changes your life.

But anyway, I opened up my laptop computer. I'd just gotten laptop-ized. I had entered into the technological age. I had become Joe.com. And I was just learning how to do it. I had been working on a novel for a long, long time. I call it the unfinished novel. It may never get finished. It may stay that way. But I got bored with my own writing. And I opened up a fresh page on the laptop and I wrote:

"Molly was two years old and a fully-grown cat although she still looked somewhat like a kitten. It's just that she never grew very big. Molly thought that it had something to do with her beginnings, not that she remembered very much about them. However, she sometimes recalled and often dreamed about the night that a young male humancat child picked her up out of the rain and took her to the Home and to Mother Mary."

I called Mary on the phone and read it to her five times. She said, "Are you writing a story about our little cat Molly?" I said, "I'm writing a Disney screenplay about Molly!"

I became all-consumed. So to make the story short, eventually Ideals Children's Books took my manuscripts, told me their vision for Molly was as a series of children�s books and we needed to get a good illustrator, which they did, a lady named Erin Marie Mauterer from Ocean, New Jersey. If you've seen any of the Molly books, you know how wonderfully illustrated they are. So then, Molly came out, the first book, and it started to do really good. Then the second book, the Home; third book, Outside; and the fourth book, Brewster, was just released.

And all of a sudden, I found myself not only doing my regular day job of singing with The Oak Ridge Boys, which takes a lot of time. But all of a sudden, I found myself at literacy events. I found myself being surrounded and involved with authors' and book events. All of a sudden instead of going to town and sitting in a hotel room all day long or just taking a long walk, I found myself at Barnes and Noble reading to children. I found myself just a couple of days ago in Scottsdale, Arizona, reading Brewster to over 250 elementary school children who gathered in the school to hear me read to them. It's incredible!

I started reading when I was a kid, just like Andy was saying. My first mentor was an old woman named Nana Clark. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful old lady. My mom and dad both worked. I grew up in a row house in Philadelphia. My daddy and mom are war veterans. They're in a veteran's home in southeastern Pennsylvania now. I'm glad they're both still with me.

I called her today and wished her a happy Veteran's Day. I said, "Mom, when did you learn to read?" I knew she grew up in North Carolina and had ten brothers. She said, "I learned to read in school but then I left school and joined the WACs - the Women's Army Corps. I said, "I knew you did that, Mom. I knew you always could read. I just wanted to know when you learned. I need research!" She said, "Well, I'll tell you my ten brothers couldn't read. But they all eventually learned."

My Nana Clark came to the house one day because we had a room to rent out, the back room. And Nanny came. As a young man, she taught me everything. She read to me. Oh, yeah, I was learning in school, but Nanny taught me how to read. I read all of those Zane Gray books. Here I am sitting in Philadelphia reading Thirty Thousand on the Hoof! And I'd never seen a cow! Reading Jack London books, like White Fang. I remember reading all of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne.

But you know what, I didn't realize a lot of people couldn't read in Philadelphia. It seemed to me like all of my friends could read. My parents could read. I found out later that there were a few of the neighbors that couldn't read, but I didn't realize that. I didn't know that these guys couldn't read. I don't think I realized that we had a literacy problem until I got somewhere in my twenties, and I saw a movie on TV called "The Pride of Jesse Hallam" with Johnny Cash. And there was Johnny Cash as a coal miner who was totally humiliated everyday of his life because he couldn't read. A road sign looked like it was in Japanese to the coal miner Jesse Hallam. It made a big impact on me. It made me realize that we did have a problem that needed addressing. But again, it wasn't until years later, with Molly, that I realized that we had people like you, who could help address these problems.

The LVA is obviously a needed organization. I was thinking about Johnny Cash and how the road to literacy paralyzes our ability to learn. Learning is knowledge. and the absence of knowledge totally handicaps people of any age and keeps them from ever being able to even visualize their full potential in life, let alone be able to obtain it. We must know how to read.

I sent a Brewster book to my biggest critic, Barbara Bush. I've sent her each Molly book as they came out, and she has sent me a rave review and an "A" every time. I sent her Brewster a little over a week ago, and I put a little note in there "To Mrs. Bush." I told her what we were doing tonight, and I asked if she had any words for you folks, knowing that literacy was so close to Barbara Bush's heart, as you all know. She sent this note (Mary told me that whatever I said tonight, whatever I do, Barbara was going to bail me out!):

"Dear Molly and Friends (I appreciate the plug). As a literacy advocate, I'm delighted to send greetings to everyone attending the annual meeting of Literacy Volunteers of America. I'm convinced, and so are the experts, that if every man, woman, and child could read, write, and comprehend, that we would be that much closer to solving so many of the other problems facing our society. Thanks to people like you, we are that much closer to winning the fight against illiteracy. And while it is important to help those adults who cannot read, it is essential to work offensively by also working with children. Parents are our child's first teachers, and the home is a child's first school, so I encourage all parents to take time out to read to their children as often as possible. With all best wishes, warmly, Barbara Bush."

And she wrote on the bottom here, "Your keynote speaker is one of the Bush family's favorite friends, especially mine!" Yeah! I saw that and freaked!

Time. It's our most valuable gift. It's the most important gift we possess, the most important thing God gives us. Everything we do is based on time.

What time is it? In a few hours! Today, tomorrow, yesterday. I slept eight hours last night. Some days I think, "If I only had more time." How much more of our time is that guy up there going to take talking about time!

Time is a precious commodity. I wrote an article for oakridgeboys.com called "An Oak Looks At Fifty." And in that article, I wrote: "Now time is a unique partner who jogs a few yards up ahead of us, constantly peeking back over the shoulder to make sure that we are still in the picture. The passing of time also inspires us to, occasionally, look back over our own shoulder so that we might study the pathways that we have taken to this point and therefore help us ascertain, perhaps just a glimpse of, what may lie ahead - providing that God, in His infinite wisdom, allows us to stay in this picture."

When you volunteer, you are doing a good deed because you are giving up your precious time. Like I said, there's not a greater gift that God gives us. And you're also giving it of your own free will. That's what volunteerism means. Giving of your own free will. When Davy Crockett said, "Anybody going with me?" Guys said, "Yeah, I'll go!" Free will.

Usually, if I speak at all outside of The Oak Ridge Boys, my speeches are usually motivational in nature. I talk a lot about the creative process and how much I enjoy the creative process. Something that wasn't here today and all of a sudden tomorrow - because of some creative thing you did today, write a song, write a story, design the kitchen curtains - it exists tomorrow when today it wasn't here. That's the result of the creative process! I love it!

But I also talk about the key to success is to be willing - willing to work, willing to sacrifice, willing to succeed. You've got to be willing. And I think this applies to the Literacy Volunteers, as well as the adult who's trying to learn to read. To be willing.

Getting back to The Oak Ridge Boys for just a moment. We've always felt as a group, as a musical entity, that we had the ability to affect people in one of three ways: positively, negatively, or not at all. I'm thrilled that I've sung with a group all of these years that's done their best to influence people in a positive direction. We've always tried to do things right. We've always tried to be a positive role model for young people that might come to see us.

So for years, The Oak Ridge Boys have been involved with various charities, from being Honorary Chairmen of the National Committee for Prevention of Child Abuse, Habitat for Humanity, spokesmen for the Boy Scouts for a couple of years. All of that stuff has been a lot of fun. But I remember one time in particular, I was asked to host a video for the National Exchange Club as it related to child abuse. They had these centers, called Suspected Child Abuse and Neglect Centers, and they were going to do a video promoting what they were trying to do with these centers. I could not believe what I was seeing, because I was seeing child abuse first hand at the time. I was a relatively young man here - it was about 1984 or 1985 - relatively younger than I am now. And I was so blown away, not only with the obvious horrors of child abuse, but what I really got out of it - looking at the positive, which I really try to do, to learn and try to get something out of any situation - was the hard work and dedication of the people, just like you and me. Who day in and day out were never giving up in the face of all that sadness and discouragement. They stayed at it - all the time. So encouraging were these people, working in this situation and in this environment.

In closing, I want to talk about one more movie. I love movies. I love a good story. I love a yarn. Tell me a story. Read me a story. Give me a good book. Show me a good movie. Let me hear a good song. Remember the Roy Campanella story?

It was a major TV movie, I forget which network. Legendary Dodger catcher Roy Campanella was in a car wreck at the height of his career and became a paraplegic. Paul Winfield played as Roy Campanella. And there was a young Louis Gossett, Jr. character that played as his therapist that was with him through thick and thin, year after year. Every time Roy Campanella would give up, this guy would pull him up by the boot straps, stay right with him, make him work, and keep him positive - for years. The movie ends with Roy Campanella about to be honored in Dodger Stadium. Dodger Stadium is full and everybody's wanting to cheer their hero, as we do in sports, in baseball. And down there in the runway on the way up to Dodger Stadium is Roy Campanella sitting in his wheelchair. Standing next to him is the young Louis Gossett, Jr. character. Roy Campanella looks up at him, and I've never forgotten what he said, "Where do they get people like you? Where do people like you come from?"

I've never forgotten that. I'm not sure of the answer. But thankfully, there are people like you. Board members, educators, volunteers, precious people out there who are learning to read. I don't know where we get people like you. But thankfully you're there, and America will be a better place for it. I thank you for letting me be just a small part of your little celebration here in the great city of Nashville, Tennessee. God bless all of you. And keep on hitting the high notes for literacy!