Make Something Happen

This is the 24th in a collection of newspaper ads written by Harry Gray, then CEO of United Technologies, that appeared in the Wall Street Journal from the late 1970s through the early 1980s. Here is the text from that ad.

You come out of a meeting and someone asks,
“What happened?”
And you answer,
“Nothing.”
You sit in a legislative gallery and someone sits down beside you and asks,
“What’s happening?”
And you say,
“Nothing.”
Maybe that meeting room and that gallery should have had the same sign hanging on their walls that – so the story goes –
a college football coach pasted in his teams’ lockers:
“Cause something to happen.”
He believed that if you didn’t make something happen with a good block, your runner would go nowhere – and if you didn’t tackle, the other team would run all over you.
He sure caused something to happen. He won more college games than any other coach.
Bear Bryant.

Bear Bryant, having coached for 25 years at his alma mater, University of Alabama, retired after the end of the 1982 season. His 323 wins were the most of any college football coach at the time. Since then, his win total, at the Division I Football Bowl Subdivision level, has been surpassed by Bobby Bowden and Joe Paterno. However, of those three coaches, Bryant has the highest winning percentage at .780.

“Cause something to happen.”

It’s a perfect phrase for today, Labor Day.

The best way to make something happen is hard work, and today is the day we celebrate the American labor movement and the contributions that workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.

So thank you to all of our workers, past and present, who have made America the great country that it is. You not only created the infrastructure (highways, railroads, bridges) that allowed our country to prosper, but fought for workers’ rights that we all benefit from today.

Happy Labor Day.