Fred Glass - Making Your Own Luck: From a Skid Row Bar to Rebuilding Indiana University Athletics

Contents

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR
MAKING YOUR OWN LUCK

Fred Glass is wise, funny, and unsparingly honest. Making Your Own Luck is more than just the story of a scrappy kid prevailing after weaving through the obstacles of an unconventional upbringing. Glasss memoir forces us to confront the excuses we often make that hold us back from success in our careers and in our lives. While Glass is a person of remarkable accomplishment, he makes a compelling case that you dont have to be born remarkable to achieve great things. He asks us to embrace the idea that we canand shouldshape our own destinies. He wants each of us to walk away from this entertaining and inspiring book saying, Well, if he can do it, why cant I?

Bart Peterson, former mayor of Indianapolis

A winning combination of a coming-of-age tale, an honest spiritual memoir, and a how-to book on building teamwork, all presented with a true writers flair.

James Martin, SJ, New York Times best-selling author of The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything

Freds friendly leadership style belies the keen human insights he has gained along the way as a son of a tavern owner, a practicing lawyer, and an adviser to city, state, and national leaders. As commissioner of the Big Ten, I had a front-row seat to admire and collaborate with a man who listened and led IU athletics to success while treating all around him with dignity and respect. Making Your Own Luck is a great read that I highly recommend.

Jim Delany, former commissioner of the Big Ten Conference

This book is a publication of

Indiana University Press

Office of Scholarly Publishing

Herman B Wells Library 350

1320 East 10th Street

Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA

iupress.org

2021 by Fred Glass

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

Manufactured in the United States of America

First printing 2021

Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-0-253-05946-8 (hardback)

ISBN 978-0-253-05945-1 (paperback)

ISBN 978-0-253-05940-6 (ebook)

To Barbara, Katie, Joe, Connor, George,

Tom, Emily, Betsy, Ellie, Anna Rose, Lucy,

and Eli, plus all the family I havent yet

met, as well as those I will never meet.

CONTENTS

I was always proud to see the accomplishments of my Indiana University classmate. After reading this amazing book, Im even prouder. The challenges he faced, his perseverance, and his ability to bring people together and lead them all come to life in a way that will teach and inspire.

Fred has always been one of those people who got things done. Now I know why, and readers will know more about how they can as well. I really enjoyed this book, and you will too.

Mark Cuban

This book is itself a grateful acknowledgement of people who have impacted my life. Because I wouldnt do them justice by trying to summarize that impact in this short section, I wont. I do gratefully take this opportunity, however, to acknowledge those who directly helped me in writing this book.

First, thank you to my wife, Barbara, and children, Katie, Joe, Connor, and George, who read early drafts and provided me with insightful and candid comments, perhaps most significantly some variation of What do you want the book to be about? That advice, diplomatically posed as a question, led to the books evolution from a collection of rather random stories into a more cohesive call to make your own luck. Thanks also to the handful of others who also read early drafts and provided excellent, challenging suggestions. While I wont name names so as to protect you from any unwanted responsibility for my content, you know who you are.

Thank you to my IU assistant Terri Beatty, who typed the manuscript from my legal pad longhand, generally indecipherable to mere mortals. Thanks to IU president Michael McRobbie and his deputy chief of staff, Kelly Kish, who were stalwart supporters of this project from the beginning. Thank you to IU professor of history emeritus Jim Madison and IU vice president emeritus Terry Clapacs for your early encouragement. Thank you to my editors, Joe Jansen of RootBole Wordcraft, Megan Schindele of Amnet, and Lesley Bolton of IU Press, as well as a special thanks to IU Press director Gary Dunham for believing in me and leading me through the process, including some excellent editing of his own.

Thank you to Malcolm Abrams for his longtime support, including permission to use the Bloom Magazine photograph for the cover of this book. Thank you to former Indianapolis Star newsroom researcher Cathy Knapp for lending her excellent professional expertise to this project. Thank you to the very professional volunteers at the Jefferson County (Indiana) Historical Society, of which I am now a proud member. Thank you to Anne Lamott and Stephen King for their inspiring books Bird by Bird and On Writing, respectively, which were the best of several excellent books my family gave me about writing once I confided in them my literary ambition. Thank you to all my colleagues at Taft, Stettinius & Hollister, especially managing partner Bob Hicks, for supporting this endeavor.

Finally, another special thank-you to Barbara for giving me the time, space, and encouragement to work on this book. Like everything else in my life, I could not have done it without you.

November 2, 2020

On Fathers Day, 2018, my daughter, Katie, gave me what turned out to be one of the greatest gifts I have ever received. It was a one-year subscription to a service that emailed me weekly questions about my life, shared my answers with Katie, gave her the opportunity to comment on them, and then bound them all into beautiful books. She gave one each to me and her three brothers. The book was an unexpected, emotional, magical sharing for all of us. My son Connor told me that he cried when he read it. It also gave me the desire and confidence to heed my late mothers admonition: Fred, you have to write a book someday! This is that book.

I have been given the opportunity to do some really cool things in my life: serving a mayor, a governor, a senator, and even a president; helping to bring to my hometown a long-term relationship with the NFL Colts, a regular rotation of NCAA Final Fours, a massive convention center expansion, Lucas Oil Stadium, and a Super Bowl; and being the athletic director at my alma mater, Indiana University. Ive had a number of advantages in preparing for these opportunities, but Im still just a knucklehead who grew up in a skid row bar, had an alcoholic father, struggled with anxieties and self-doubt, did a lot of goofy stuff, and made my share of stupid mistakes. I hope my odyssey serves as an example that it is ordinary people who do the kinds of things Ive had the opportunity to do. Im reminded of the words of legendary Pittsburgh Steelers coach Chuck Noll that I heard his former player Tony Dungy quote to the Colts as he coached them at a practice preparing for Super Bowl XLI: Champions are champions not because they do anything extraordinary but because they do the ordinary things better than anyone else. The key is not being cowed from seizing opportunities by a feeling that we are not ready, or capable, or deserving, but rather taking ownership of them by believing in ourselves and making our own luck.