Failing His Way to Success

Failing His Way to Success
By Janice Leary

Working in the control room of the salvage vessel Seaprobe at two o’clock one morning in 1977, Robert Ballard was jolted by a massive piece of equipment that crashed onto the deck just three feet above him. The ship shook with the force of an explosion. A drill pipe and its attached pod full of sonar and video gear had snapped and plunged into the Atlantic, abruptly ending the explorer’s test run to find the RMS Titanic.

“I lost a lot of credibility with sponsors, who had loaned the $600,000 worth of stuff” for the 1977 expedition. “It took me eight years to recover from that.” But recover he did, despite skepticism from other scientists, failed fund-raising efforts and other setbacks.

After the Seaprobe debacle, Ballard says, “I was back to square one. I had to come up with another way to search for the Titanic.”

He returned to active duty as a U.S. Navy officer assigned to intelligence work. At a time when the Cold War was still being waged, the marine geologist cut a deal with Navy officials. He would offer his expertise if they funded the development and testing of Argo, a camera-equipped underwater robot critical to the Titanic mission, and allowed him to use it for exploration.

The Navy sent Ballard and Argo on classified missions to survey Thresher and Scorpion, two nuclear submarines that sank during the 1960s. Those vessels lay in waters not far from the Titanic. After surveying the Scorpion in 1985, Ballard began looking for the doomed luxury liner. And two miles down, in the dark sea at 49° 56′ W, 41° 43′ N, he found it.

The oceanographer, who later found the German battleship Bismarck, the liner Lusitania, and other historic wrecks, has a simple philosophy. “Failure and success are bedfellows, so I’m ready to fail.”

Ballard’s current port is the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography, where he has launched an archeological program. Students will join him on his latest quest — exploring ancient trade routes in the Black and Mediterranean seas.

The Manager Who Couldn’t Write

The Manager Who Couldn’t Write
By Gary Sledge

What launched Amy Tan’s career was not a big break, but a kick in the butt.

Before the million-copy sales of The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God’s Wife and The Hundred Secret Senses, Amy Tan was a writer. A business writer. She and a partner ran a technical-writing business with lawyer-like “billable hours.”

Her role with clients was largely that of account management — but this daughter of immigrants wanted to do something more creative with words, English words.

So she made her pitch to her partner: “I want to do more writing.” He declared her strength was doing estimates, going after contractors and collecting bills. “It was horrible stuff.” The very stuff Tan hated and knew she wasn’t really good at. But her partner insisted that writing was her weakest skill.

“I thought, I can believe him and just keep doing this or make my demands.” So she argued and stood up for her rights.

He would not give in.

Shocked, Tan said, “I quit.”

And he said: “You can’t quit. You’re fired!” And added, “You’ll never make a dime writing.”

Tan set out to prove him wrong, taking on as many assignments as she could. Sometimes she worked 90 hours a week as a freelance technical writer. Being on her own was tough. But not letting others limit her or define her talents made it worthwhile. And on her own, she felt free to try fiction. And so The Joy Luck Club, featuring the bright, lonely daughter of Chinese immigrants, was born. And the manager who couldn’t write became one of America’s bestselling, best-loved authors.

Abraham Lincoln's World Famous Letter to his Son's Teacher