by RON STARNER
Ron.Starner@IAMC.org

The Election Day Flood
Maxwell Locks and Dam, Monongahela River

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

MapQuest the route from Lynchburg, Va., to Cincinnati, Ohio, and you will learn that the trip covers exactly 428.76 miles and requires 31 separate action steps.

I wish I knew that 22 years ago.

Long before the era of Garmin, TomTom, Google Maps and "turn-by-turn navigation," the only way to find the route from Point A to Point B was good old Rand McNally.

With Rand by my side, I got behind the wheel of my 1980 Chevy Citation and set out to make the drive from Liberty University to the land of the Big Red Machine.

A college senior with only a few weeks left before "the real world," this was my last chance to enjoy a cozy Thanksgiving dinner with family and friends in Southern Ohio, watch the Dallas Cowboys on TV and wonder, "When will the Bengals ever be this good?"

There was only one problem: they didn’t have CNN back in those days either. If they did, I surely would have known that large portions of the Ohio River Valley were being deluged in what would become known as The Election Day Flood of 1985.

From Pittsburgh to Cincinnati and many places in between, the Ohio was so swollen with excess rainwater that crossing the river had become, at best, treacherous. Little did I know that it would be even more treacherous for anyone attempting to cross the river in an extremely light-weight, front-wheel-drive Citation.

1980 Chevy Citation

HowStuffWorks.com

You remember those cars, right? I nicknamed mine, appropriately, the "Hydroplane-Mobile."

Well, somewhere along U.S. Highway 52 between Portsmouth and Cincinnati, my little car with its 108,000 miles lived up to its name. I swerved all over the slick roadway and into the path of oncoming traffic before bouncing off the only thing preventing my Citation from plunging into the Ohio — a guardrail.

When my vehicle finally came to a stop, I was facing east instead of west, but at least my car was in the eastbound lane. "Maybe this is God’s way of telling me I should turn around and head back to Lynchburg," I thought for a moment as I laughed.

Undaunted, and with a car not too badly damaged, I turned around, re-entered the westbound lane on 52 and trudged on toward Cincy. My parents and other relatives had no idea of what had happened (there were no cell phones back then either) until I arrived at my uncle’s house in Glendale — fashionably late and only slightly damp.

Needless to say, the roast turkey and dressing with all the trimmings never tasted so good, the Bengals were no longer quite so disappointing, and home never seemed more satisfying.

Over the many years since, as the calendar turned to November, I have often recalled the lessons learned on that rain soaked Thanksgiving Day in 1985: use a reliable map, stay focused, follow directions, slow down, appreciate the journey, laugh at your mistakes and, most important of all, trade in that Chevy Citation before the odometer shows nothing but zeroes.

Ron Starner, executive director of IAMC

Thanksgiving wasn’t my favorite holiday before 1985. It is now. The sad truth is that I can’t claim to have reached that conclusion on my own. Events beyond my control changed my perception of what really matters.

As you work feverishly to wrap up your many projects before the end of the year — whether they are in corporate real estate, economic development, commercial real estate or another field — my advice is to take the time to thank the many people who have helped you along your own personal journey in life.

But don’t just keep those thoughts of gratitude to yourself. Thank each and every person you can. Send a card, a letter, a thank-you note, even an email. Or, better yet, pick up that other relic of 1980s-era technology, the telephone, and call the individual personally to say thanks.

You will be amazed at how quickly that one, simple act will change your life.