As they came at him from every direction, I never saw Joe Alton brush off a single person. It
didn’t matter how late it was, or how long he’d been there, or how much more he had to do
after he left. He never failed to look everyone in the eye, or give anyone his full attention.
One night following such a public meeting, I was playing “lead man,” making a path through
the crowd in the slow trek from the front of the room to the back of the hall and our waiting
car. When we climbed into the backseat at last, I turned to Joe incredulously.
“How do you do it? ”I asked. “How can you give so much of yourself? All those people,
hanging all over you, everybody wanting something from you.”
“It’s very simple to give them what they want, actually,” Joe smiled.
“What do they want? ” I had to know. “What kinds of things are they asking you?”
“They all want the same thing.”
I looked at him quizzically.
“Don’t you know what all people want?” “No,” I had to admit.
Joe looked me straight in the eye. “They all want to be heard.”
Thirty years later I would be walking out of meeting rooms and lecture halls with people
coming at me from every direction, and I would remember Joe.
People want to be heard, and they deserve to be. They’ve read your book and given you their
mind from cover to cover. They’ve given you a part of themselves, and they want a part of
you, and that’s fair, and that’s what Joe Alton knew. It’s what he deeply understood. He
wasn’t giving anything away. He was giving back.
I’ve learned that again on the lecture circuit from some wonderful people. Author Wayne Dyer
always says to his audiences, “I’m going to stay here until the last one of you has had your
book signed and I’ve had a chance to visit with you.” So do a lot of other speakers. They
hang around. They give back.
What goes around, comes around.
Joe Alton was the first to teach me that wisdom, too. I learned that “what goes around, comes
around” thirty years ago in the rough and tumble of a political campaign.
We were in the trailer late one night following a long and difficult debate. Joe’s opponent had
been ruthless in his denunciations, saying very little about the substantive issues in the
campaign, engaging instead in personal attacks. When I got back to the trailer, I headed
immediately for the typewriter. My fingers flew across the keyboard as I composed a stinging
and concise rebuttal—a rebuke, as I recall, of unmatched eloquence.
Joe lumbered over casually. “What are you writing?”
“Your statement for the press tomorrow in response to those vicious attacks,” I replied in a
tone that said, “What else?”
Joe just chuckled. “You know I’m not going to use any of that, don’t you?”