Bert L. Wolstein

Chapter One:

Choosing Sides of Taylor Road

Somewhere, in the recesses of my mind, I had anticipated a welcoming committee. Okay, balloons and a brass band seemed farfetched, yet to me it seemed fitting that the Mayor or at least someone from his office would be there to greet Iris and me as we arrived on the island of Pohnpei. But rather than the beat of drums, marching feet, and crash of symbols, only the thump of the stamp on our passports marked the completion of our 8,000 mile journey from Cleveland, Ohio to the capital of the Federated States of Micronesia.

Courtesy of the U.S. Navy, I first landed on this tiny Pacific island shortly after the first of the year in 1946, six months after the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war in the Pacific. I spent 4 ½ long months on that island, learning about life and myself and dreaming about a future back in the States.

For at least twenty years, after reading that an airport had been built on the island, I had wanted to return to Pohnpei—this time with Iris. Yet something always prevented us from making the trip. It was too far, too inaccessible. A pending deal needed supervision. Ohio State was playing Michigan. I always had a ready excuse. Finally, Iris said, “we’re going,” and we bought the tickets. On September 28, 2002, after watching The Ohio State University football team beat Indiana, our four-day journey began. We flew from The OSU airport in Columbus to St. Louis, where we spent the night, before flying on to Honolulu the next day. The following morning a four-stop hop took us to Pohnpei.

Suddenly here I was, back in the place where my life took a pivotal turn; the place that gave me perspective on my future. I thought perhaps someone else would remember my time here.

But only I remembered. Only I recalled that it was while in the Navy that I decided to become something, to become someone. At the time, I didn’t use the word ‘entrepreneur;’ I don’t think I had ever even heard that term before. It was here that I also realized that the military, at my level at least, was a meritocracy. I figured that working harder than everyone else was the way to get ahead—a lesson I followed throughout my life. I had always worked hard, don’t get me wrong, just as many of us had, growing up on the lower east side of Cleveland during the Great Depression. Though I probably had two-dozen different jobs by the time I graduated high school, life as a competition or a zero-sum game, with the winner making out better than the loser, was a new concept to me. It was during these years that it dawned on me that life is a race to the finish line, walked very slowly by most people. To succeed, all you have to do is walk a little faster than everyone else.