The band has been at every football game. Has the football team ever attended a band concert?
The drama club would appreciate more attendance at their performances. Have they ever gone to a soccer match?
Build a flag and save a life.
These words were part of the anchor in the “get real” message Kevin Atlas brought to Fannin County High School Tuesday morning, February 13.
Kevin shared his life story that included the loss of part of his left arm at birth – he was actually born dead – the loss of his father, his ups and downs in basketball, and a suicide attempt in high school before playing Divison 1 college basketball and a rise to success.
Kevin began by telling the students his message was not about him, it was about them, but put their choices in perspective he said he wanted them to, “Feel what I feel to be me.” And he did just that, to the point FCHS Principal Scott Ramsey would tell the students it was “the most attentive,” he had ever seen them.
Kevin laid out the facts of high school early as he spoke, telling the students, “You guys make school suck.” Judgment and cliques are the norm. Negative thinking, reliving angry moments and creating problems that may not ever exist all cause depression, worry and anxiety. All this because, “You guys are trained to put yourself first,” Kevin said.
Students admitted what he said was correct, but they also acknowledged they wanted to be happy, to be successful.
“I’m here for you...I’m happy. I want you to be happier,” Kevin said.
He told the students all he would ask from them when he was finished was to “turn around and do this for someone else (make them happier).”
Kevin talked about his early life with just part of one arm, how people stared and kids were cruel.
He saw his dad dying with cancer in the hospital so he set out to raise money, knowing if he could just raise enough his dad could come home and get well.
His dad found his savings of $240 in Kevin’s shoe. That was a lot of money, so he wanted to know where it came from.
When Kevin told him how and why, it was the first and only time he saw his dad, “a refrigerator of a man,” cry.
At 10 years old and in the fifth grade, Kevin held his dad’s hand as he lay on their living room couch and took his last breath.
Kevin blamed himself.
He put on a mask, the same mask he told FCHS students many of them were wearing. The one that hides their pain, their feelings of helplessness, of inadequacy. Their belief that no one cares.
In the seventh grade, Kevin tried out for basketball. The coach cut him, telling him he needed two arms to play the game.
He tried out for an AAU team, where he was told, “Use that thing (the stub of an arm) for a weapon.”
He became a high school basketball star. Then, in his senior year and on the day he met the president of the United States, he broke a leg.
His world crashed as colleges took back their scholarship offers.
Kevin took a whole bottle of pills.
Back at his high school, there was Josh, who had a rare disease. Josh had the head, hands and feet of a 16-year-old, but the body of a baby.
He could have stayed home. That would have been easy. He knew his mom had to come to school twice a day to change his diapers. But Josh kept coming, kept working, and probably had a better grade point average than Kevin.
One day, a couple of the senior boys took a look at Josh and thought about what he must be going through. They learned what Josh hated the most about his circumstances was he couldn’t play sports.
They came up with the idea to make him a flag, one in school colors. It was nothing pretty, nothing fancy. They convinced the football coach to let Josh carry it around the track on the cart he rode before football games. His trips drew huge rounds of applause from fans from both teams. Imagine how that applause made Josh feel.
Kevin returned to school three and a half weeks after trying to take his own life, and only because he was told he wouldn’t graduate if he didn’t. His friends, his teammates, were not there to meet him.
Josh was.
Josh, who had long been the smallest man on campus, was there to meet Kevin, who had once been the biggest man on campus.
Josh greeted Kevin with the words, “I got your back.”
“He literally saved my life,” Kevin said,
Kevin went on to play Division 1 college basketball and is also a millionaire.
“This is your family. Show up for each other. Stop being too busy for each other,” Kevin told the high school students.
And he told them how.
“Mindset comes first over everything,” he said. Students need to change theirs.
The problem begins with the fact the students’ generation is the most sensitive generation ever. “You lack self love,” Kevin told them.
He posed the question, “If you can’t accept yourself, how can you accept anyone else?”
“Self love creates confidence. You’re beautiful. Admit it. Own it. As soon as you accept that, your life is going to start,” he said.
He told students to get rid of ego because it creates a defensive armor. Students learned they need to appreciate the teachers and administrators who criticize them because, “They love you...they are trying to help you.”
To get better, Kevin told them to ask, “How?”
““How” is my favorite word,” he said.
“The present is a gift...you have 24 hours a day. Use it wisely. If you let a day go by without getting better, shame on you,” Kevin said.
“You can go anywhere. You can do anything when you leave here,” Kevin said.
Students were told they needed to change their mindset, to get away from “I” and “me,” and to take care of each other.
“This is your family, show up for each other,” Kevin said.
Build a flag. Save a life.