The roughest way to learn to swim is to be thrown in the deep end of the pool, and have to dog-paddle your way to the side if you want to keep breathing.  My parents never did that to me, and I know only one person who actually experienced that.  But, metaphorically?  Now that’s another matter.

        This column is about Clarence Thomas, Paul Carre of the University of Detroit, and the Boy Scout motto.  I begin with Clarence Thomas.  I have just finished reading his autobiography, ''My Grandfather’s Son: A Memoir.''  It is a gripping tale that would be utterly unbelievable, except that it is true.

        If you haven’t read it, I recommend that you find it, and read it.  I guarantee that you will come away from it with a sense that the trials and tribulations that you’ve had in your life, whatever they are, are small in the scheme of things.  Most importantly, you will learn that not just once, but many times, his grandfather (who raised him) put him in situations where the odds were long and he had to sink or swim.

        Time and again, he swam, until it became second nature for him not to count the odds in any situation, but to figure out what was the right choice, and then pursue it to success, if that was possible.

        That brings me to Paul Carre and the University of Detroit.

        My second coat-and-tie job was with the Barton-Gillet Company in Baltimore, a communications company that specialized in working for colleges and universities.  When I was 25, we were asked to bid, along with two other companies, on a total review of all communications of the University of Detroit, those with alumni, potential donors, potential students, and the surrounding community.  Detroit is a Jesuit university in an urban area of the city, whose engineering graduates were especially prized, but which faced several, daunting problems.

        Paul Carre, executive vice president of my company, was slated to make the presentation.  I was going along just as a helper.  Now, I should have suspected that something was afoot, because Paul had been on a plane whose landing gear failed a few years before, and his plane slid in on a bed of foam.  After that, Paul never went anywhere he couldn’t reach by train or car.  Yet, on this occasion, Paul was going to fly to Detroit.

        Anyway, the night before we were due to fly, Paul called me at home to say he was not going.  The presentation was mine alone.  When I got there, the room was filled with officers of the university including Father Dunn, director of development, and Gerry Marnell, director of public relations.  The two competing firms were represented by silver-haired veterans.

        To make a long story short, we got the contract, for a princely sum (then) of $7,000 plus expenses.  I did the research and most of the writing, and the upshot was a number of changes that served the university well.  I remember one vividly.  The university offices were in the Fisher Building, a black glass-faced cube in the middle of the campus, whose entrances were below grade so from a distance you could not see them.  It was a gift of the Fisher Body Company, at one time an automotive giant.

        From my interviews, I told the university about the “Fisher Building Syndrome,” an us-versus-them attitude that the leaders were in that fortress, and the others were scattered outside.  I recommended that the university transfer some of its high traffic offices like admissions, outside of Fisher, and some high impact student organizations like the newspaper and the student government, inside of Fisher.  The changes were promptly made.

        The point, however, is not what happened at the university of Detroit.  It was what Paul Carre did to me, on purpose.  He decided that I was prepared (there’s the Scout motto) to succeed in challenges well above my apparent current capacities.  He took a huge gamble on me.  And both of us benefitted.

        I expect that all of us who have a few years on our treads have had occasions when others threw us in the deep end of the pool.  It is in exactly such moments that our characters are forged.  From fear at the moment, our understanding turns to gratitude afterwards.

          That’s what Justice Thomas’ grandfather did for him.  That’s what Paul Carre (and many others) did for me.  And that’s what I hope others have done for you.  And that you are passing it on to the next generation.