Post by pavel on Feb 6, 2016 5:02:11 GMT -6
Gov. Bentley: "We rank dead last in some of the things dealing with people's lives"
Gov. Robert J. Bentley came to the state's richest city Friday to speak to an audience of some of the state's best, brightest and most successful people about a problem the state has been neither successful, bright or best at solving--poverty.
It's a problem that some of the successful men and women attending Friday's annual meeting of the Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama once knew only too well in their young lives, including Bentley's "I could have been a statistic," said the 73-year-old Bentley who grew up in Columbiana, the son of a sawmill worker. Both of his parents never finished high school.
"I didn't have electricity or indoor plumbing until we moved to Columbiana and I was in grammar school. I didn't even hold a tooth brush until I was six years old. I brushed my teeth with a sweetgum brush," Bentley told the audience of several hundred at the Harbert Center in downtown Birmingham.
But Bentley said he had two things in his life that allowed him to escape poverty. "I had two things going for me. Number one, I had a set of parents who loved me unconditionally and they believed in me and they encouraged me," said Bentley. "The other thing I had was this: I had an opportunity. And that opportunity primarily dealt with the people who taught me in school and who cared about me. I had mentors, people who walked along beside me, and stayed with me all the way through."
Read more: www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2016/02/gov_bentley_we_rank_dead_last.html
Gov. Robert J. Bentley came to the state's richest city Friday to speak to an audience of some of the state's best, brightest and most successful people about a problem the state has been neither successful, bright or best at solving--poverty.
It's a problem that some of the successful men and women attending Friday's annual meeting of the Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama once knew only too well in their young lives, including Bentley's "I could have been a statistic," said the 73-year-old Bentley who grew up in Columbiana, the son of a sawmill worker. Both of his parents never finished high school.
"I didn't have electricity or indoor plumbing until we moved to Columbiana and I was in grammar school. I didn't even hold a tooth brush until I was six years old. I brushed my teeth with a sweetgum brush," Bentley told the audience of several hundred at the Harbert Center in downtown Birmingham.
But Bentley said he had two things in his life that allowed him to escape poverty. "I had two things going for me. Number one, I had a set of parents who loved me unconditionally and they believed in me and they encouraged me," said Bentley. "The other thing I had was this: I had an opportunity. And that opportunity primarily dealt with the people who taught me in school and who cared about me. I had mentors, people who walked along beside me, and stayed with me all the way through."
Read more: www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2016/02/gov_bentley_we_rank_dead_last.html