Hope and love the messa
CSVC Breakfast of Champions
September 30, 2015
By Peggy Kelly
Santa Paula News
Giving and receiving especially the power of love and hope was the theme of the annual Boys & Girls Clubs of Santa Clara Valley’s Breakfast of Champions.
The September 22 celebration packed the Community Center with club supporters who heard Ventura County Sheriff Geoff Dean, the event emcee, give the message that the Positive Place for Kids “Takes care of them now so we don’t have to later...”
Following the Pledge of Allegiance led by Club Kids Isaiah, Joel and Jolissa Macias, Alumni Speaker Cesar Villanueva spoke of how the club impacted his life and led to his position as the director of the new Piru club branch.
“My goal is to make it a second home for the children, help get them engaged in their community and sharpen their social skills,” said Villanueva. “I want to help impact minds and lives just as the club did for me,” as a 7-year-old Club Kid.
“Cesar is an example of what we do and a wonderful role model,” said B&GCSCV Executive Director Jan Marholin, who noted club staff “Might be the only ones to ask kids how their day has been and give them a smile.”
Marholin said Bob Allen of KADYTV.com was taping the event so club supporters can enjoy it online.
Dean introduced special guests including elected and public safety officials from Santa Paula, Fillmore and Ventura County.
He also introduced Featured Speaker John Styn, FreshRealm co-founder and former CWO (Chief Wisdom Officer) and the creator of Hug Nation.
The pink haired Styn noted he has much in common with other famous marketing characters such as Aunt Jemima and Colonel Sanders as his face appeared on boxes of hair dye.
With an address peppered with humor and pathos, Styn spoke of his late grandfather, the Rev. Caleb Elroy Shikles.
“He was a very fire and brimstone Baptist preacher who became more in tune with love and softened later in life to the point that he called himself a Baptist Buddhist. He got very involved with civil rights, women’s rights and gay rights,” marching with Martin Luther King Jr. and advocating equality for all.
Styn said he did not follow in Caleb’s footsteps, rather becoming involved “overboard” in the self-obsessed aspects of the Internet.
“I even moved into web cam house with others, filmed everything we did...they now call that Facebook!” he joked.
Then came 911 and Styn said terrorists’ attacks and thousands of American deaths made his existence seem “silly...I remember the night after this horror thinking ‘maybe this is going to have a real long-term effect on brotherhood and sisterhood,” bringing people together.
“But then the dialogue changed to us and them,” the enemy.
‘There is no them...there is only us one click away from connecting...”
Styn started Hug Nation to “Show people hugging themselves all over the world,” to symbolize hugging viewers.
Noted Styn drolly, “It didn’t catch on...”
But it did for his grandfather who had been widowed.
“My grandmother was his companion and driver...he thought God looked over him when he drove through an intersection not the DMV.”
With typical good humor, sense of wonder and hope his grandfather tackled his new status, showing amazement and joy in shuttle service and trips to CVS where he would tell all who looked his way, “My wife has taken a new residence in Heaven...can you help me?”
Said Styn, “My grandfather never said the glass was half-full, he said it’s a beautiful glass!”
And Styn found a Hug Nation co-host, often taping uploads from a senior complex where his grandfather decorated his room “like a college guy...we were fired up!”
Styn would ask his grandfather to tell the folks in cyberspace about his life and Caleb always “Showed intense gratitude” for all his surroundings and experiences.
When he entered his 94th year filming of Hug Nation was moved to the hospital where the old man marveled at the wonders of science and “amazing medicine...”
Now, “He is no longer with us,” but Styn said his grandfather taught him people could make choices that lead to happiness.
“We have a really bad habit in our society of bonding over complaining...my grandfather had a second hand computer, a second rate dorm room and no money but he was the richest man I ever knew. One year he bought a woman out of slavery in Thailand...but I really wanted an iPad!”
Gifting is important, and a way of life at the annual Burning Man festivals Styn has attended for years.
“It took me a while to get gifting,” said Styn and then one must learn how to be good receivers to make it complete.
A resident of San Diego Styn now goes out and gives away food and clothing, “Not to solve the problem but to do kindness in the moment...and you can still be a cocky bastard and do good!”
At one point Styn was working with disturbed and often violent children in a group home including one boy who on his first day attacked him with a rake and his last day came after him with a knife.
“They just need a grandpa or a Cesar,” such as Caleb or the Fillmore club branch director. “I hope we all feel we have the ability to feel good in helping these kids, in bringing them the light...”
Styn said he misses his grandfather although he remains a “big part of my life — or I’m riding his coattails, it depends on how you look at it. I had his ashes mixed with pink paint,” to paint his pink Hugmobile RV, took some of his ashes to dispose of at Burning Man, and has adopted a pink wing as a symbol.
The latter is also a tribute to his grandfather who wore pink wings on Hug Nation to send love and hope around the world.
Said Styn, “We all have the ability to be great men and women...”
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Boys & Girls Clubs of Santa Clara Valley Executive Director Jan Marholin (center) presents Featured Speaker John Styn and Emcee Ventura County Sheriff Geoff Dean with gifts at the Breakfast of Champions fundraiser that last week packed the Community Center.
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