Stuff I learned from Jim
On October 25, 2003, my friend and mentor, Jim Codega died after a lengthy battle with Mantle-Cell Lymphoma.
Jim was my first boss and hired me right after college. Jim really laid the groundwork for my career in social work by instilling core beliefs about our work that I still hold dear today. Whether I am just talking with a colleague or training a large group, something Jim has taught me usually has a way of coming up as just the right thing to say. Here is a collection of things Jim said that I will always remember. I can’t say for sure whether they are original to Jim or if he repeated something he heard from someone else. It’s not really important. What is important is that he gave them to me.
"There is a simple solution to the problem of child abuse…and it is wrong."
"People don’t wake up in the morning planning to screw up their lives and the lives of their children. On the contrary, they hope and pray and beg God to let today be different."
"The work we do is generational. The parents we work with are not likely to become Parents-of-the-Year. Our hope is that we can help lessen the damage to children so that when they grow up, they will be able to raise their children without our help."
Someone once told Jim that child welfare is not rocket science, seeming to imply that it is not complicated. Jim replied, "You’re right. It’s not rocket science. It’s much harder. In rocket science, you always get the same amount of thrust with the same amount of fuel. In social work, there are no equations and no constants. We have to discover the right formula each and every time."
"The line between Us and Them is thinner than you think."
Much of what I learned from Jim isn’t about specific words. Jim treated everyone with respect and admiration - co-workers and clients alike.
Our unit, Project CHILD, had the worst space in the building. Our offices were in the basement and most were small and damp. Jim was the director of Project CHILD and could easily have claimed a space upstairs or at least the best of the spaces in the cellar. He took the worst space - the smallest, darkest, dampest hole available. When I asked him why he said, "If anyone complains about their office, I always offer to switch with them." It was a funny answer, but I suspected that the real reason was something more fundamental to the way Jim treated everyone.
