I’ve long held the belief that folks ought to be growing something: a business, a set of skills, aptitude with a wedge around the green, tomatoes, puppies, children, a library — each are good examples requiring a mix of dogged determination and thinking about something larger than yourself. Growth is inevitably disjointed, coming in fits and starts like our three boys who seemed to grow in and out of blue jeans and baseball cleats in a week or less. One day’s school picture wardrobe was tomorrow's hand-me-down to the next growing brother in line. If you were like us, you measured each kid on their birthday and put a pencil mark or notch on the door frame, marking where all the milk, bread, and hamburger ended up over the last year. That’s growth.
Growth is good if for no other reason that the opposite strategy, contraction, seems like a recipe for headaches and heartaches. It is not hard to find growth peppered throughout the vernacular of our lives what with ubiquitous phrases like growth mindset, growth engine, growth rates and stages, growth hormones and spurts, and one of my favorites, growth ring, bouncing in and out of our everyday coffee conversations. Satchel Paige, whose ever-expanding arsenal of nearly two dozen pitches included the midnight creeper, the bat dodger, and the dipsy-do, famously advised “don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.” Though I admittedly am only in my third year in Springfield, I believe the onetime Kansas City Monarch might have just the right advice for us in the Queen City.
Put another way, unless Springfield continues to foster productive growth, other localities and regions in the upper South or regional Midwest might gain on us more than we might like. Springfield is well positioned with universities, healthcare, broadband, financial institutions, and talent pipelines from every age group. It’s time to hit the accelerator, but not to become a different city, to become the best Springfield.
I have come to love the pace of life and the culture of our community which seems not so different from North Carolina where I came from. The majesty of the breeze that always seems to blow through this part of the state, the inherent goodness of the people, as well as the food, hospitality, outdoors, and sense of place take a back seat to no other geography across the fruited plain. Every day, people come to our campus to walk through our grounds, marvel at our trees, and feel the palpable sense of history that infuses our university in this city. There are plenty of other places all over the city that hold the same allure. It’s worth asking the question, “Why can’t we grow and maintain our same quality of life and Southern-Midwestern charm?”
Why can’t we optimize the collective power of our educational horsepower, healthcare systems, expanding tech capacities, and entrepreneurial chops to build a 21st century research park that brings innovation, venture capital, and growth industries to our vicinity? What can’t we expand our housing, access to child care, and continue to add advanced manufacturing spaces and places? Why can’t we unleash the creative and caring spirit that defines us, all while keeping our outdoors and quality of life as beautiful as the 417 ever was? The answer to all is that we can. The question is will we?
My tomatoes barely made it through the Sahara-like summer but my peppers are going strong and may have another crop yet in them. That’s growth. I’m not exactly sure who is gaining on us. But I think looking forward in growth is the better strategy than looking behind and finding out.
Jeff Frederick is president of Springfield's Drury University.
This article originally appeared on Springfield News-Leader: Better for Springfield to grow than fall behind | Opinion
