Wednesday With Mitch
Posted at 1:46:20 PM by Jim Harris

Mitch Albom, the Detroit-based sports columnist, author, playwright and frequent ESPN contributor, addressed the Clinton School of Public Service's first scholarship luncheon, using the education he received from Morrie Schwarz of Albom's "Tuesdays With Morrie" as a basis of life lessons.

"Tuesdays With Morrie," which Albom wrote after the death of his Brandeis University professor and friend to help pay for medical expenses Schwartz incurred during his lengthy illness, was made into an Emmy-winning TV movie as well as an Off-Broadway play. The Arkansas Repertory Theatre performed "Tuesdays With Morrie" during its '06-07 season.

Anyone who saw that moving play could have related to Albom's speech Wednesday, which Skip Rutherford, the dean of the Clinton School of Public Service, said was "maybe the best speech I've heard, ever."

A Wally Allen Ballroom at the Statehouse Convention Center was filled, the audience heard a talk that was a emotional as the "Tuesdays With Morrie" book or play. Besides being an acclaimed writer, Albom possesses the talents of a storytellor and Seinfeld-like comic observer of life, too, and those qualities were everpresent on Wednesday.

Albom was close to his professor during college, but he said he went 16 years without any contact, until one Friday night he was watching ABC's "Nightline," which had a special on a Boston area professor, stricken with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or "Lou Gehrig's Disease," spending his last days teaching a course about dying. Albom rekindled their friendship, and as the title says, spent every Tuesday thereafter with Schwartz.

The lessons Albom learned in those last weeks with Schwartz from his professor centered around giving rather than taking -- "Giving makes me feel like I'm living," he quoted Schwartz, and realizing that all of the material gains mean nothing compared to family and friendships, and that you live on through how you've touched others.

"Forgive everyone everything. It's just not worth it," Albom said.

Also, Albom said, "Death ends a life, not a relationship. But you must invest in those relationships while you're living to make them keep going ... That's how you live on. That's how you are remembered. One life, touching another, that touches another."

Albom, while well known as a sportswriter, novelist ("The Five People You Meet in Heaven" among his nine books) and sports TV face, is also devoted to causes in his home of Detroit, founding three charities aimed at disadvantaged families, underprivileged children gaining exposure to the arts, and the homeless.

The crowd at the luncheon was well represented by men and women, many who may not know of Albom from his sports work, but through his books like "Tuesdays With Morrie," the New York Times bestseller and which is the most successful memoir in history.

He closed by noting his audience and adding, "Look how much Morrie's classroom has grown."
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