Pastor & Career Coach Bestows Perspective
Written by Tim Buckley, June 2023
Pastor Ronnie Brooks delivers an impactful presentation on the power of personal attitude
A bad attitude, like a bad hair day, can be fixed. So says Rev. Ronnie Brooks, pastor and educator, a career coach and program administrator with a half-century of helping others find their way in life.
In April, Rev. Brooks presented at CBEL’s Perspectives on Racial Justice & Reconciliation event. When it comes to attitude, each of us is in the driver’s seat, he said. If you don’t know your attitude is broken, or don’t care, your life will be more about clouds than silver linings. Here’s an example he gave:
“While I was going to college, I also worked at a hamburger restaurant as a cook,” Ronnie said. “Part of my wages included two meals for each shift. Already married, I would invite my wife to the restaurant to have a meal with me.”
“Well, the owner was a nice guy, and generous. His son, who managed the place in his dad’s absence, had a different attitude. One night the son said to me, ‘Ronnie, I don’t want you cookin’ no more, just cleanin’. No more free meals.’ Then he micromanaged my cleaning, yelling at me instead of talking. I think he was putting on a show for a couple of his friends who were there.”
“The next time the owner came in, he asked me what I was doing. ‘Why aren’t you back there cooking?’ I told him that his son had reassigned me,” Ronnie said. “Well, he put me back in the kitchen and talked to his son. But the son never got the message. He must’ve been embarrassed being called out in front of me, so his attitude about me never changed. I ended up quitting because I can’t work like that.” Ronnie said the restaurant failed shortly after the son took over ownership from the dad.
In-person attendees gather together to discuss a breakout question during Pastor Brooks’ April presentation
In order to change one’s attitude, at least two things are necessary:
Self-Awareness. Knowing that something’s off…seeing a pattern of behavior.
Intention. Wanting to do something about it.
Then, these four things can help, Ronnie said:
Developing your attitude, even in times of stress and discouragement.
Adding value to others. Requires generosity of spirit and humility.
Practicing forgiveness. Yes, others, but also yourself.
Having a strong faith in God.
Two stories Ronnie told about his life help to illustrate these points.
“My grandmother had an unshakable attitude, a belief, that people were basically good,” he recalled. “So, when she wrongly got accused of stealing a saltshaker from her employer and then got fired from her long-time housekeeping job because the woman didn’t believe her, my grandmother didn’t make a fuss. She never lost the attitude that was instilled as a girl by her parents.”
“And when a friend of her former boss asked her about what happened, my grandmother didn’t say a mean word. Instead, she only said, ‘She did give me quite a number of years of good employment.” His grandmother had faith. She showed great perspective. And forgiveness.
“Well, two weeks later, the boss’ friend came back to my grandmother and said, ‘Will you come work for me?’ The woman appreciated my grandmother’s attitude and saw value there.”
Here’s another example. When Ronnie was in high school (Wichita Falls, TX), the state was reluctantly integrating the school district. “It was 1970 and I was at Booker T. Washington high school, which was in the mostly Black part of the city,” he said. “Instead of integrating our school, administrators chose to close it and bus everyone to four other schools. It destroyed our classes, and we didn’t graduate together. It was a terrible year for me, and I was bitter,” he said. The loss of the school was a huge blow to the health of a once-vibrant Black community.
That experience may have skewed Ronnie’s attitude towards a belief that all whites were cruel, having no humanity, no compassion for Blacks. He may have carried that attitude into his first years of postsecondary education at Henderson Community College. Then, life experience helped him to change that attitude.
“I was struggling to fill out a class registration,” he remembered. “When I finally turned it in, the professor asked me a couple of questions about why it took me so long. Then he realized that I couldn’t hardly read. Instead of discounting or dismissing me, he told me he supervised the reading lab and offered to work with me on my reading skills. By that time, having not been taught basics in elementary school, the way I improved my reading was by memorization,” he said.
“That experience changed my belief about whites being all bad,” he added. “Since then, I judge people by their character, what they do, rather than generalize.”
After graduating from East Texas State University, Ronnie worked as a speech pathologist for a few years before moving into what would be his career calling: starting and running programs to help students elevate their career aspirations. He worked for 30 years at a branch campus of Texas A&M University before moving to Salem, where he retired after 15 years at McKay high school, “basically doing what I had been doing at Texas A&M.”
In addition to helping students with their beliefs and aspirations, Ronnie also worked with families, helping Principal Cynthia Richardson with Family Night, and inviting parents to change their attitudes about what their children might achieve. “They began to look beyond high school, and beyond college,” he said. By inspiring students to excel academically, and then locating scholarships to help them financially, it opened up a door for a new generation of high achievers and community leadership.
How’s that for attitude changing?