“Reading that one little book set me on my path,” said Monumental Sports & Entertainment Founder and CEO Ted Leonsis of Ernest Hemmingway’s Old Man and the Sea during his keynote speech at the 18th Annual Everybody Wins! Gala.
With the theme of “Open Books. Open Doors,” the event encouraged Congressmen and elementary-schoolers alike to take a look…because that bright future might be in a book.
Leonsis, admittedly reluctant to crack a book binding early on in life, credited perseverance in reading with driving his success as a young man. He and a room full of business and congressional leaders — many of whom give up a lunchtime each week to read with an impressionable youngster — joined other supporters of the literacy non-profit to highlight the importance of its mentors (and books, of course!)
The storied path won’t necessarily take them out to sea, but it will show what the world has to offer. Because as Leonsis knows so well… “My big fish must be somewhere.” (Hemingway, Old Man and the Sea)
*Image courtesy Everybody Wins! DC
