It’s been said in gambling circles that life is the ultimate wild card. You wake up each morning with no idea of what may come your way or how you will respond. In the last few years, Detroit jewelry designer Donna Sadler, entrepreneur Nadine Thompson, and tennis pro James Blake all endured devastating personal crises. Here, they talk candidly about their experiences and how they’ve been reshaped and, ultimately, renewed by it all. Their collective message: We each have the capacity to triumph over anything.
FINDING HIDDEN TREASURE IN THE MIDST OF DEEP LOSS
On a crisp December night in Motown in 1971, Albert Sadler was leaving a party when college co-ed Donna Davis walked in. Their eyes met and he instantly opted to stay. It was the first time Albert, a Chrysler employee, would change his plans to accommodate the lady he fell for, but it would hardly be the last.
When Donna started a singing group a few years later, Albert left his job to manage it. The group racked up 16 gold and platinum albums as backup singers for top names like James Brown and Aretha Franklin. The two later married.
In 1984, Donna launched a handmade accessories company. “I had been making and selling jewelry and snakeskin belts for about a year. I’d even filled orders for major stores, but when Al asked me how much money I made, I had no idea,” she recalls, laughing.
So Al, a computer geek, sat down and created a spreadsheet and helped his wife write a business plan. “It wasn’t until I saw it in black and white that I really viewed it as a business,” says Donna. “So, in that way, Al gave me my start.”
The partners in life once again became partners in business. Naming the company for its creative force, Donna D, the couple later opened a store. With no official title, Al became a jack-of-all-trades, managing the books, tracking inventory, creating a Website, and personally hooking anklets around prospective buyers’ legs when needed.
It was a shock of the worst kind when Al died suddenly in 2000. Donna was dressing for a meeting and Al was sitting on their bed. “He stopped talking,” she recalls. “I turned around and he had fallen over from a heart attack.” He was 55.
The blow was all consuming. “When you’ve been part of a team for 28 years and then someone’s gone, you don’t even know who you are,” says Donna. “Al had always taken care of everything, and he was meticulous. I knew almost nothing about the business of things. Shortly after he passed, our Website went down. When I couldn’t get it back up, my son asked if I’d paid the bill and I said, ‘What bill?’ It was one of those things Al had always just handled.”
Rejecting suggestions from others to fill some of Al’s roles, Donna insisted on going it alone. “It’s difficult to think about replacing someone, especially when it’s your husband. The only people I let in were my children, and I was amazed at how much they knew about the business. They’d just absorbed it over the years.”
One recommendation she did take proved critical. “I was advised not to make any major decisions for a year,” she says. Luckily, the business was sound and Donna continued to create new merchandise so there were no urgent decisions to be made. “Taking my time, going through all of Al’s files helped bring me closer to him and to see my business in a whole new light.”
But she still faced some black holes. Most notably, she soon learned that during a time when they were strapped for cash, Al’s life insurance policy had lapsed. “Financially, things were hard, but how could I be mad? He did whatever he had to do to make us OK. Now, it was my turn.”
Today Donna, 55, is more than OK. Last year, she moved her shop to a space in downtown Detroit’s new Compuworld headquarters.
Donna D has also regained its footing, thanks to a loyal and growing clientele. Donna is currently looking for investors to help launch stores in Las Vegas and Florida.
Unafraid to make mistakes, to step out on faith, or go it alone, Donna says she is fueled by the goals she’s always had, as well as by a desire to honor her husband’s memory. “I don’t know if Al achieved all his dreams, because he was always busy helping me try to achieve mine,” she says. “But I know he would be really thrilled and proud of me. And he’s still with me, guiding me. I feel him all the time.”
FLYING HIGH IN THE FACE OF INTOLERANCE
From the 17,000 women who sell her company’s richly scented potions to the broad network of friends she has cultivated throughout her journey from social worker to CEO, Nadine Thompson seems to draw in folks with her generosity, intelligent grace, and kindness.
Warm Spirit is not merely the name of the $14 million bath-and-body products company she runs from her Exeter, New Hampshire, home base; it’s also an apt description of Thompson herself.
But on a clear June morning in 2003, when a Southwest Airlines employee boarded her Chicago-bound plane and asked to speak with her in the Jetway, Thompson, 44, was stumped by his suggestion that for her “comfort and safety” she’d have to purchase another ticket. It was only once she refused and returned to her seat that it dawned on her.
Months earlier, Thompson had read an article about Southwest’s policy requiring obese people who cannot comfortably occupy one seat to purchase two, but she took little notice of it. Now, even as she buckled her seatbelt and put her armrest down, her resolve was melting into uncertainty and fear. “I’m thinking, that policy’s not about me. I fly all the time. I’m fat, but I’m not that fat. This can’t be happening.” Anxiety made her gather her things and get off the plane.
What ensued will no doubt be hotly debated in a New Hampshire courtroom in February if the civil suit against Southwest Airlines goes to trial. At press time, no settlement had been reached despite an October meeting between the parties. Thompson’s Boston-based lawyer, Neil Osborne, said he is fully expecting a trial.
Southwest declined to state their version of events for this article, but Thompson is crystal clear on hers. She was led out of the airport’s departure lounge that day, flanked by two armed sheriffs who were waiting at the gate when she exited the plane. “Hundreds of people were circling, staring,” Thompson recalls. “I kept my eyes glued to the ground and just kept walking. It was the most humiliating experience of my life.”
While Thompson has let her attorney deal with the airline, she has confronted deep personal demons and withstood very public scrutiny. The New Hampshire Union Leader and The New York Times reported on the incident. In response to the publicity, she’s received reams of mail, some supportive, some hateful and cruel.
After initial bouts of anger, self-doubt, and self-blame, Thompson’s doctor prescribed antidepressants, which helped, but only moderately. “My friends would say, ‘Look what you’ve accomplished! You’re beautiful, you’re great, you’ll be fine.’ But nobody knew what I was going through. Nobody understood the pain I was in.”
Convinced that only a drastic change in her physical self would relieve her anguish, Thompson decided to have gastric bypass surgery. She cancelled when her insurance carrier refused coverage.
In the meantime, psychotherapy had proved a revelation. “It made me start asking myself questions about who I really want to be and what matters most to me?” she says. “I started this company from nothing, and I am highly confident being out there, speaking to thousands of women about how to empower and take care of themselves, and yet here I was not doing a good job of taking care of myself.”
Thompson has since hired a personal trainer and is more careful about reserving time for herself. She has prioritized some
long-deferred health issues and gained a heightened appreciation for how fortunate she is.
Says Thompson: “I was able to pay for a lawyer. I was able to call well-educated, well-connected friends for support and advice. I have a wonderful family. I am so privileged. But what if I wasn’t? I have to speak up for those who aren’t.” That’s where the trial comes in, but Thompson knows that the odds are not in her favor. In class action suits challenging the airline’s policy regarding obese passengers, Southwest has consistently prevailed, according to Osborne. But, he adds, Southwest has not encountered a suit of this kind.
“Southwest’s policy applies to someone who cannot sit in a seat with the armrest down,” Osborne explains. “Clearly, that didn’t apply to Nadine. So our presumption is that her race or gender must have played a role. The way their policy is carried out, it’s always a subjective call. The risk of discriminatory behavior in enforcing it is therefore very high.”
Thompson wants the policy changed. She is resolved to see it through, no matter the outcome.
“I stood up for something I thought was wrong, and I showed up every step of the way. If I didn’t do what I could to make sure no one else is ever treated the way I was, I don’t know if I could live with myself. That part of me has nothing to do with how much I weigh. That’s just who I am, and that’s something no verdict can change.”
WINNING ISN’T EVERYTHING, IT’S THE PEOPLE THAT COUNT
Sixteen months after breaking his neck, U.S. tennis star James Blake, 26, squared off against Grand Slam champ Andre Agassi in the 2005 U.S. Open quarterfinals. While he lost to Agassi in a grueling five-sets, that day marked one of the greatest comeback stories in the history of tennis. On May 6, 2004, Blake and his practice partner, Robby Ginepri, were lobbing the ball. Ginepri hit a drop shot that Blake chased down. When Blake went to slide, his foot got caught and he slammed head first into the metal net post.
“I remember my coach just running to get someone to call an ambulance and being on the ground for about 20 minutes before they got there,” Blake says. As he lay there unable to move, Ginepri and a few others carefully rolled Blake onto his back. Pain ripped through his body.
“But the scariest part was the uncertainty at the hospital and just not knowing what I was in for,” Blake adds. As it turned out, he had broken his neck. Right before hitting the post, he turned his head, avoiding a downward fall that could have paralyzed him.
A full recovery was very likely, his doctors told him. But the good news was overshadowed by news that his father, Thomas Blake Sr., was losing his battle against cancer. An unexpected trip home was a bittersweet reunion. Two weeks after Blake shed his neck brace, his father died. Blake had been home for about a month.
“It gave me an opportunity to be home with my father,” Blake said. “It gave me a chance to get a lot of my emotions out and be a part of my father’s life in those last few weeks.”
As if that weren’t enough tragedy for one man, about a week after his father’s funeral, Blake woke up in tremendous pain. The left side of his head was covered in a rash resembling chicken pox, and he couldn’t move the left side of his face. The diagnosis was shingles.
“One of my friends came in and started laughing,” Blake says. “My face was half-paralyzed, IVs going in me, and I was in the hospital bed with shingles.”
Today, Blake is back on his feet and feeling good. Despite a rough year, he continued to work hard on the courts. Now, ranked No. 24, he’s earned more than $2.3 million in his six-year career, and he’s headed to the Australian Open this month. Yet, through the series of events that nearly derailed his career, Blake says he’s learned several lessons.
“I think some people don’t appreciate how good they have it until things are taken away,” he says, looking back. “I had pretty much everything taken away — my vision was blurry, my balance was off, my taste was messed up, I lost partial hearing in one ear, and my smile was taken away. When you have things like that taken away, you realize that there are a million things that you do on a daily basis that you take for granted.
“I just try to take it all in and to think of what my father always taught me: to work hard and to be proud of what I do,” he says. “I don’t have the physical voice of my father telling me that every day, but I still hear him in my head.”