Wayne lost his football scholarship to the University of Southern California due to a body surfing accident. He went on to become a legend.  Quoted as, “Courage is being scared to death but saddling up anyway.”

Did you know, Wayne spent years making B-movies before hitting it big?  He was born in 1907 and his original career path was that of attorney.  He enrolled at USC on a football scholarship but soon lost it due to a broken collar bone.  His coach got him a job as a prop boy for John Ford at Fox in 1926.  In 1930, he was cast in a leading role but the movie was a box office failure.  This failure set him on the path of B-movie movie star.

In 1939, Ford went to bat for Wayne to get him cast in the movie Stagecoach which made him a mainstream star.  However, it was an additional ten years before Wayne rose to become a movie war hero.  That’s 23 years of hard work and persistence, not to mention the heartache of having his dream of becoming an attorney crushed.

Because of Wayne’s persistence and the people he met along the way, his coach who got him the job at Fox and Ford who went to bat for him, he was able to rise to box office stardom.  Wayne also credits his acting style to his friend, Wyatt Earp. Earp was the inspiration for the John Wayne swagger.

Additionally, John Wayne tried several times to join the military.  He was, however, rejected each time.  His widow suggested that his patriotism in later decades sprang from guilt.  She wrote, “He would become a ‘super patriot’ for the rest of his life trying to atone for staying home.”

Wayne’s epitaph reads:

Tomorrow is the most important thing in life.  Comes into us at midnight very clean.  It’s perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands.  It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday.

No matter your mistakes, there is always tomorrow.  And the results of tomorrow are up to us.  Learn from your mistakes and get back in the saddle.  No one is perfect.  We all make mistakes and sometimes, times change.  As those times, change, we change if allowed.  But certain characteristics are to be admired regardless.  Wayne’s perseverance is definitely admirable.  Without perseverance, few accomplish much.