The Drive Through Villanova

Back in the mid-1970s I was coaching at Roxborough High School in Philadelphia. During the spring before the upcoming season, I was driving our QB, Ken Macdougall, to a spring football practice session at Villanova University. We were hoping to get some information about their offense, the Wishbone, since we were running the same.

On the drive we took the back roads to avoid traffic, and we happened to pass through the well-known and very prestigious Villanova, Pa., zip code. Ken was amazed at the spacious homes with pools and vast landscaping. He admitted that he never knew homes of this magnitude ever existed.

Ken played well for us and graduated from high school. He did not attend college but went right into an apprentice program with Hinkle and McCoy Electrical Contractors, beginning, of course, at the very bottom of the corporate ladder. Through hard work and discipline, Ken worked his way up the corporate ladder to become a corporate executive.

After 42 years of hard work and dedication, Ken, a few years back, moved into that very same Villanova zip code that he once drove through as a senior in high school.

When asked to what he attributed his success, he responded: hard work, along with being willing to work anywhere at any time, and to always be the first on the job and the last to leave. When thinking back, Ken always had the proper state of mind and still does to this day!