Here is the full transcript of John Tarantino’s talk titled “Redemption Stories” at TEDxProvidence conference.
In this TEDx talk, John Tarantino shares powerful narratives about overcoming adversity through the experiences of two men, Ralph and John. Ralph, a successful businessman, faces a downfall after using a racial slur, but redeems himself by creating a foundation that combats summer reading loss in schools. This initiative transforms many lives and helps Ralph regain his reputation.
John’s story revolves around his wife Pat’s battle with stage four pancreatic cancer and her remarkable resilience despite the grim prognosis. Pat becomes an ambassador for Ralph’s foundation, even while undergoing treatment, and inspires many. After Pat’s passing, John continues her legacy by creating a foundation focused on cancer research and care, contributing significantly to the community.
Tarantino concludes by emphasizing the power of hope and redemption, urging everyone to believe in their capacity for transformation and positive change.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
Good afternoon, everyone. I’d like you to close your eyes, and I want you to think about the worst thing that you’ve ever said, the worst thing that you’ve ever done, and the worst thing that has ever happened to you.
And I want you to imagine that there’s no escape from that. That moment is frozen in time forever, and you will be judged by that worst thing you ever said, the worst thing that you’ve ever done, and the worst thing that has ever happened to you.
Now, if you open your eyes, you’ll see that, thank God, that’s not the actual world that we live in. There is movement forward from that worst moment. There is an escape. There is contrition. There is atonement. And there is redemption.
I want you to think about your own redemption stories as I tell the stories of two men, Ralph and John. And these two men were very good friends for decades. They were business associates. And they each had something devastating happen to them. And in each case, as you will see as I tell these stories, they transformed not only themselves through redemption but they were able to transform the communities in which they live. So let’s begin with Ralph’s story.
Ralph’s Story of Redemption
Ralph was a highly successful businessman. He was a captain of industry. At one point in time, Ralph’s companies employed more than 14,000 people across the United States. He was born and raised in Providence, 14,000 people, remarkable. And Ralph was popular. He was financially successful. He had a great reputation. Everyone wanted a piece of Ralph. They wanted him as a client and a customer and a friend and a business colleague. And they wanted him on their boards because Ralph was successful.
And one day in May of 2007, Ralph was in a board meeting. And that board meeting became fiery, controversial, heated, tempers flared. It became personal. And during the course of that meeting, in a moment of anger and frustration, Ralph used a racial slur. Now, we could try to give context to it or explain how or why it might have happened, but that’s an excuse. And there is no excuse for using that racial slur. Ralph apologized immediately. And it was a sincere apology. He was contrite. He was sorry about it. And the board members accepted his apology.
And later that day, some members of the board contacted the media. And they told the media about what Ralph had said, even though they said they had accepted his apology.
And the next day, on the front page of the paper, was a picture of Ralph and a story about what he had said. And he was on all the news stations, all the radio talk shows, and all of those media outlets characterized Ralph as a bigot and a racist in that one moment in time. And everyone who had wanted to be close to Ralph, everyone who wanted Ralph in their corner, abandoned him. He was a pariah. He was an outcast.
Even people who knew him well made believe, “I don’t know Ralph,” because of that one moment in time. And Ralph went to his friend, John, who was also at that board meeting, and he said, “John, what am I going to do? I built my reputation over decades. It was a great reputation. It’s ruined. It’s ruined now. What am I going to do?”
And his friend John said to him, “Ralph, there’s a difference between character and reputation. Character is who you are. And if you haven’t changed who you are, if you are the same person that you were before that awful moment in time, then you can rebuild your reputation. If your character has changed, well, that’s a problem. But if you are the same person, we can work together to rebuild your reputation.”
And that’s what they set out to do. Ralph and his friend John and Ralph’s wife Barbara decided that they would do everything that they could, not by words but by deeds, to rebuild Ralph’s reputation. And they started out quietly and softly under the radar. They didn’t ask for publicity. They didn’t buy ads on television or the newspaper about what they were doing.
But what they did was they went into the third grade of a core city school, and they said to the teacher, “What is the biggest problem you have?” And the teacher said, “Summer reading loss. Our children don’t read over the summer. And when they come back to school in September, they’re three months behind, and they never catch up.”
And so what Ralph and Barbara decided to do was to put together a program to combat summer reading loss. And what they did was they purchased six books per child, age-appropriate. And they said to the children, “If you read these books over the summer, and you come back in September and prove to your teachers you’ve read these books, then not only will you have the enjoyment from reading the books,” — and for many of these students, it was the first time they ever owned a book of their own — “You come back, you prove you read the books, we’ll give you each a thousand dollar scholarship for college.”
And when they came back in September, it was an amazing success.
Those kids read the books. They loved the books. They loved the reading. They did better in school, and they each got a thousand dollars.
And what did the kids say? “Can we do it again?” And so what started as a small program in one grade, third grade, in one school, over the course of time, spread to many schools and many grades in our state. And Ralph and Barbara donated millions of dollars, millions of dollars, to combat summer reading loss, and millions of dollars in scholarships.
And those children, the ones that were in the third grade, a few years ago graduated high school and went into college. Great colleges across our country. And many of them have now graduated from graduate school. Amazing careers. Wonderful stories. And when they were interviewed about that early program, they said, “That program changed our lives, transformed our lives. We not only learned to read, we loved to read. It expanded our horizons. It gave us the courage to do things we never thought we could do by learning and reading.” And now they’re amazing success stories.
Now Ralph and Barbara saw that transformation and they said, “If we can do this in those schools, imagine what we can do in the communities of color in our state.” And that was their dream: To transform the communities of color in our state.
Now unfortunately, Ralph became very ill. Very ill. And Ralph knew he was going to die. But Ralph wanted that legacy to continue. He wanted more than what had just been accomplished. And so he and John and Barbara decided that after Ralph passed, they would form a new foundation and it would do just that: To transform lives in our state.
And at the end, when Ralph was very ill, he talked to John again and he said, “John, my character has stayed the same. But where is my reputation today?” And John said, “Just look at the children. Look at the children, the hundreds and hundreds of children that you have helped. Look at their families. Look at what you have done in the community. The community has embraced you again. You have your reputation again, Ralph.”
And Ralph said, “I also want to thank you and Barbara because you know the biblical saying that it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.” And he said, “I have been a very rich man, but together you have shown me how to use my money for good. And maybe now I can squeeze through that gate.”
And John said, “The prayers of the community, the love of the community, the way the community respects you, Ralph, they will push those gates open for you and you will be welcomed.”
And after Ralph passed, Barbara did exactly what they had planned, and she formed a new foundation to transform the lives of the communities of color in our state. And today, that foundation has given more than $63 million in education grants, health care grants, criminal justice, civil justice, entrepreneurship, technology training, on and on and on. More than 250 organizations have been funded by that foundation.
Now, is that a success story? That’s an amazing success story. In my view, every time one of those donations is made, you can view it as an act of contrition or as I do, as an act of redemption. An act of redemption. And Barbara and Ralph proved, beyond a reasonable doubt, that there is such a thing as redemption. Ralph and Barbara. Now let’s go to John’s story.
John’s Journey Through Tragedy and Triumph
John was the friend who talked about the difference between character and reputation. Well, years later, John had his own devastating moment. Very different than Ralph’s, but devastating. John’s wife of almost 45 years, her name was Pat, out of the blue one day, she started to experience pain in her hip. And she went to the doctor and she was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. There is a zero survival rate for stage four pancreatic cancer. Zero. It’s a death sentence. Nothing can be done.
And when Pat and John met with her oncologist, a wonderful man, skillful, knowledgeable, compassionate, and he gave them that diagnosis, he asked, “Do you want a prognosis? Do you want to know how long you have to live?” And Pat immediately said, “No, I do not want to be cabined. I don’t want to be cabined by a thought of how much time I may have to live. Only God knows that. And whether He gives me a day, a week, a month, a year, however long He gives, what’s the important thing is that I choose to live my life every day with grace and to do good and to help others and to help my family. Cancer isn’t going to define me. I’m going to continue to lead the life I had for as long as God gives me.”
And she went about doing it in a remarkable way. Again, it shows how these lives are intersected. And Ralph and Barbara’s foundation, well, Pat became an ambassador for that foundation while she was undergoing chemo.
So when she was in an oncologist’s office, a radiologist’s office, a surgeon’s office, or undergoing infusion, whenever she saw a healthcare worker of color, she recruited that person to come into the foundation to take advantage of the training programs and the scholarships. And Pat was, and to this day still is, the greatest recruiter that that foundation has ever seen. Remarkable, while she was undergoing cancer treatment for a disease she knew was going to kill her.
The Struggles and Strength of John
Now John, on the other hand, he didn’t do as well. He wasn’t as strong and as courageous as his wife. He struggled. He was afraid of the cancer. He was afraid of the effect that it was having on himself and his wife and his family. He was afraid. But he did everything that he could to honor his wife.
And people would come to John and they would say, “John, your wife is a saint.” And he said, “I view her as a different heavenly figure. I view her as an archangel warrior, the kind with the blazing sword in her fight against pancreatic cancer.” She fought every day of her life. But stage four pancreatic cancer, as I said, is a death sentence. There’s no escape from it.
So John and Pat together decided that they would not let her death be a dividing line. She would pass to a better place. But the fight against pancreatic cancer here in our state, that fight had to continue. And as Pat passed, she passed that sword to John so that he would continue the fight every day.
And they came together as a couple and they said, “What we’re going to do is we’re going to take the life insurance policies on Pat’s life, which were very substantial, and we’re going to donate the proceeds of those to cancer research. We’re also going to take the home, the beautiful home that we have lived in for the last 33 years, and we’re going to donate the proceeds of that home to cancer research.” And that’s a lot. That’s good.
The Legacy of John and Pat
That’s great. But it’s still not going to be enough. They decided that when Pat passed, John would also form a foundation. And his foundation would work with Ralph and Barbara’s foundation together, again, an intersection of lives. And they would work together to transform cancer care in our state.
To make Rhode Island first class, they recruited top physicians from around the country to come here and lead a new cancer lab. Together, Barbara’s foundation and John’s foundation worked with the doctors here to form what is called the future generation of cancer research, recruiting young students in high school today of color who are brilliant to become oncologists and cancer researchers and hematologists, and to stay in our state when they do so, and transform our state so that patients in our state will see doctors who look like them, who know their cultures, and they will not appear to be foreign to them. And millions of dollars have been donated to do just that.
Now, is that a success story? Well, if you look at John today, he used to have a big, beautiful home, and now he lives in a small apartment. He had a wife of 45 years, whom he loved. Now he lives alone. But John is no longer afraid of cancer. He knows the battle can be won. He knows it. That sword, it’s not only taken up by John, it’s taken up by everybody in the community, fighting together, fighting that demon together.
Now one day, one day, there will be a cure. And John prays every day that he’s alive when that happens. So with whatever strength he has left, when that day happens, he can shout at the top of his lungs, “Pancreatic cancer, Pat has beaten you. Not for herself, but for the community, for everyone.” Now I can tell you these stories of John and Ralph because I lived them. I’m John, and that’s my wife.
A Message of Hope and Redemption
So I want to leave you with this. The motto of our state is hope, and that’s a motto and it’s a slogan. But it’s much, much more than that. Because redemption and hope are real. They’re real things. Every one of you has a redemption story or will have one. Believe in them. Because if you believe, then hope always finds a way. Always.