SixSeeds welcomes NYT best selling author
December 15th, 2007 was a very chilly evening in the little New England town of Winchester, Massachusetts, but the cold weather and the anticipation of the second snowstorm in three days didn’t stop well over one hundred guests from coming out in force to Town Hall for a SixSeeds event. The event featured our SixSeeds partner and guest speaker, Nathan Whitaker (right). Nathan is the co-author of the New York Times bestselling memoir of Super Bowl champion coach Tony Dungy, Quiet Strength: The Principles, Practices & Priorities of a Winning Life.)
The event, which was privately funded by the Kingstons, also featured great food, desserts and drinks, and music by Billy Novick and Larry Carsman (two well-known Boston musicians).
The relationship between John and Jean Kingston and Nathan and Amy Whitaker goes back over sixteen years to the beginning of Nathan and John’s law school days. Friendship was formed not only in the classroom and on campus, but perhaps especially on the intramural playing fields in a variety of sports competitions. Also, Nathan, John, SixSeeds board member David French, and our CEO Curtis Chang square off every spring in their now almost 20 year old fantasy baseball league (the fount of so many of their shared initiatives over the years!).
And in the past decade, the Kingstons watched with great respect as Nathan and Amy worked their way across the challenges of the cut-throat world of professional football and through much professional agony and ecstasy. Nathan, a collegiate player at Duke, ended up as an executive in the front office of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. One of the best aspects of Nathan's time with the Bucs (other than winning a Super Bowl ring with the franchise - which is serious bling for his fantasy baseball cohort) was forming a deep friendship with Tony Dungy.
Friendships between families defined this event... and SixSeeds as a whole
Out of that friendship grew a common desire to share Tony's story and values with a broader audience. The book, which chronicles Dungy’s approach to life, family and football, has quickly topped the best-seller lists and become one of the top-selling sports books in history.
After the crowd of holiday revelers had plenty of time to mingle, enjoy the music and their dinners, they gathered to view a short film clip highlighting Tony Dungy’s unique and quietly encouraging coaching style. They were then treated to a short conversation with Nathan. Nathan was able to sprinkle in some amusing anecdotes about life in football (i.e. when his gloves caught flame on the freezing sidelines of a Patriots game) while explaining Dungy’s unique ability to balance his work life and the work lives of his players with a strong vision of what he believes are the most important things: his faith and his family.
In a delightful evening filled with such great content, good food and drink, garland and white lights and poinsettias, and great music, perhaps the most enlivening aspects were the relationships that were renewed or built anew. Friendships between families – such as the one between the Whitakers and the Kingstons – are central to the story of SixSeeds. And forming those friendships around a shared desire to align our family lives with our deepest values is the very spirit of SixSeeds.
In that spirit, all of us here at SixSeeds wish you a very blessed Christmas!