Pressure Makes Diamonds. Valerie Graves

      Introduction

      Mining for Gold in Muddy Water . . . Returning the Page

      The city of Pontiac, Michigan was celebrating its 150th birthday in March 2011, and my role in the festivities was “hometown girl made good.” Being honored as a lifetime achiever by Pontiac is no small thing—my hometown has produced two Olympic gold medalists, renowned jazz musicians Hank, Thad, and Elvin Jones, and the noted playwright Phillip Hayes Dean, a Chicago native whose family moved to Pontiac when he was young. I am flattered and pleased, though the achievements for which the city recognized me could never have happened if I had stayed within its boundaries. I could describe my blessings as unimaginable, except for my belief that they came to me precisely because of my imagination.

      My life in New York and improbable career in advertising have taken me into the world of famous people, from President Clinton, Bill Cosby, and Johnnie Cochran to Magic Johnson, Beyoncé, Jay-Z, and Spike Lee. Advertising Age magazine once named me one of the best and brightest in a mostly white industry. The leading organization in multicultural advertising has awarded me the standing of “Legend.” I have been a senior vice president of Motown Records, home of musicians I idolized during my youth in Pontiac. The work I am lucky enough to do for a living, my hometown watches on TV. That night in Michigan, my fellow honorees would include a retired NBA basketball star, a billionaire real estate developer, a noted author, a legendary union leader, and an award-winning New York journalist. I wondered how many of them, like me, were motivated to succeed by the feeling that their hometowns were too small to hold their dreams. Had they, like me, ever fallen from grace and had to pick themselves up? I thought of the years I had spent longing to leave Pontiac in order to “make good,” and of the time I had spent clawing at the imaginary walls that held me there. I even wondered if a bit of prodigal confession should be part of my remarks.

      On the way to the program where I was to be honored, I attempted to drive through the former site of the public housing project where I grew up, only to find it impenetrably reclaimed by nature. The sapling trees of my childhood were now tall and strong obstructions to my attempt to revisit the past, and the land was overgrown with thick brush, grasses, and cattail reeds. The location of my childhood home once again belongs to creatures that were there long before me, and nature’s reliable cycle of destruction and resurrection was not to be interrupted. Gone was the horseshoe-shaped drive where fresh-off-the-line cars had once cruised in search of fast young girls. A pleasant

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