Sometimes I'm Just Lucky

Luck has been defined as preparation meeting opportunity.  Sometimes it's just being in the right place at the right time.  In the case of the photo here of former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich,it's more like being told to be in the right place at the right time.

It was April of 1992 and Rep. Gingrich was raising issues that called into question the abuse of power of many of his colleagues in the US House of Representatives.   Not long after he made his accusations that pointed to corruption on the part of others, it was disclosed that he had also been implicated in a few of those questionable practices.  You might say it turned out to be a bit of the pot calling the kettle black, as my mother used to say.

One of the issues he had shed light on was the abuse of checking accounts at the House bank by members of Congress. It turned out that he was also involved in abusing his account there by  bouncing 22 checks.  The day the news broke about Rep. Gingrich, he was at a local high school in the suburb he represented just outside of Atlanta.  The reporter for the New York Times and I went to the high school to get a comment from him.  When we arrived, the school principal told us that Rep. Gingrich was speaking to an assembly and instructed us to wait in the lobby.  As we headed to the area we were told to go to, my eyes lit up.  The high school nickname was the "Raiders" and the image of their mascot painted on the wall of where we were to meet Rep. Gingrich couldn't have been better to tell the story if I had ordered it up.  As you can see from the picture that ran on the front page of The New York Times the next day, lady luck was shining on me.