Lefty’s Journey

Ralph DeFalco

 

 

 

 

 

In his youth the little island of Ponza, Italy, the author’s life had been defined by his left-handedness.  He dreamed more than the average child of Ponza.  In ways that the educational system of that time could not measure, his abilities were developed much more rapidly than other children. Lefty’s Journey is the success story of a man who developed independently in an almost autodidactic way and withstood all sorts of trials by his strength of mind.
 
Coming to America, his “dreaminess” and “crooked-handedness” turned into the gold of the American Dream.  Left-handedness became his talisman – the creativity developed in the blue, wide-open spaces of the Mediterrranean vista became his ticket into General Motors, where he became a legendary design innovator. 

Instinct, in his youth in rocky Ponza, made his mind nimble and thus attuned to changes.  Like the canny rams, his ability to find solutions where people normally would see nothing but rock was imprinted into his way of working out problems.  His journey through life, from hard working young man to successful master of his trade, is a sterling example of how a gifted young man, through the work of his hands, might mold himself into what God might have dreamed him to be.