by Gila Hayes
A few days ago, my team and I attended what was once the preeminent yearly gathering of armed citizens -- the National Rifle Association Annual Meeting. With the election of our friend John Richardson (photo, below) and a goodly number of other men and women who are willing to jump out of the proverbial frying pan and into the fire to try to save the 154-year old organization, I pray for cohesiveness amongst armed citizens in the coming decades, because I don’t think anything else can save this fallen giant.
In my opinion, yes, it will take decades. Snippy comments and pointed barbs have focused on the ousted executive vice president for about five years now. The time to stop pointing fingers passed quite some time ago. Are the glory days of heavily attended Annual Meetings gone forever? What reduced this once grand event from attendance by crowds so big that returning to our exhibit after a visit to the food court for lunch was almost certain to end with the lunch plates either clutched to your chest or spilt on the aisle carpet? For the past few years, carrying lunches back to the booth crew has been unfortunately smooth sailing with no human traffic jams to negotiate. This year was also far smaller than the glory years.
Over the weekend just past, these thoughts were hard to ignore, as armed citizens gathered in Atlanta, GA for the 2025 Annual Meeting. Leadership is a big challenge, one that starts at grassroots levels, ascends to state organizations, climbs the ladder to the board of directors and up to the executive offices – be that a corner office in a nice office building or a desk on the side of a factory floor. Leaders would do well to enjoy a re-reading of the classic fictionalized history of the Spartans, Gates of Fire.
I don’t generally read historical fiction; real life is weird enough without analyzing it through the smudgy lens of a novelist’s imagination. Several times now, I’ve put aside my general disdain to read and reread Gates of Fire. Recently, I indulged in an audio book performance of the story.
For me, Pressfield’s account of the battle of Thermopylae is a novel about how legitimate leaders earn loyalty. As the story goes, faced with overwhelming discrepancy between the size of his army and the army of the Persians, the Spartan king Leonidas leads a suicide mission to a mountain pass. That sounds pretty grim, but the fictionalization of that historic battle and its participants is so very engaging that at the end, I had to ask, “Did I just enjoy a story in which the most prominent characters were killed?”
Loyalty all up and down the organizational chart depends on the quality of leadership. In Pressfield’s telling, although king, Leonidas bore the same hardships as his army. “They could see their king, at nearly sixty, enduring every bit of misery they did. And they knew that when battle came, he would take his place not safely in the rear, but in the front rank, at the hottest and most perilous spot on the field.”
Finding the defensive wall at the pass broken down, the Spartans dither and argue about how to and who should repair it until their gray-haired king picked up one stone, positioned it and placed another beside it. The book draws a compelling picture:
“The men looked on dumbly as their commander in chief, whom all could see was well past sixty, stooped to seize a third boulder. Someone barked: ‘How long do you imbeciles intend to stand by, gaping? Will you wait all night while the king builds the wall himself?’ With a cheer the troops fell to. Nor did Leonidas cease from his exertions when he saw other hands joined to labor, but continued alongside the men as the pile of stones began to rise into a legitimate fortress. ‘Nothing fancy, brothers,’ the king guided the construction. ‘For a wall of stone will not preserve Hellas, but a wall of men.’”
Gates of Fire is narrated in the voice of Xeones, who is not high-ranking enough to hold full citizenship. In the story, the Persians capture him and learn the story through Xeones’ deathbed telling. On leadership, he tells Persian king Xerxes, “A king does not abide within his tent while his men bleed and die upon the field. A king does not dine while his men go hungry, nor sleep when they stand at watch upon the wall. A king does not command his men’s loyalty through fear nor purchase it with gold; he earns their love by the sweat of his own back and the pains he endures for their sake. That which comprises the harshest burden, a king lifts first and sets down last. A king does not require service of those he leads but provides it to them. He serves them, not they him.”
For me, leadership is distilled into the final six words: “He serves them, not they him.”