Bootstraps

What are you going to do now?

That question has followed Vernell "Chuck" Makell through a lifetime of unexpected turns-through hardship and opportunity, disappointment and loss, service and reinvention.

Raised along the Chesapeake Bay as the youngest of six children, Makell grew up in a family without much material wealth but rich in lessons about work, responsibility, faith, and helping your neighbors. From cutting wood and carrying kerosene as a boy to working on oyster boats, pursuing athletics, serving in the military, and building a career caring for others, he learned early that moving forward often means finding another way when the first path closes.

In Bootstraps, Makell reflects honestly on a life tested by racism, injury, heartbreak, grief, missed opportunities, and difficult choices-and the faith that repeatedly helped him begin again.

For Makell, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps has never meant succeeding alone. It means trusting God, working hard, accepting help when it comes, extending that help to others, and refusing to let adversity have the final word.

Both personal memoir and testament to resilience, Bootstraps is the story of an ordinary boy who believed he could make a way and became a man determined to make a way for others.

Life may close one door without warning. What matters is what you choose to do next.