In the Willsboro Central School auditorium, cartoonist Sid Couchey was drawing on the overhead projector.

He called the squiggles he drew peanuts; to me, they looked like amoebae. I wasn't sure where he was going with them. But then he added a few strokes, a line here, a mark there, and it was as if he had breathed life into them. Suddenly they ceased being amoebae or peanuts and became beings who were angry or hurrying or confused.

Couchey was giving a short lesson on animation. Before that, he spoke about his early art training in New York City, his drawings of Richie Rich, Little Lotta and Little Dot for Harvey Comics.

Couchey is a wonderful raconteur, his humor usually self-deprecating.

"When I was young," he said, "I wrote to Walt Disney for a job. I told him I was ready. Disney wrote back: 'We're not.'"

Couchey was part of an evening presentation at Willsboro called "Sharing the Wisdom." When he finished, Peter Paine delivered the night's second lecture. Educated at Princeton, Oxford and Harvard, Paine is a successful lawyer, chairman of Champlain National Bank and served as a commissioner of the Adirondack Park Agency for 24 years.

Paine traced his family's business in Willsboro — which began with his great-grandfather's pulp mill that eventually became the New York and Pennsylvania Paper Company.

About his own life, Paine noted that some of his success was the result of chance encounters — in one case with the Peugeot automobile family in France.

Concerning the APA, the former commissioner suggested it might be time to "push the pendulum back a bit, towards more development and less conservation" in the Adirondack Park.

When asked about his family's philanthropic efforts in Willsboro, Paine mentioned that those who have been fortunate have a responsibility.

"To whom much is given, much is demanded," he said.

WORDS OF WISDOM
Couchey and Paine offered very different answers to one of education's basic questions: "What do you know now that you didn't know then?"

Looking back over lifetimes of achievements in different contexts, the two men told the audience some of what they've learned in those years.

This is Willsboro's second year of "Sharing the Wisdom," a program Superintendent Steve Broadwell says was inspired by Randy Pausch's "The Last Lecture." In that famous lecture, the 47-year-old Carnegie Mellon University professor, who was dying of pancreatic cancer, saw an opportunity to share with his students the wisdom he'd gathered in the life that was to end 10 months later.

So at his last college class, the computer scientist spoke about achieving the dreams of childhood and what was really important in life.

The overwhelming reaction to Pausch's presentation — visits with Oprah and Diane Sawyer, millions of viewings of the lecture on the Internet, etc. — suggested there is an audience hungry for the personal story filled with wisdom.

And that is what Willsboro Central has tapped into.

"Our goal is to create a venue in which our students and community members have an opportunity to learn from successful people," Broadwell said.

The people invited to speak all have some connection to the local area, to education or both: New York State Regent James Dawson; Rick Dalton, president of College for Every Student; Ralph Marcotte, a longtime Willsboro educator; Nick Muller, former president and CEO of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation; George Hearn, Tony-Award winning Broadway performer; and Willsboro resident Thurston Clarke, whose most recent book is "The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and 82 Days that Inspired America."

It's a simple but effective idea: Ask people to share their knowledge with us. Sid Couchey showed us how to make squiggles come alive. Peter Paine shared his family's history, a history that shaped the town, and reminded us of our responsibility to each other.

There will be more "Sharing the Wisdom" evenings at Willsboro. Good. We need them.

Jerry McGovern, the Press-Republican's coordinator of Newspapers-in-Education, taught in New York state's public schools, and now teaches in the Communication Department of Plattsburgh State. He can be reached at gmcgovern@pressrepublican.com or 565-4126. This column is the opinion of the writer and not necessarily of this newspaper.