True Influence
From an early age Joe was helping his mother and father pay bills, raise his three obnoxious brothers and even help his father run the family gas station (Spillman Services) at the age of thirteen. He quoted, “Be the change you want to see in the world, help others.” He always takes his time to teach me life lessons. Although Joe doesn’t always exactly teach me directly, from my eyes I’ve watched him, I’ve been influenced incredibly.

You ask, who is Joe? Who is this influential man worth writing about? Well, this influential, kind and helping person is my father. He is also the founder of Pizza inn, wings-pizza-n-things, expert furniture company, and many other successful chains of businesses. He founded pizza inn when he was the young age of twenty one, in 1953.
He is currently running wings-pizza-n-things in Dallas, Texas.

Ever since I was thirteen I have been tagging along Joes side observing and contemplating how Joe runs his business with such compassion for others. When you see Joe you might not think he looks so kind. He has long slick black hair with a very bushy mustache like some kind of hardcore biker from the eighties. Although he seems to pull the look off when he goes to work wearing his starched suit with not one wrinkle in it. This is where the quote, “don’t judge a book by its cover” comes in to play. Joe looks as brutal as a lion, but really he’s as fair as Gandhi.

I observe Joe often at his place of work but one day in particular stood out the most to me. It was January 2nd, 2008. Joe was working on some seemingly never ending paper work when a man walked into the office. This was no ordinary man, he had scars on his body along with a miserable smell like he hadn’t showered for weeks. This man got on his knees and said, “I have no place to go. I just got beat up and