I’m always fascinated by why someone develops perseverance.
Singer Sophie Tucker, known as “The Last of the Red-Hot Mamas,” had perseverance. She was also an actress, comedian, and radio personality with a career that spanned over 70 years.
Her life was tough from the start. She was born on the road while her Jewish parents fled persecution by traveling to America. She began working at her parents’ kosher restaurant at 9 years old.
She started singing for tips. Between taking orders and serving customers, she “would stand up in the narrow space by the door and sing with all the drama I could put into it. At the end of the last chorus, between me and the onions, there wasn’t a dry eye in the place.”
She eloped with a beer cart driver at the age of 16 and soon had a child. The marriage turned bad, and she left her baby with her family to try and make it in New York.
She changed from a child belting out a song in a restaurant to a clever and accomplished singer.
She developed perseverance because she had to. She had little else.