The best advice I got from a painter friend of mine when I said, “If you had one thing to say to an aspiring artist like myself, what would you say?” And she said, “Make as many mistakes as you can.”

He says: Take your gloves off, Mellody, but use your power for good. He's giving me my hands back. Use your power for good. And I have never - I've used that analogy in all things in my life, something as simple as getting my hands back, using my powers for good in the water but also day-to-day life using your power for good no matter who you are.

You know what? Eddie was probably the best leader by example and not so much by words. You know, sometimes if he said something, you know, then you had to stand up and listen to it, but for the most part, he taught me the importance of being there every single day.

I often repeat to them something that — not my mentor, but a senior scientist at the NIH — said to me once. We were having lunch together. I was despondent, despondent because nothing had worked. I had been there a year. And this guy said to me, “Look,” he said, “do you know the difference, Bob, between an average scientist and a world class scientist?” I said no. He said, “Here’s what it is.” He said, “For the average scientist, maybe one percent of their experiments work. But for the world class guy, the world beater, it could be as high as one-and-a-half or two percent.” And then that really stuck with me because it’s really true.

That's a real challenge and a real issue. Reading the statistics, they had a ranking of quarterbacks, and the statistic was the percentage of a touchdown drive after an interception. To me, that is a telling statistic. The guys that have a high percentage are the guys that have short memories. They talk about having amnesia as a quarterback. You better move along from it. It is hard to say you forget about it, because you want to learn from it. You want to address it. You can't just say it never happened.

My dad had such a big influence on me, he was kind of all that wrapped into one. Even if we had a guest speaker at our school, or read something in class, or heard about it, I would always go back and check with him. “Is this right? Would you agree with this, Dad?” He had a big influence on me, so he was the guy I went to for advice and the guy I listened to, and still do today.