My name is Hope and this is my story:

In early 2002, I found myself standing alone, staring down at a newly carved gravestone. I'd made the trip back to New York from the west coast for the first time since my father had lost his battle with brain cancer two years earlier. It was my first look at the inscription I'd chosen for my father, although I'd seen the gravestone before. Nine years earlier, I'd buried my brother there, a life cut too short by AIDS.

The reality of having lost them both was almost more than I could bear. I was filled with bittersweet memories and some regrets over what might have been.

Then it struck me. What was left behind when we died was so simple, on the surface: a name our parents had chosen for us and dates of our birth and death, both of which we have absolutely no control over. And connecting the dates was a dash. Our entire life, and what we chose to do with it, was represented in the end by a mere dash. Two hundred years from now, a person walking by our gravestone would have no idea who we were or what was important to us.

Our legacy cannot be carved on a stone.

At the time, my grief was so overwhelming I couldn't stop crying. My stepfather had also passed away shortly after my father, and my marriage of twenty-three years was ending. Sometimes it was hard for me to breathe.

Standing there, I was reminded of something my mother frequently told me. "Life is not a dress rehearsal,"she'd say. "You don't get to do it over again, so enjoy it." It was a phrase she'd seen on a card somewhere and it had stuck with her and guided her life.

I laid down the roses I'd brought for my father and brother and walked over to another nearby gravesite where my grandparents were buried. All my life I'd been told I was a lot like my grandmother, stubborn and full of conviction. I placed some of the roses I'd brought next to the evergreen trees we'd planted years before and I made a promise to my Yiayia (Greek for grandmother).

"I'm going to make my dash count for something," I told her as I wiped the tears from my face.

On the plane back to Seattle, the idea and the phrase took hold in my mind and wouldn't let go. "Make the dash count" began repeating in my head, and the power of the phrase slowly and surely began to replace the grief I'd been feeling. For the first time, I felt like there was a chance that my faith in myself might be restored.

When I returned home, something had changed. I told my son, who was 12 at the time, about the promise I'd made to my grandmother. As he left for school that morning I gave him a kiss, told him I loved him, and shouted after him as he ran out the door, "Make the dash count today."

Most mornings, that became his send off. Once the concept was born, it became a permanent part of our consciousness.

One night after I returned, I relayed this story to a dear friend over dinner and a glass of wine. She was so taken by the phrase, that she told me I should "patent" it. "It's like Nike's 'Just Do It," she said. I laughed at the time, but whenever we were together with our friends, she would encourage me to tell my story.

One evening, she called and insisted we get together because she had a gift for me. Totally by coincidence, my divorce was final that day and I was beginning a new chapter in my life. Her gift to me was a beautiful crystal paperweight shaped like a star. She had purchased one for me and one for herself, both inscribed with the phrase "Make the Dash Count," to sit on our desks as daily reminders. She told me she knew I was going to do something with this simple, yet wonderful, phrase. I was touched by her faith in me but still laughed at the idea of patenting the slogan.

In the meantime, unbeknownst to me, the story traveled among my friends and even on to some of their children. One night my son Geoff came home from a middle-school dance and said, "Mom, you're never going to believe what happened tonight". He'd been sitting off to the side watching the kids dance and his classmate Dayna had come over to him and said, "Hey Geoff, what are you doing sitting over here by yourself? How come you're not out there making the dash count?" Geoff looked at me and said, "Mom, the kids are using your slogan. How do they know about that?"

I had shared the story with Dayna's mom and apparently she'd shared the message with her children. It must have made quite an impression on a 12-year-old girl for her to remember it and begin using it.

The very next morning, I stopped laughing, got on the Internet and went to the U.S. Patent Office website and applied for a trademark on "Make the Dash Count." My friends asked me what I was going to do with it. I told them I had absolutely no idea, but I assured them that when the idea came to me, I'd let them know!

Once the application was on its way, I set off in what I thought was an unrelated direction. I began to focus on how to make my own dash count.

This meant finally doing something that I'd always wanted to do: get involved in the wine business. My grandfather started making wine in his basement in Greenwich Village, New York during Prohibition. My mom used to tell me stories about stomping the grapes with her bare feet. My mother later owned a wine shop in Westport, Connecticut for many years and that's where I got the bug. I would run the shop while she and my stepfather went on vacations. It was where I received my first tutorial on wine. I helped put myself through college by tending bar and--you guessed it--pouring wine.

In my twenties I became an investor in a vineyard in a strange-sounding place called Yakima, Washington. I never actually saw the vineyard and had no clue where Yakima was. In fact, it was years after I sold my interest in the vineyard that I finally set foot in the state that I now call home.

 

But my fascination with the wine industry grew. It's always seemed to me to be a passionate place full of passionate people, from the growers who toil in the ground to grow the perfect fruit to the winemakers who add their own style to the blend. Together they strive to achieve the ultimate result: juice in a bottle that ends up on a table, surrounded by family or friends and eliciting conversation, which I believe is the lost art of the twenty-first century.

You don't rush through life with wine on the table.

It makes the food taste better and the celebration more sweet. It brings families, friends and sometimes strangers together, whether for the harvest, the crush, the bottling parties, the wine tasting events, the winemaker dinners, or maybe just that romantic picnic under the cherry tree where promises are made and dreams hatched.

It encompasses the complete circle. You have to get your hands in the earth to plant the vines and your hands in the water to wash away the last drops from the wine glass. We toast with it to celebrate birth and to remember a dash well lived. We cry over it, laugh over it, give it as gifts and share it with friends. Those in the industry share a special bond with a fraternity of fellow winemakers who understand this passion. And for families who make wine together, it can be a "little piece of heaven."

So here I was at a crossroads.

I'd sold my vineyard investment years ago, but I still wanted to be involved in the wine industry. About that time, I was asked to help plan a surprise birthday party for the same friend that had given me the crystal paperweight. At the dinner, I was seated next to one of her friends who was aware of my previous vineyard investment. We talked about my desire to be in the wine business and, coincidentally, he told me about a young vineyard owner he knew who wanted to expand his operation and produce his own wine label.

This conversation led to a trip to Eastern Washington, where I met this young winemaker and his family. As I stood with him on the bluff of his vineyard overlooking the Columbia river, I immediately felt a connection to this place, appropriately named "Destiny Ridge."

   

I gave the package to a friend of mine and asked him to take a look at the prospectus and give me his opinion. After giving me some initial positive feedback, he asked if I was really excited about the possibility of getting into the wine business. I had to be honest. "I am but I'm not," I told him.

And then, as if the idea had always been in my head, I said, "What would really make me excited is if I could have my own wine label, call it "The Dash" and have all the profit from the sale of the wine go to charity." It seemed suddenly clear to me that this was what I was supposed to do.

Having my own winery would allow me to generate revenue that could go to charity and enable me to accomplish a number of things I felt strongly about. The importance of giving back to the community was a lesson I had learned from watching my mother. When I was young she was always raising money for one cause or another. I never understood why she worked so hard, volunteering her time to hep other people. When I asked her about it, she answered, "Becasue I can and I should."

It was a lesson I wanted to pass on to my own son. I wanted him to experience both the responsibility and joy of giving back. I decided to set up a foundation so we could make giving decisons together as a family and so he could learn from experience, which I've always thought was the best teacher.

I hired attorneys to help me set up the foundation and the winery. I called the foundation the Make The DASH Count Foundation and committed its resources to helping children at risk. After thinking more about it I realized that if this was a good idea for my son, then it would be an even better idea if the decisions were made by a group of young people. I envisioned a group of high-school-aged youth who would make all the decisions about how to allocate the foundation's funds. Under the direction of advisors, they would be nurtured, educated, and given the opportunity to personally experience philanthropy with the goal of developing the next generaton of community leaders. All grant monies would be awarded to deserving community programs serving at-risk youth.

On the night before I was set to meet with my attorneys to sign the papers for the foundation, I was still struggling with whether or not I was on the right track. I had read Squire Rushnell's book "When God Winks" and was hoping for one of those signs that tells you you're doing the right thing. I kept wondering about the connection I felt between the wine and the charity aspect, and I worried about whether or not this was the right choice for me.

As I struggled to fall asleep, my thoughts returned to that day in the cemetery and the promise I had made to my grandmother about making my dash count for something. I suddenly understood that my past was showing me what I was supposed to do.

My grandparents' legacy to me was to understand that the power to make a difference in someone else's life exists in all of us.

You see, my grandparents immigrated to this country from Greece in their late twenties. They came with wide-eyed optimism for a better life and opened a restaurant in Greenwich Village, New York. My grandfather sent most of his profits back to Greece to enable other relatives to come to America and start new lives. In his spare time he was making wine in the basement of the restaurant, and as a small child I was given two fingers of this wine with my meals when I visited.

Each evening my grandmother would prepare the following days' menu specials. There was a young law student who would come in each night after school. He would sit at the table my grandmother reserved for him and she would serve him whatever was being prepared for the next day. She spoke very little English and he quickly learned the Greek language she taught him. He was overwhelmed by her generosity, as she would never charge him for his supper. They would share meals and wine together and he became my grandfather's best friend.

He would ask my grandmother, "How can I ever repay your kindness to me?" She would look at him, a man of small stature, and in her broken English reply, "You are a very small man, but if you really want to repay me you will study hard and you will become a very big man, and do great things." That young law student graduated from law school and eventually became one of the most beloved mayors of the city of New York.

His name was Fiorello La Guardia.

After recalling this story that my mother had told me many times before, I realized that the connection between the wine and making the Dash count had begun long before I was given my name.

Hope