DES MOINES - Quitters never win.Just ask Jeff Fisher, Des Moines' oldest alcohol dependent resident, who for years has inspired residents and visitors with messages of hope and inspiration from the Fifth Street bus stop.
Now Fisher, 72, is visiting area high schools to encourage students to "never give up."
"You can be ... all that you can be. In the army ... Reserves. And that is something I learned, too, from that commercial, and from my life. If you don't quit, you'll always finish," Fisher told a group of about 500 area high school students at Thursday's Youth Organization Conference at the Hilton Regency on Gardner Ave.
"You get that, Dumbo?" Fisher added, addressing a youth in the crowd, who promptly sank in his chair.
Youth Organization event coordinators applauded Fisher's efforts to personally connect with the individuals in the crowd to "really drive the message home."
"He told Susie McKenzie that she should consider losing some weight or she'd become what [Fisher] and his friends call, 'a heffer', or a 'six-pack stopover,'" Daniel Webster, the Youth Organization's senior program coordinator, reported. "She was so touched that she left the lecture in tears."
Fisher also offered advice to George Johnson, a quadriplegic student, to "ditch the wheelchair" he depends on, or else he'd only "be sleeping with chicks like the teary-eyed broad that just ran out of here."
"We're very proud of Fisher's work. These kids sometimes need a reality check," Webster said. "And if they're not going to get it here - I don't know where else. Fisher is an inspiration."
Fisher concluded his one hour pep talk reminding kids that "quitters are losers. I'm not a quitter - and neither should you be. Then you can be like me. He likes it, Mikey, he likes it."
Fisher then exited the stage in Vaudeville fashion, slipping over a microphone cord and then cursing at God before springing upward and jumping off the stage onto Johnson, who was rushed to the hospital and announced dead on arrival.
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