Neal Embry
Billy Ivey, founder of “Napkinisms,” speaks to the Vestavia Hills Chamber of Commerce on Feb. 12.
Ever since his five children were young, Billy Ivey has been writing notes to pack in their lunchbox each day.
One day, Ivey said he was inspired to share one of the notes on social media: “Remember, every time you smile, a mean kid gets diarrhea.”
While the note may not have been the most uplifting message Ivey had ever left his kids, it went viral and started something Ivey said he’d been working 20 years to try and find.
Ivey, a Nashville native who now works at Fireseeds in Hoover, began #Napkinisms as a way to share the funny, “bordering on the edge of obscene” and encouraging notes he left his kids, but as time went on, it turned into an opportunity to influence thousands of lives.
Ivey shared his story with the Vestavia Hills Chamber of Commerce on Feb. 12, telling how his father influenced him, and in turn, taught him to influence others.
Ivey’s father, Bob Ivey, was a wide receiver at Vanderbilt University and loved his wife and children, Billy said. The elder Ivey battled ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease, before dying at the age of 41. Before he died, he wrote a note for Billy that stuck with him throughout his life.
After being cut from the ninth-grade basketball team, Billy came home with tears in his eyes. His father told him there was nothing he could do on a basketball court that would make him love him more or less than he already did.
While Billy was sleeping, his father, crippled by ALS and forced to use his left hand to write, wrote him a note and taped it to his door, encouraging him to stay positive.
“Attitude is everything,” the note read. “Today is not yet anything. Fill it with laughter.”
Laughter filled the Vestavia country club as Ivey continued to share his favorite #Napkinisms, such as, “Sometimes, our biggest mistakes turn out to be our greatest blessings. Your sister, for example,” or, “I hope you enjoy your lunch, because Mom is cooking dinner.”
“For 20 years, I was trying to figure out how to … influence people,” Ivey said. “... I mean, I sweated blood over a paragraph. … Then I put diarrhea on a napkin and people went nuts.”
While many of the notes are funny, Ivey realized his notes, like the one his dad wrote him, had the chance to change lives.
One woman told him one of his notes made him reconsider having children. The note was just a silly, one-word message: “Poop.”
The woman, Ivey discovered, had been abused by her father and had an addicted mother. She’d been through 13 foster homes and hadn’t seen what a good home could look like. Ivey’s silly, “stupid” note, he said, helped show her that there is a different story that can be written.
“It’s been really fascinating to see,” Ivey said.
At the end of the 2016 school year, Ivey partnered with the Chick-Fil-A Foundation and wrote 300 notes in four nights for under-privileged students receiving lunches over the summer. He was asked to write 900 notes in one week, and, after initially saying no, started the website, napkinisms.com, partnering with the public and allowing others to write encouraging notes.
The notes were distributed to students in the Atlanta area. One boy was found crying in a Boys and Girls Club parking lot. Clutching his note, he told a counselor who asked what was wrong what the note said.
“Someone who loves you is thinking about you right now,” the note read.
“I didn’t know that kid needed to hear that, but he did,” Ivey said. “And he does. I didn’t set out to change his life. Only to change his day.”
Now, Ivey is partnering with Children’s of Alabama to send notes to encourage hospital patients. More than 400 notes a day are going to children and their families.
“I can’t make them better,” Ivey said. “I can’t heal them. I can’t make their hospital stay shorter than it is, and I definitely can’t save their life, but maybe one of them will get a note that they needed to hear.”
Ivey challenged the audience to find ways to make a positive difference in the world around them, even if it’s as small as writing a note on a napkin.
“You don’t have to do something grand to do something great,” Ivey said.
To submit a #napkinism, visit napkinisms.com.
Vestavia Hills City Manager Jeff Downes will speak at the March 12 luncheon, where he will give an update on the Community Spaces Plan.
