Moving Onward

Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.”

Sir Winston Churchill

2022 – A Monumental Year

The year 2022 started out with the promise of the end of the COVID-19 global pandemic but quickly showed us the doorstep of World War III with the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24th. As it comes to a close, I look back at all the events that took place this year. Some predictable, others not, like my diagnosis with stage-IV prostate cancer in July, and the shocking, though not too surprising tragic death of my son, Mitchell, in the Kansas City area only 2 weeks after my diagnosis.

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The Old Magnolia Tree

When our family lived in Durham, North Carolina, for the second time between the years of 1963 and 1971, we lived in an area that was a boyhood dream. In our back yard, less than 20 yards from the house, was an old log cabin with remnants of a linoleum floor and a covered hole in the wall that was once for a stovepipe. The cabin had been a dwelling at one time. Just across the street, was the eastern boundary of Duke Forest, in which my neighborhood friends and I had a network of paths and forts extending almost to Orange County to the east.

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Close Encounter of the Iconic Kind

It’s not likely to go through life without having some form of contact with someone well-known, whether it be a professional athlete, a politician, television personality, or some kind of celebrity. I have been fortunate over the years to have known and even become friends with some very famous, popular, and well-known individuals, but the biggest by far was an encounter with a particular screen icon!

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