Today Would Have Been My Father's 83rd Birthday!

June 6 is an important day in our history because 48 years ago today Robert Kennedy was taken from us all too soon. I often wonder what the world and our lives would be like had the 1960s been different on so many occasions.

The 1960s brought tremendous amount of change for me as a young boy moving from five different communities and learning to adapt to five very different environments. It was also a decade in which my relationship with my dad changed dramatically as I grew up under his tutelage.

I have written about his birthday on several occasions and other times I wrote how he affected me as my mentor, coach and friend. I was my father's shadow in many ways and as I grew older I came to realize just what a wonderful relationship we had.

There was an alternate side of my father I did not know much about until much later. I choose to focus on the positive side of our relationship. That is why I miss him tremendously since he has been gone almost ten years already. I have several pictures of him at various stages of his life on my Screensaver and see him for seven-second intervals every so often.

Attached is my first photograph of him playing with me and teaching me how to blow bubbles in 1957 when I was only two:

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Recently, I wrote a blog post that has become one of my most read ever about him coaching me in the summer of 1968 in Sibley, Iowa. After that summer, he accepted the track and cross country coaching job as well as a counselor position at Worthington State Junior College (WSJC) where he stayed for eight years until my family moved again where he took a similar job at Rochester Community College (RCC). He retired after seventeen years in Rochester. 

Several years ago, I was in Worthington in mid-September for the annual King Turkey Days celebration. I took some time and went to visit and give a brief speech for my long time friend Joel Krekelberg who was teaching a class entitled "Prevention and Care of Athletic Injuries." Krek as he is appropriately known in Worthington was teaching his students how to wrap ankles. Every time I get an opportunity to watch him deftly wrap an ankle is a treat because he is so good at!

After his class, I wanted to go over to the athletic building and see if any of my dad's track and cross country teams pictures were still there. We went over there and there were only a few photographs left. The athletic director was there and asked me if I wanted those photos because since track and cross country were eliminated from their sports options, eventually they would be thrown away when the football team pictures crowded them out. I gladly took them and want to share a couple with you now of my father's very successful track and cross country program in the eight years he ran the program that he took over when Bruce Traphagen turned over the program to Dad in the fall of 1968.

I am attaching a couple photographs and their yearly haul of trophies:

As always, click on the images to make them larger:

Some of you may recognize yourself or someone you know. One of the members of the track team, Jerry Schnyders, back row, second from right, I have known since we lived in Edgerton and played baseball together in the mid-1960s!

Roger Schipper who is on the far right in the second row lived with my family for a while when he first moved to Rochester to become the trainer at the Community College. Later, when he was finishing his student teaching, he stayed with Dave Bisbee and me in my first apartment in Minneapolis.

This is fun for me to look at old pictures of not only my dad but also friendships that have lasted many years. I wrote a lot about that in my book.

I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike

One Pitch Can Change Everything!

One pitch can change everything from a walk off home run in the bottom of the ninth in game seven of the World Series to keeping a young Iowa junior high school team from going to the state tournament.

Iowa, unlike its neighboring states, of Minnesota, South Dakota and Nebraska has run its baseball program in the summer. The Iowa High School Athletic Association feels it is necessary so young boys can participate in their summer months and run track in the spring if they choose so. In Iowa, I could play four sports. I played baseball in the summer, football in the fall, basketball in the winter and ran track in the spring. I only did that one year as I started going to school in Worthington and commuted with Dad who had started coaching and counseling at Worthington State Junior College in September 1968.That was in my eighth grade year. We stayed in Sibley until our house was completed in February 1969.

The first picture I want to show you is when we were getting ready to go to the 9th District Tournament Championship game to qualify for the Iowa State Tournament:

The next picture is the rundown of our game as it appeared in the Sibley Gazette:

 

The next picture was our practice picture and does not have all the team members at practice.


I want to show you our team of student/athletes at our practice field, which doubled as a demolition derby on weekends at the Osceola County Fairgrounds. It was an all dirt field with very little grass in the outfield. My dad was our coach, bus driver, groundskeeper and third-base coach. He had to reinstall the pitching rubber every Monday after a demolition derby that weekend and performed any other tasks deemed necessary. He is standing on the far right. He also coached the high school team.

Our loss came on one pitch in the bottom of the seventh when Mark Huisenga hit a smash up the middle and the pitcher blindly snagged, which abruptly ended our rally and our season. It was a sad ride home that day.

Baseball was fun to play and watch. I miss being able to play catch with my dad with a baseball, football or shoot baskets with him teaching and mentoring me all the way.

The regulations that govern Iowa baseball state your birthday has to come before a certain day to be eligible to play on that team. We were lucky because our three best players all have the same birthday falling into the parameters in the rulebook. Bob Wahl, Dan Pomerenke and Mark Huisenga were those players.

I built lifelong friendships with that team and still keep in touch through Facebook with a few of them, their friends, sisters, wives and other people from Sibley. We only lived in Iowa for two and one-half years; but it was an active, carefree, fun existence for a young boy in a quiet, little town in northwest Iowa in the late 60s!


I often think about what other memories we would have made if that pitcher had not made that one pitch!

Now, I get my coaching and mentoring fun by watching the Minnesota Twins and the University of Minnesota's Gophers men's basketball team. Both of them have been hard to watch lately.

As always, I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike

Black Lives Matter!

Now that I have your attention, I want to tell you about one black man who has had a tremendous influence on my life. Shortly after I moved to this apartment in mid August 2012 I was coming down the sidewalk after running a few errands to get little things we could not find in our packing.

Ahead of me was a thin, small black man who was using his phone. He did not hear me when I asked him if I could get by. I kind of snuck up on him and scared him. I apologized for scaring him and went on my way. I went around the building and came in the front door as Robert was coming in the backdoor. We did not know each other lived in the building. We laughed and introduced ourselves. That was the first time I met Robert Foster and we became fast friends at that moment.

Robert lived in the building with his brother, Rodney and was his primary Personal Care Attendant (PCA) and shortly came to work for me as well.

He had an infectious smile and loud, booming voice. From behind my apartment walls, I could hear if Robert was in the lobby.

He became part of my extended family and we did a number of things together including making a trip to the annual Smith pheasant hunt in South Dakota. Here is a photograph taken in 2013 during that trip:

 As always, click on the image to make it larger:

We were in the barn on the farm my uncle is renovating and Robert was teasing me about something trying to get me to smile and I was not going to give him the satisfaction!

He read my book, enjoyed it and we had many discussions which came from points he found interesting. He told me he learned a lot from me and that meant a great deal. I try to mentor and teach just about everyone I come in contact with. We had a great connection and love of all things sports especially basketball. We meshed from the very beginning and the race difference went away from the very beginning.

He loved to play basketball and often shared stories of when he played at North High School in Minneapolis. We would often watch football and basketball games together and SportsCenter was always on when he would get me up in the morning.

Robert loved life and despite overcoming many tragedies with losing his daughter because a kidney transplant did not take, a mother suffering from Alzheimer's disease, his brother being paralyzed and struggling, a brother with AIDS, just to name a few of the tragedies he is overcome in these little more than three years I knew him. He had a strong faith and inner drive we all can aspire to have!

He also liked his Nikes! He had around two hundred pair many of which have never been taken out of the box! He even had a storage shed full of his shoes and a few other assorted items.

A couple years ago, he was struggling with a car and needed $1200 to get a used car to get him through the winter. I put my old financial planning hat on to try and see if we could straighten out his financial situation. The first thing he did was open a checking account at the bank just up the street. Then, he got a credit card which he used sparingly just to establish his credit.

Shortly after that, he went up the road a ways to an Acura dealer and bought a very nice car for around $6,000. He loved that car and it was always in immaculate condition. They gave him a good deal and treated them very well all because he was in the system now and not living from paycheck to paycheck. He was also building up a small investment.

I am very proud to say he learned how to use the system to his advantage from me.

The other great thing he had going for him was the love of his life, Lisa. They were always together and shared many experiences that helped him get through all of the tragedy he was dealing with. They were soul mates and found each other and had a great time together.

He was like a member of our family and even called my mother, Moms! They also got along great together. We teased each other we were brothers from different mothers. We also referred to ourselves as ebony and ivory, chocolate and vanilla, salt-and-pepper. You get the idea about the young man growing up in the inner-city and connecting with another man who grew up living in small towns across the Midwest. We came from very different backgrounds; however, that did not matter. We overcame those differences from the very beginning.

I am not positive about Robert's exact cause of death, I just know he went very quickly these last few months and had something to do with renal and liver failure. I have a hard time believing he is gone. It will hit me at his service on December seventh.

I know I need to go through the grieving process and it will take some time as I am still in denial. I wish you well in your next world, Robert. Peace be with you and we must take solace in the fact your pain is gone. I will miss you my friend.

I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike

I Enjoy Watching A Skilled Craftsman At Work

Many of you know my cousin, Michael Patrick Bailey. He has a lifetime of picture framing and hanging experience. He came over last night and hung seventeen photographs, my 1955 calendar and one small poster! They had been in storage since I moved out of my house in 2011!

He did a yeoman's job in only two hours time! He hung photographs in several different places and I only had to supervise on a few occasions!

Mike hung a collage centered on a photograph that is one of Tom Wallace's favorite photographs of a high school basketball game between Luverne and Jasper in the District 8 tournament in 1973 in Worthington! Tom as been shooting since high school and has shot me on many occasions. He is now on staff at the Minneapolis StarTribune newspaper. The fun thing about Tom is he was the first person I met when I started school in Worthington partway through my eighth grade year. We have remained friends ever sense, and he has recently told me he wants to upgrade my profile photograph.

Jim Brandenburg mentored Tom when they worked for the Worthington Daily Globe. Yes, that Jim Brandenburg! It does not get any better than Jim for a photography mentor!

The irony in this picture is it features one of my favorite people and Mike Bailey's brother-in-law, Tom Brakke, boxing out his opponent and waiting to grab one of his many rebounds! His photograph is surrounded by smaller photographs of me as a baby on my first New Year's Eve and my second birthday photograph. The next photograph up the left side is a unique photograph my aunt, Dorothy Fish took of a picture of George Washington's profile on Mount Rushmore! Moving around is a photograph I took of a woman many years ago after she had been at a professional modeling studio that day, so she was all made up and it remains one of my favorite photographs.

Along the top are pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge, which was taken by a friend of mine from way back in the dorm when I attended the University of California at Berkeley, Mike Ross. Next to that is a time-lapse shot I took of downtown Chicago that is rather unique. Moving down the right side are pictures of two little boys that had some inquisitive looks on their face when I shot them one day many years ago out at Valley Fair. Moving down the right side of the collage are two pictures of my favorite building to shoot, the IDS Center in downtown Minneapolis. I must confess, Mike Ross took one of those as well.

Mike also put three concept photos on the other wall I took of the IDS Center.

In my bedroom, he hung three photographs from when I went downhill skiing in Winter Park, Colorado in 1980. He also hung my calendar from April 1955! It was a rather racy photograph at the time as the seductress on the calendar has a quote that reads, "Tell me more!"

It is often said, "The time to buy an antique is when you see it." That was the case with my calendar girl. When I saw it in an antique mall and it had January, February and March torn off, showing April. I had to buy it!

Mike was operating a framing shop at the time and I asked him to put my calendar in a period frame. He hit it perfectly!

There was one more sign Mike put up for me last night. He hung it by my front door where I will read it once again like I did in my house for many years. It reads, "HELP WANTED" on the first line and underneath it in slightly smaller letters it reads, "NO IRISH NEED APPLY"!

The irony in that simple sign is it was made by the Boston Sign Company on September 11, 1915! I had that hanging in my house by my door and have not been able to get most of these pieces hanging on the walls because there just was no room in an eight hundred square foot apartment!

I hang it by my door to remind me how my Irish immigrants were treated in the late 19th century and the early 20th century! It seems timelier today when we are discussing the immigrants and the situation about letting them continue to build our workforce! There was a time when Boston did not embrace the Celtics like they do today! It seems every minority group has taken its fair share of lack of being welcome in this country that is built on immigrants! I believe everyone should read the words at the base of the Statue of Liberty!

I still have more pieces I want to hang and Mike will be back to do that after the Thanksgiving holiday trip to be with his extended family. He has assured me he will not wait as long to hang the next batch of photographs as he did in this one!

I apologize for not getting any of the pictures up on this post. However, if you were ever at my house and saw photographs by my friends listed above and me, you know what his photographs I am talking about.

I promise I will post another photograph once Mike gets some of my other pieces up and show you what my apartment is starting to look like! We simply did not have a phone or camera to take photographs of Mike's work.

I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike

Happy Father's Day

This post marks a special post for me besides wishing all fathers a wonderful day with family and friends on Sunday, June 15, 2014. Before I address my main goal in this post, let me first explain the other reason this is a special post.

This post marks the three hundredth post I have written on this blog! My first post was August 1, 2007. It was entitled "When Bridges Fall" and you can imagine what the topic was for that post. If you would like to read it, click here. If that does not get you there, click on this link: http://iamnotdoneyet.blogspot.com/2007/08/when-bridges-fall.html I would be curious to see if you think my posts have changed since then.

Now, let me address the intent of this post. If you are a regular reader of my blog, you read my last post about my father and what would have been his eighty-first birthday. I told you in that post there was plenty more I wanted to write about my dad but it already rambled on long enough. As you know, some of my posts get rather lengthy as I am using voice recognition software Dragon Dictate; and once I get started speaking, I have a hard time stopping!

Like I stated in last week's post, my dad played for a living. As a coach for many different sports and several ages he was always playing right along side his athletes. I did not use the term student/athletes because some of his programs were summer programs and we were not students when we played summer baseball.

I showed you a picture in last week's post of him teaching me how to bat left-handed. He was always mentoring, coaching, teaching and playing with me. I had a very special relationship with him in that sense.

In the summer of 1968, he accepted the vacant guidance counselor and track and cross country coach job at Worthington State Junior College. He left the guidance counselor and baseball coach position he had been in Sibley, Iowa for only two years.

Worthington was the eighth town I had lived in before I was fourteen years old, and we had lived in sixteen different locations. Dad continued to get better jobs all along the way and we never stayed anywhere more than three years.

I write in my book "I Still Believe In Tomorrow" I really believe the reason I have been able to adjust to all of the changes I have had to adjust to since my accident was because I was being groomed to deal with change growing up as a child and moving all the time. I was adjusting to different houses, friends, schools and very different environments going from an Indian reservation to a small town comprised of a very conservative, very Dutch community in southwestern Minnesota.

This picture was taken when dad took the job at Worthington when he was only thirty-five years old:

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He was not very old, but he finished his career in the community college ranks in Worthington for eight years; then seventeen years at Rochester Community College in Rochester, Minnesota as a physical education and health teacher; as well as their track and cross country coach.

Besides being my dad, he was also my best friend. I was with him constantly and he taught me all kinds of things. I want to show you this picture of how he was teaching me at a very young age how to read a scorebook after one of his high school basketball games before I was even four.

Again, click on the image to make it larger:

First and foremost, he was a teacher, then a coach and lastly my friend. I remember going to his biology classroom when we lived in McLaughlin, South Dakota and a student had brought in a bald eagle in a cage. I remember walking around the cage and having that eagle follow me around the room almost the entire way with his flexible neck.

What a treat for a young child to be able to go to Dad's workplace, see an eagle, a live rattlesnake and other animals in formaldehyde, learn big words from his Anatomy, Muscular, Skeletal and other charts that would carry me through my life and stick with me today. His biology classroom in both McLaughlin and Edgerton, Minnesota were treasure troves of knowledge for my young mind. Gastrocnemius, sternocleidomastoid, pectoralis major, gluteus maximus, medius and minimus and brachioradialis, remain some of my favorite words today!

Once again, I could go on and on; but let me end this post by wishing all of you fathers and grandfathers a wonderful day with your family either in person or in thought, if not those free weekend cell phone minutes, Skype or FaceTime a wonderful day on Father's Day!

I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike

My Dad

My Dad was born eighty-one years ago today! June 6 has always had a special meaning for our family as many events happened on June 6. Most notably, of course, was June 6, 1944 when the Allies stormed the beaches at Normandy and turned the tide in World War II.

Another notable June 6 was the night Robert Kennedy was shot on the fifth and died twenty-six hours later on June 6, 1968 just after winning the California Primary Election. If only he had taken the intended route out of the ballroom instead of being whisked away at the last moment through the kitchen.

I do not intend to discuss the latter two events; but rather discuss the life and times of my father who died of mesothelioma on July 23, 2006.

Like many children of my father's generation, he was born in the house on the family farm near Elkton, South Dakota on June 6, 1933. He took us by that farm a couple of times and the thing I remember most about that small farm was the artesian well that supplied that farm for many, many years. As far as I know, that well is still gushing out clean, fresh, cold water at a rapid rate. I remember looking out over the pasture and seeing three water tanks that had slowly been carried away by that well as the water pressure wore away the bottom of the tank and pushed it away from the well.

I am not sure exactly how long they lived on that farm before my grandma and grandpa bought the farm where Dad spent most of his early life growing up until he moved away to go to college. He used to tell great stories about his memories growing up despite all the tragedies they had to endure on that farm.

My dad was a runner. My grandmother made sure of that. My dad is the second of seven children born to Ben and Irene Patrick. When Grandpa Ben was plowing on May 27, 1942 he saw a storm coming from the West. He told dad's older brother, Murl, who was barely ten years old, and plowing with two teams of large draft horses, to take the horses in, unharness, curry down, feed and prepare them for the oncoming storm. Grandpa told Murl he would be in when he was done plowing. Grandpa never made it out of the field. A bolt of lightning saw to that. 

When the storm had passed and Grandpa had still not come in from the field, Grandma, pregnant with child number seven under the age of eleven, brought a couple of the kids out to see where Grandpa was. She found him going in circles, literally, fried to the tractor, and had to figure out how she was going to get him off the tractor and out of that newly plowed field.

She ended up driving to neighbors' farms eliciting help to get Grandpa off the tractor after they got it stopped. By that time, it was time to do the evening chores which included milking the cows, gathering the eggs and feeding all the other animals. Life was not easy in the good old days!

Three years later, baby Lorraine had seen the boys throw kerosene into the large round, old, gravity furnace in the middle of the basement. She thought she would do like her older siblings had done, except she did not know you had to flick the can to stop the kerosene from bringing a flame out and burning her. She died of the burns shortly after that.

By the time, my dad was twelve years old; he had lost his father and baby sister. I do not think he ever got over that. He did not, nor did the rest of the family, have time to grieve, as there were chores to do!

Murl, Dad, Leroy, Norris, Barbara and Dorothy all went to a small one-room schoolhouse through the eighth grade. After that, Grandma gave them a choice. The only two I know of are Murl and Dad's choices. As I understand it, when Murl was young he liked Gene Autry, the singing cowboy, and wanted to be the next Country and Western star! Grandma gave him this choice; you can go to high school or if you choose to stay home on the farm, I will give you a guitar and lessons.

Murl chose the latter and sang the old Country and Western songs his entire life, amassing an impressive collection of incredible, valuable guitars.

Dad's choice was this: you can stay here and help Murl and me run the farm, or you can go to high school and continue running. However, if you go to high school, you have to run everywhere you go, and when you are here at the farm, you have to wear a pair of five buckle overshoes.

Dad also chose the latter and became a member of a small five-man team from tiny South Dakota State College in nearby Brookings to win a National Championship in track and field in Abilene, Texas in 1953. Here is a picture of that team:

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Kneeling: Russ Nash and my Dad
Standing: Jack Pearson, Leo Hammerich and Pete Retzlaff looking at the trophy with coach Jim Emmerich

Along the way, Dad ran everywhere. His siblings have told me they remember passing him in the family car on their way to high school as he ran the five miles into town.

I have a lot of stories I would like to tell you about my dad, but I see I have already written a long post. Let me finish with a story and a picture of my dad teaching me to bat left-handed. I was thirteen years old and we lived in Sibley, Iowa in the summer of 1968.

Dad was my coach, mentor, father and friend. He had some shortcomings, and I was occasionally on the short end of the stick, but not very often. We had a special relationship and I miss him every day. I am sure if you have lost a parent(s) you feel the same way.

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I miss all the time we spent together. He will be teaching me again all too soon!

Happy Birthday, Dad!

As always, I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Happy St. Patrick's Day to all of my Irish family and friends, and those that wish they were Irish! Growing up with a name like Michael Arlin Patrick, I was always told there are two types of people in the world. They are the Irish and the people that wish they were Irish!

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I have no reason to believe any differently, especially today! I have had more fun over the years playing with that quote then you can imagine. Most of us know the story of St. Patrick, so I will not take up your time with retelling it again. Besides, there is always GOOGLE!

Most everyone knows the stereotype of the drunken Irishman or woman and how he or she likes to drink their Guinness. On St. Patrick's Day much of that Guinness and other beers are turned green in honor of this unique holiday. The irony in that stereotype and the author of this post is I have never drank a beer in my life, green or otherwise!

I have only had two drinks in my life and can honestly say, "I just do not like the taste of alcohol in any form."

I remember back in the mid-70s and early 80s when I was coming of age and asked if I wanted a beer at a party or in a bar, I politely replied, "No thank you." Then, someone would ask me if I was a recovering alcoholic? When I told them, "No, I just don't like the taste." They would always tell me you have to acquire the taste.

Before my accident, I never would have drunk because it would have been breaking training regulations. I was not about to do that! After my accident, I never imagined doing any more damage to my body than had already been done. It was an easy choice. Plus, there was the issue of how would I be able to handle my van getting home from wherever I was? It was an easy decision to make, and still is.

The main reason I never drank, smoked marijuana or did any kind of illicit drug before my accident was I did not want to let my parents down by breaking training rules that would make me ineligible to play whatever sport was in season.

I tell a great story in my book about how during one of my many hospitalizations I was prescribed a muscle relaxer called Marinol whose active ingredient is THC. Yes, That's right, the same THC found in marijuana. My doctor gave me a five-milligram dose, and I laid there and laughed and laughed and laughed!

Friends and family would come to visit me or tell me over the phone I should have tried marijuana way back in college when they were all doing it and having such a good time. They told me now I knew what I was missing!

The irony in me getting that Marinol was it happened roughly six months after Dad died in 2006. I have often wondered how he would have reacted to see me lying there giggling uncontrollably!

Like many stereotypes, there is someone that breaks the mold about the Irish and how much they like to drink. I am one of those people that break that mold. I would be remiss if I did not tell you I am proud to wear that moniker! 

As I grow older, more and more people are telling me I am getting more sarcastic. I know that is true. However, I have developed a sarcastic wit about me a long time ago and also wear that quite proudly! I have some good mentors that have taught me that skill over these last many years. I have a feeling you know you are. Thank you for that gift! 

Here is another picture I would like to include in this post in honor of all my sarcastic mentors out there:

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If you are going out tonight and having some of that green beer, please make sure you have a designated driver so everyone gets home safely. Enjoy your evening.

As always, I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike

My Uncle Ed

My Uncle Ed was laid to rest yesterday beside his loving wife, Mabel. Although, everyone called her Tabby. For as long as I can remember, most everyone called him Ralph or Ralphie. Ed was the sixth child of my maternal grandparents Joe and Erma Smith. Ed was born in 1945 and after graduating from White High School in tiny White, South Dakota he enlisted in the Army.
 
Four years later, he found himself in Vietnam where he had volunteered to be a door gunner. He flew eight missions in the most dangerous position one could have in combat. For those of you that do not know what a door gunner is, they were the guys on the doors of the helicopters firing machine guns into the jungle as the choppers came in to rescue the wounded and other soldiers after an encounter with the Viet Cong. Only 8% of door gunners came home!

We have all heard the phrase, “I’ve got your back.” Being a door gunner is the epitome of having your brothers in arms backs! Door gunners saved many lives and had an incredibly high mortality rate because the VC were aiming at them! The enemy knew if they could take out the door gunners, they had a much better chance of survival because no one would be firing back at them.

Ed never talked about his experience in Vietnam, but talking to my other uncles, reading about the war, and talking to other people, I have learned more than I ever care to about war. You may have heard the famous General William Sherman’s statement to the Mayor and Councilmen of Atlanta before he burned the city to the ground, “War is hell!” If you have experienced battle, you know all too well what that statement means. If you have not experienced combat, ask someone who has and see what they tell you — if they are willing to talk about it. It will make you think twice about wanting to serve in a battle zone.

In May 1967, my grandma died very unexpectedly. Ed’s two older brothers who were active military at the time and had some high ranking connections, got Ed out of the Army on a hardship discharge to go home and help grandpa run the farm. There were still four younger siblings living at home and grandpa needed help. Fortunately, Bill and Bob were able to use their connections and get Ed out of his military obligation.

After several years of being out of the Army, Ed reenlisted and served sixteen more years to retire from the Army with twenty years of service. Between my mom’s seven brothers, they have a combined eighty-two years of military service in all four branches of our Armed Forces. I have always contended you cannot find many families that have made that much of a commitment to serve our country from one generation of young men in one family.

To a man, whenever I bring that up, none of my uncles think it is such a big deal and other families have done more. That may be true; but I believe eighty-two years from one family is pretty impressive!

Sometime in 1969, Ed was struggling with what today would be called survivor’s guilt and probably PTSD. He was in Marshall, Minnesota and called mom to tell her he was thinking about taking his own life because he felt he could have done more and he should not have left his buddies back in Vietnam.

Mom asked him if he had enough money to get a bus to Worthington. He said he did and he came to live with us for a year. That school year we had thirteen people living in our house! Besides my mom and dad, my four siblings, (Chad had not been born yet), two uncles, four renters in our apartment in the front half of our basement, and me we had a Baker’s dozen under one roof.

One of our renters was also a Vietnam vet who had combat experience with a K-9 unit in Vietnam. He would share some of his stories and kept us mesmerized for hours listening to his experiences with his dog in a combat zone. The four renters we had were all college student/athletes and my mother fed all of us that year. She charged them one dollar for lunch and a dollar and a half for dinner. We went through one hundred pounds of potatoes every two weeks, gallons and gallons of milk and more food than you can imagine. It was like living on Walton’s Mountain!

We had to eat in shifts because thirteen people would not fit around our dining room table. You just hoped if you got the second shift, there was still enough food left to fill your stomach.

Ed did several different jobs that year starting at Campbell’s Soup Company where he worked a number of jobs I do not want to describe. He did not have enough money to buy a car, so he rode my brother’s bicycle to work that fall. 

By winter, he was working in the Worthington Co-op gas station pumping gas, checking the oil and doing all the things full service gas station attendants did back in the day. He also worked in the shop doing car repair work. It was during that time he bought an old Studebaker for $50.00. I will never forget that Brown Studebaker with the bright red rims coming to pick me up from basketball practice to give me a ride home after he got off the shift from the co-op.

One day, Ed did 180° turn on the street in front of the playground while Chuck Peterson and I watched from inside the school door as we waited for our rides. When Ed drove up on the curb a little bit, rolled the window down, and yelled, “Come on Fat Cat, the hawk’s a bitin’!” 

Chuck looked at me and wanted to know who that was. I said, “Oh, that’s just my uncle Ralph!” 

For those of you that do not know what the euphemism, “the hawk is biting,” is all about, it refers to the wind is blowing and it is cold!

Ed’s younger brother, Terry, also lived with us that year and the next while he went to the junior college in Worthington. It was during those two years Terry became more like a big brother to me than my uncle. Before that, Terry, Dee and Tim who are the youngest three siblings in mom’s family were more like cousins then aunt and uncles. They still are.

After a year living with us, Ed enrolled in the vocational school in Pipestone, Minnesota and studied carpentry. I am not sure exactly which year he decided to go back into the Army, but at some point, he reenlisted and served his duration to retire after twenty years of service.

It was in the Army he met and married Tabby. They have one daughter, Amanda, who is married and lives in Mifflintown with her husband, Guy Bowman.

I know this is turning into a long post, but I want to share one more story about my relationship with Ed.

In 1995 I started a youth oriented business in White I called Prairie Woods. The whole idea of Prairie Woods was to recycle old or waste wood and make unique products out of the material. We also got a job taking down roughly three hundred ash trees and sold them as firewood. I hired Ed to come back from Mifflintown and help me run the business in the lumberyard in White. I was going to turn an empty lumberyard into a source for local farmers to buy used wood from barns we had torn down, products we were building like feed bunks and storage sheds. I wanted to give the young people experience and responsibility in product design, manufacturing, marketing and various aspects of running a business.


Here is a picture of part of my crew sitting in some of the Adirondack chairs we had made from a kit I got from a friend who was doing a youth project here in Minneapolis.

Click on the image to enlarge:

How is that for a motley looking crew? There is not a lot of diversity in White, South Dakota. These boys and the rest of my crew knew how to work. I would like to think I helped them in some way to develop into productive and responsible young men and women.

Prairie Woods failed due to a number of reasons. Ed went back to Mifflintown to be with his wife and daughter. Even though that business venture failed, I had a lot of fun teaching those young people new skills and being around a project that was the right thing to do. Plus, I love the smell of wood!

I could go on and on telling you stories about my uncle Ed, but I think you get my point. I will miss him and appreciate the fact I got to talk to him about two weeks ago for a while one Sunday afternoon. Little did I know that would be the last time I got to talk to him?

Life is like that. We never know when it will be our time.

As always, I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike

Young People And Change

Most Fridays I try to spend an hour on a conference call with the group called "The Good Men Project." It runs from 12 noon till 1 PM Eastern time. Today we had an interesting discussion on change and changing cultural norms towards how society views men and what men are doing to try and change some preconceived notions.

Whenever I get a chance to listen in, and the topic is appropriate, I have to make some comments based on my experiences. We were discussing the way men procede down their own road to discovery and how our experiences affect our journeys.

I believe everyone has a journey they travel which affects their perception and their outlook on not only their situations but the people they deal with. One man talked about his struggle with chemical abuse. He is now more than ten years chemically free and doing very well, thank you.

My comments regarding each one of our own life path or journey was one of reflection on my own "recovery" if you will of my spinal cord injury. Now more than forty-two years later, I still find myself dealing with issues that go way back on an ongoing basis.

The interesting thing that came out of the conversation was how our journeys began at a fairly young age. Several people mentioned times when they needed mentors and may not have had one when they began their particular behavior that led them down a self-induced destructive path.

I believe as we all travel our journeys we need mentors and teachers to guide us in a positive direction. Some of us are fortunate to have positive role models to teach us starting at an early age. Others are not so lucky. They may not have grown up in a functional two-parent family, or a dysfunctional two-parent family. They may not have grown up with a functional adult role model at all.

In our ever-changing world when young people do not grow up with positive role models, they often learn behaviors from peers who may not have their best interest in mind. Another example is when the adult role models boys and girls grow up around our dysfunctional themselves and teach negative behaviors to impressionable young minds.

The discussion will often take off in many directions as it did today. The good thing about that is those discussions often lead to more interesting topics than what was on the original agenda. I like that flexibility when learning takes place you were not expecting.

The discussions are always interesting and open to anyone interested in becoming involved. If you have any interest I encourage you to go to their website by clicking on the address in the first paragraph, and checking out The Good Men Project!

As always, I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike

Alexandria's Aces

Alexandria, Minnesota has a very successful mentoring program going on in their middle school, and it all revolves around basketball. Larry Novotny is mentoring, teaching and coaching a group of young student/athletes through basketball.

Most of my friends know basketball is my favorite sport, and I have been around it my entire life in one way or another.

From the 1977-'78 season through the 1979-'80 basketball season, I was an assistant coach for the new general manager of the Minnesota Timberwolves, Flip Saunders, at his first coaching job at tiny Golden Valley Lutheran College (GVLC) in Golden Valley, Minnesota. We had the youngest coaching staff in the country with Saunders, Mike Cervony and me at only twenty-two years of age. Our third assistant, Dan Kozmoski, was only twenty-one. We had a player who had been in the military and he was twenty-three!

All four of us coaches were still in college. When Saunders played at the University of Minnesota the previous four years, he had been recruited by Bill Musselman as a point guard. Musselman had a pregame show that involved a lot of ball-handling drills, fancy passing, and synchronized activities that electrified home crowds. People would arrive hours in advance to make sure they got a good seat to see the pregame show. If you were ever in Williams Arena during the Musselman Era, I am sure you remember what a show they put on!

Bill Musselman taught a walk-on player by the name of George Schauer to do elaborate ball-handling tricks including spinning multiple basketballs at once. "Crazy George" as he is known today, is still performing his basketball wizardry all over the world.

Saunders liked that pregame show so much he brought it to his first coaching job at GVLC. That is where this post really begins. Larry Novotny wanted to be on our basketball team and Saunders gave him a chance if he could learn to do what George Schauer was doing.

Larry took the challenge and was the star of our pregame warm-up drills. I believe the most balls he had spinning at one time was seven! He would sit down and place a pencil in each shoelace whereupon he put a spinning basketball on each pencil, he had a strap on each knee that held another ball on a pencil, he devised a brace for his chin that held one more ball and lastly, he spun a ball on the fingertip on each hand. That tiny gym was a fun place to be!

Besides our pregame show, we had a pretty good team. We went three years without losing a game at home. We had two Junior College All-Americans, a 63–11 record; won our conference all three years I was there and placed second in the state tournament the first and last year I coached. Saunders stayed there for two more years before going back to the University as a graduate assistant.

That brings us to what Larry Novotny has been doing with his middle school students at halftime shows throughout the country for the last twenty-four years! There is a wonderful article about Alexandria's Aces at this link. Just click here.

Look at the joy in Larry's eyes as he is addressing this year's group of young students who are trying out for the Aces. Does it look like he is having fun? After all, basketball should be fun for anybody that plays and loves the game. When I was the age of the students, I was in the gym all the time. My dad was a high school coach and I spent many hours learning from him and the older student/athletes I so admired. These young student/athletes are also getting that wonderful feeling of enjoyment playing basketball. I think this is a wonderful program Larry Novotny is doing, and I applaud him for his dedication and commitment to these young people.

Click on the image to make it larger:

Think of the trips and experiences these young people are getting as they travel around the country performing in front of as many as 20,000 people. They are learning teamwork, cooperation, coordination, self-esteem and who knows, maybe even a scholarship somewhere to carry on the "Crazy George" Larry Novotny ball-handling tradition!

This was how Larry got his start on our team picture for the Golden Valley Lutheran College Runnin' Royals in the fall of 1978. Larry is seated on the floor front and center right in front of head coach Flip Saunders:

Click on the image to make it larger:

As always, I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike

Fifty-nine Years Ago Today

Fifty-nine years ago today my parents were married in a small, civil ceremony in Ivanhoe, Minnesota. Here is a picture of my parents at their wedding reception in the basement of the parsonage in Aurora, South Dakota:

Click on the image to make it larger:

Their marriage, like so many others, did not end with those three words, "happily ever after."  However, it did produce six wonderful children who I am proud to say have turned into wonderful adults.

Mom likes to jokingly say, "I didn't raise no dummies." Of course, the irony in that statement is the improper grammar, which she uses to make her point very well. 

After their wedding, Dad went on to finish his bachelor's degree from South Dakota State College in nearby Brookings in 1956. Over the years, as SDSC started offering postgraduate degree programs and became South Dakota State University, he earned two masters degrees, one in Physical and Health Education in 1961, and the other one was in Guidance and Counseling in 1967.

Of course, Dad did not earn those degrees on his own. He had help. Here is a photograph of his typist and her assistant:

I was probably more of a nuisance than an assistant; but since this is my story I am calling that large-diapered boy an assistant. I love the antique secretary behind my Mom's chair. Unfortunately, that was put in storage and never survived. We did not know what a treasure we had when we lived above the White Creamery in that tiny apartment.

We moved many times as my dad's career began to develop. When we moved to Worthington in February 1969, I was just thirteen years old. Worthington was town number eight and the house at 716 West Shore Drive was the sixteenth different location I had lived in.

Once Mom and Dad were married, they lived in a one-room utility shed on her maternal grandfather's farm for a few months. After only three or four months of being married, they moved into a house just off Main Street in Brookings and were caregivers for Fred Baker who was roughly one hundred years old. I was born when they lived with Fred.

After that school year, we moved three times. The first stop was a farm just outside of White. Then a few months about the Gambles store, a few more months above the creamery and the Odyssey was on.

That fall Dad got his first teaching and coaching job in tiny Revillo, South Dakota for two years where we lived in a small apartment behind the local café for one year. Next year saw us living in a big house until it was time to move to the next town. Are you beginning to see a theme of change and moving here?

It seems we were always moving. We went wherever my dad's job took us. Every job he got was better than the last one. Every move he made, whether it was his choice or the school board's decision to not renew his contract was an improvement over the last one. Plus, he was earning his advanced degrees, and becoming more qualified to be more of an asset to a school district.

As the years went by, our family was growing. Kathleen came along two years after me. Rick was three years later. Vicki came four years after Rick and Tammy followed four years later. Five years after Tammy, Chad arrived. He was born two years after my accident. Here is a picture of Chad and Dad on Dad's farm shortly before he died July 23, 2006:

My parents divorced in 1991. Chad had just finished high school, and Mom and Chad moved to a small house in St. Louis Park, Minnesota where Mom still lives today. 

The day Mom and I took Dad to the Mayo Clinic for the last time when the doctors told him he did not need to come back because there was nothing more they could do for him unless he wanted to have chemotherapy, we had a very special moment before Mom and I left Dad at his farm.

Dad gave me a big hug as we both were crying, he said, "We had a good run, didn't we? He was still talking about running even as he was dying.

Then it was Mom's turn for a goodbye hug. Mom said as she hugged him, "I loved you a lot longer than I liked you."

That comment puzzled my dad and he did not know quite what to say. It was a very touching moment and one I will always remember.

I have so many stories I could tell you about what happened fifty-nine years ago today; but I have gone on long enough. Thanks for reading. This was good for me!

As always, I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike

Clyde Turner's Educational Basketball Camp

I had fun in the last thirty hours. Please indulge me and let me tell you what happened. On Thursday after my acupuncture appointment, I ran a few errands. One of them was to stop off at the OfficeMax store and get a new printer cartridge. I found my printer but could not locate the printer cartridges.

So, I wandered around the store looking for someone to help me. I got back by their copy area and waited my turn for the next available employee. She happened to be helping a large, black man who I recognized as Clyde. Remind you; Clyde is hard to miss. He is six feet nine inches tall and casts a large shadow.

Clyde played for the University of Minnesota in the early seventies with Jim Brewer, Ron Behagan, Corky Taylor and Dave Winfield, among others. That team won the 1972 BIG 10 Championship. They were fun to watch!  Bill Musselman was their coach and did a fun, choreographed pregame show to "Sweet Georgia Brown" and "Keep The Ball Rollin'" which filled Williams Arena well before game time just to watch the show.

When I coached at Golden Valley Lutheran College, Phil Saunders had us doing that same routine at our home games in a tiny gymnasium that was packed an hour before tip-off. If you had tickets to Golden Gopher games back then, you know what I am talking about.

I am getting off task again! Meanwhile, back to OfficeMax and the copy center. When the woman came out from behind the counter to help me get my printer cartridge, she was standing about five feet from Clyde. I told her I had two things I needed help with. The first one was if she knew Clyde Turner played basketball for the Gophers back in the early seventies? I heard he could still play! Of course, I said it loud enough so he could hear me. You should have seen the look he gave me. It was precious!

He said, "I know Clyde Turner."

I acted surprised and replied,  "Clyde, you're Clyde!"

"No, I'm his twin brother."

I said, "I didn't know Clyde had a twin brother."

Clyde replied, "He doesn't, I am Clyde."

He was playing me just like I was playing with him. It was a great exchange, something I will never forget. He told me I looked familiar. Then I told him I had spoken at his camp several years ago. In reality, I spoke at its camps twice in 1994! He remembered my visits.

We started talking and I gave him my book to show him the picture of the Golden Valley Lutheran College Royals the first season I was one of their assistant coaches in 1977. He was pleased to see all four of the coaches as he knew all four of us. It was another one of those fun exchanges I have all the time.

He told me he was having a camp right now and was ending today at 4 PM with the parents coming for an award ceremony. I asked him if you would like to let me say a few words to close their ceremony. He said that would be great!

So this afternoon about 2:30, I went up to the Phillips Community Center, sat in on the last hour and a half of camp, gave a little motivational speech, talked about Clyde and all he has accomplished outside of basketball, told how valuable a mentor and coach he was, discussed the staff and their commitment to helping these young people improve their basketball skills, and ultimately their attitudes towards life. He has been running his summer camps for twenty-seven years, and has more than ten thousand young people attend those camps!

I found out he had speakers all week long from the business, education and medical fields coming in and talking to the campers about being successful in a chosen field. I really like how he incorporates the educational component into his basketball camp. They learn basketball skills, but more importantly, they learn life skills.

I even got to play with one of the coach/counselors and ended up giving him my ATTITUDE pin! It has been a fun last thirty hours! I truly believe some learning took place.

I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike

Why Are We Here?

I have been thinking about this post for several days, and I am still not exactly sure where it will go. So, please bear with me as I may start to ramble; although, many of my regular readers already know that about me.

For some time now, I have been having very vivid dreams about my dad, my grandparents, great-grandparents and even extended family members. Some of them I never even knew. However, they are showing up in my dreams and I am trying to figure out why.

You may or may not know I have sleep apnea. When I was first tested, they found I woke up and went to sleep every thirty seconds. As a result of that, I never got into REM sleep. I would always wake up more tired than when I went to bed. I would often fall asleep sitting in my chair watching a movie or even talking with friends and/or family members. I was tired all the time and driving was beginning to be a problem as I had a hard time staying awake.

Once I started to wear a BiPAP machine, I got into good, deep, REM sleep and my dreams became very intense. After all, REM sleep is the only stage of sleep when we dream. I learned years ago our average dream is only about twenty seconds in length. I also learned we tend to dream about the last thoughts we had before we fall asleep.

One of the problems I get frustrated with is I rarely remember my dreams. Last night I did remember one and it was about my maternal grandfather, Joe Smith. By the way, if you were to come up with an alias, could you come up with a better one than Joe Smith?

Grandpa died at age eighty-six peacefully one Sunday morning watching Mass in the same spot in the living room my grandma died thirty-one years earlier on a Sunday morning while the rest of the family was at Mass. She stayed home that day because she had fallen and broken her leg and was not comfortable getting in the car and sitting in a church pew for an hour. They were also married for thirty-one years. There are so many serendipitous factors around their two deaths that always amaze me how they peacefully passed into the spirit world.

On the other side of my family, my grandfather, Ben Patrick was killed by lightning while working a field in 1942. He was only thirty-seven years old. He was the oldest of six children and his younger brother, my Great Uncle Stanley lived to be one hundred years old! Three weeks later, he passed away. He had reached his goal and it was time to join his siblings and his parents in the afterlife.

Here is one of my favorite photographs of my Grandfather Ben, Great Uncle Stanley and Great Aunt Hazel Patrick taken in 1911: Click on the image to make it larger:

I love Stanley's curly hair. Stanley and I would have great conversations over these last several years. He told me stories about his brother Ben and his sister-in-law Irene I did not know. He was a treasure trove of knowledge and information from his time here on earth. I loved listening to his stories. Now he is gone and that wealth of knowledge is gone with them. I believe that is sad.

I have so many pictures from both sides of my family I am having a hard time choosing which ones to post.

Now, I want to talk about my dad because I have been thinking a lot about him lately. I posted about him on June 6th and you can read that post by clicking here. June 6th would have been his eightieth birthday. Unfortunately, he died July 23, 2006. He was my best friend and I miss him every day.

Here is a picture of Dad and me in the summer of 1968 when he was coaching my junior high school baseball team in Sibley, Iowa:

Again, click on the image to make it larger:

I am still not certain the point I'm trying to make with this post. It is just in these dreams these relatives and several others are alive and are all young adults, as am I. I find myself in various stages of my life with these dreams and others. Often times I am able to do things I could before my accident, and other times I find myself in my post-accident life.

I do not know what a psychologist would tell me about these dreams with my dead relatives. I am not sure I want to know!

I just know they all had an impact on my life in one way or another even though I may never have met them. My dad was a tremendous influence on me growing up. I see myself doing things and saying things he would have said. Like many of us, we find ourselves turning into our parents. I told you earlier my dad was my best friend.

Today, my mom is my best friend. We spend time on the phone almost every day. She also does some of my attendant care and stays with me every weekend. She has had two near-death experiences, one of them just a couple of years ago when she was in a coma for twelve days!

Am I learning things from these dreams in these relatives who are long gone? I do not know. Do I need to experience life with them through my dreams? I do not know.

Besides my mother and father, the most influential individual in my life was far and away my paternal grandmother, Irene Smith Patrick Grieme. I was the oldest grandchild and grandma was alone from 1942 until 1967 when she finally remarried Leslie Grieme. He also taught me many things when I stayed with them on weekends and for two weeks every summer for about five years until my accident.

I can extend this post much longer by sharing all kinds of stories about grandma, but I will not do that. Suffice it to say, I miss her tremendously as well.

Like I said at the beginning of this post, I was not exactly sure where was going to go. I have rambled on long time here. But, I feel good about sharing these albeit brief stories. I look forward to meeting them all again one day in heaven. I am anxious to have great conversations again with Uncle Stanley, Dad, talk baseball with my Grandpa Young, and meet my Grandpa  Patrick. Uncle Floyd is another one who was a great storyteller. I have not even mentioned him yet!

This gets back to the title of my post, "Why Are We Here?" I am not sure I answered that question, but I am sure while I am here I want to make a difference, just as all my deceased relatives made a difference in my life. I am trying to pay it forward with my speeches, my book and of course, this blog.

If any of you have any ideas about what I might take from these dreams, please comment at the end of this post. If you are a first-time reader of my blog, I want you to know this is twice as long as most of my posts! If you're still reading, thank you for sticking with me.

As always, I welcome your comments.

Later,

Mike