Words from WW Blog

When I put my pants on in the morning, I make sure no one is watching. I’m at that age where trying to balance myself on one foot while the other foot is seeking the correct leg sleeve is like an American Ninja challenge for me. It was just a few years ago that I could do that regular part of the dressing process without any difficulty. I took it for granted. Now I’m thinking of putting a chair in the closet to keep me from tumbling over.

Balance is undervalued. A person doesn’t realize it until he falls without provocation on his right or left side and grumbles at the injustice of it all. Balance comes into play in most areas of our lives. Out-of-balance can lead to some serious negative repercussions. For example, a college classmate of mine went the whole summer eating only Captain Crunch cereal. It fit his unique personality that included a time when he pretended to be a wolverine. With a Captain Crunch diet, he had to wean himself back onto other foods and I wouldn’t say he was a picture of health during his foray into the Quaker Oats cereal section. (Reference previous wolverine impersonation)

A balanced diet, balanced schedule, balanced priorities, balanced relationships, balanced perspective. Extremes have a way of leading a person or group to that awkward, tenuous standing-on-one-foot situation. Extremes lead to trouble, chaos, and uncertainty.

I’d even say that extreme positions become power-thirsty, never able to quench their need for more. In our culture of extremes, there seems to be historical amnesia about the balance that was crucial to our Constitutional reasoning. The framers of the Constitution talked long and longer about how this new nation would operate. There was the need for a leader, but not a monarchy; a need for the people to be able to express their voices; and the need for a justice system to provide wisdom and interpret the law.

It was a balanced system that left everyone a little unhappy and a little satisfied. It required that each branch of government respect the others, saw the value and purpose of each to keep the new nation from yielding to whoever talked the loudest, made the most extreme threats, or had the most resources. It was never meant to be a perfect form of government, but rather one that fit with our founding principles and purposes.

Like I said, balance is undervalued. The wisdom of a balanced perspective is often overshadowed by an irrational hyper-movement.

I’m rethinking the value of a four-legged chair now, before I fall hard on my keister.

This past winter was not kind to half of our backyard lawn. It slopes slightly up from our deck to the back of the property. That equates into half of the grass getting a decent amount of moisture and half that doesn’t. Add to that a decrease in snowfall this winter and the lawn looks like the teenager I saw yesterday who had half of her hair one color and the other half a different color. It was more resembling of part of the NBC peacock. That comment is also evidence of my advanced state of old-fashioned-ism. Regardless, it always looks weird to me, just as my backyard looks weird right now.

My neighbor up the street, Mr. Kwan, has taken pity on me and made my grass-less stretch of turf his project. It could be a great storyline for a reality TV show. The title: Mr. Good Neighbor, or…here it is…”Mr. Kwan’s Lawn!”

Mr. Kwan explains the science of grass to me each day. It brings back memories of Mr. Wizard, the TV science show back in the 50’s, 60s, and 70’s where Don Herbert would show and explain various science experiments to kids. In terms of our backyard, I’m the kid and Mr. Kwan is the wizard.

Mr. Kwan has tilled the backyard, brought up dead grass that has been lying underneath the healthy part of the lawn, instructed me in the seeding of the barren area, and come down the street to check the progress each morning. He has guided me in understanding the anatomy of a healthy lawn, brought me low to the ground for a closer view and with excitement proclaimed, “There is grass! It growing!” Like fine hair on a pre-pubescent teen’s legs, I could see them, shy in their emergence and unaware of their potential. He has enthused me about my small glade.

Like little babies who can not be left by themselves, each day I’m checking on what my new blades are up to. I’m excited to see what the Kentucky Bluegrass will be. Since I was born in the midst of Kentucky Bluegrass, just a few miles outside of Lexington, it’s almost like I’m coming home again.

Growing grass is not easy. Weeds are easy. A few residents in our subdivision have given up on the grass and yielded to the weeds. Mr. Kwan shakes his head at the lack of attention. It’s a metaphor for life. What is stunning and peaceful (a Homes and Gardens lawn) requires effort, time, focus, and devotion. The weeds and winter kills of life can deceptively invade our hoped for existence and our purpose-driven journeys. Quite honestly, weeds can spring up in the midst of the immaculate. Today I pulled a creeping type of vine out of the middle of my “babies”. The Bible warns us about those who might come into our midst and lead us astray. Like weeds in the midst of the grass, they slowly inch into dominance. Or like the dryness of a snowless winter, they drain the life out.

In my lawn story, Mr. Kwan is like my turf shepherd, excited about the growth and cautious about the possible threats. He’s my Good Samaritan, taking pity upon the lack of groundskeeping education of the Baptist pastor down the street.

I have a habit of stretching out my t-shirts and underwear. I’ll just leave the stretched underwear out of the conversation and focus on my t-shirts. Many of you are now giving a deep sigh of relief.

My wife, Carol, tells me that I tuck in my t-shirts too much, and the result is that the neckline stretches and begins to droop like someone’s double chin. After a while, the neckline is not only drooping, but also frayed. Sometime in the darkness of the night, Carol scoots some of those shirts out of my dresser and sends them to Jesus.

She makes the point that I’ve stretched them out so much that they have become an eyesore. I reply that they were just starting to feel comfortable draped over my upper body. She makes the point that my comfort is another person’s discomfort and dis-ease. I guess you could say that my “disease” causes “dis-ease”. One time she discovered that I had accumulated 120 t-shirts, half of which needed to become t-rags. The t-shirt I sleep in is from 1997. It feels broken in. All of those t-shirts that Carol removed felt fine. (Yes, a few had rips and mustard stains on them, but I was okay with that!)

Keeping that metaphor in mind, I’ve been wondering a lot lately about freedom. Is there a limit? Can freedom be only stretched so far, and then after that, usually the same words, it becomes frayed and all drooped out?

Recent arguments about the limits on firearms and reproductive rights have brought the issue of how stretchable freedom is and should be to our cultural neckline.

We’re a culture that does like to stretch the limits. Think speed limit and our understanding of what that speed limit really is! Or just go into my middle school for the last month or so of the school year and see firsthand how a number of students stretch their understanding of the school dress code. My limit in one area may be way out of the ballpark compared to your limit. My conservative view on one matter may make you start itching in its narrow viewpoint.

So does freedom have a common sense limit? If it doesn’t, does that leave the door open for people to do things like crash-and-stash stores and steal merchandise, as we’ve seen in a few places across the country? Does our personal convenience have the right-of-way when it comes to ethical and moral decisions? If so, how far can that be stretched? In a society that seems to see entitlement as a right, is there a difference between the freedoms that our forefathers envisioned and the entitled attitudes of our populace? Can we take our rights to freedom so far that we rip ourselves apart?

I know, I know, all that from a drooping and frayed t-shirt. I guess I’m thankful that I have the freedom to connect the ludicrous with our liberties.

Whining has made a comeback. There’s even a Whiner’s Anonymous group. Members of it are called “whineaholics”. They have a Whiner’s Annonymous Help (WAH!) 12-Step program. Evidently, some people– Correction! A lot of people– have a problem with whining and its twin cousin “complaining”.

Maybe it’s because we’ve become less tied into agriculture. I don’t remember my farming grandfather ever whining about all the work he had to do. Rising early each morning to milk the cows, feed the chickens, plant the corn, pick the corn, and whatever else needed to be done, he didn’t have any time to whine. Whining never got anything done for him. There was order and expectations in his farming mindset. In fact, one time when I showed up with my hair actually touching my ears, he asked me why my hair was so long? My response that it was the style and that “Everybody was doing it!”, was met with the response, “If everybody starts wearing girdles, are you going to wear one, too?”

At that point in my life I may have responded “Yes”, but I kept quiet, although I thought about whining.

Back to the pouting point! The price of gas has flooded the whining ranks. It, however, has not lessened the number of cars on the roadways. People look at the gas pump and have a whine-fest about “$4.99 for regular!” I can hear my grandfather’s voice. “Well, if everybody does it, do you have to do it?” In other words, was it necessary for you to make that road trip to that game and pay an arm and a leg for the tickets, go to the store three times today, and pull that fifth-wheel two hundred miles to a campground?

There’s whining because something is out of our control, like the feelings of isolation caused by the pandemic, and then there’s whining because we’re just addicted to being whiners. Whining has become a characteristic of our culture. Sometimes we have become confused on what is a just cause and what is just whining. Like the McDonald’s drive-thru customer who kept whining about a flavored drink (I think flavored coffee), and wanted it redone, and redone, and redone. The manager, taking on my grandfather’s personality, finally told him they were done with him. Find another place to get your coffee.

Whining is “entitlement turned-down”. Jesus was an advocate for treating people fairly, respecting everyone, and seeing the value in each person even when their society said they were worthless. His hearing was alert to pleading, but he reacted to the whiners of His time. Specifically, the Pharisees and teachers of the Law who came to Him complaining about the non-observance of their traditions. They usually began their whine with the words, “Why do…?” Jesus never crumbled to a whine, but he cried in response to pleading. When He came upon someone who the culture treated as an outcast, he righted the wrong.

So let’s get over our pouting, complaining, and whining attitudes. I like Step 5 in the Whiners Annonymous Help 12-Step program. Here it is with the attached scenario to put things into perspective:

5. Step out of your shoes.

Put your whine in perspective. There’s a woman in Africa living in a mud hut with a grass roof and NO indoor plumbing. She lives off of $27 a year. She is totally blind and collects sticks for firewood, hoping the next stick isn’t a snake. Now, what was your whine again?

My next-door neighbor has a mature aspen tree in his backyard that is beautiful, except for one branch. All the other branches up and down the tree seem to be synchronized in their posture and purpose, except this one. It hangs low over raised their deck, even causing a couple of taller family members to bend to the side if they have to go by it.

I’m not sure why my neighbor, a pastor just like me, doesn’t cut it back, but then I look at the apple tree in my own backyard that has a shape that resembles the hairstyle of The Three Stooges’ member, Larry. Both of them have weird branches that seem to be trying to make a run for it.

But, all of the branches, normal and abnormal, are connected to the same tree trunks. Once in a while, a strong wind, or like the 18 inches of heavy snow we received on May 18, comes along and breaks one of the branches. Curiously, it’s always one of the normal-looking branches that breaks off. The weird ones hang around like the neighbor kid who seems to always be practicing his squeaky saxophone.

In a time when people’s opinions are more heated than an Arizona sidewalk in July, it’s good to remember that followers of Jesus don’t need to look alike. They can even stand out and make people avoid them. They can even cause others to wonder why he, or why she, is a part of that church. He doesn’t vote like those other people there, and she doesn’t hold the same opinion about the possession of marijuana as the normal church folk does.

Jesus’ own disciples didn’t always agree on things. In fact, a couple of them were kinda odd. Come to think about it, most of them were about half-a-bubble off-center. But they were all connected to the trunk. A few years down the line, that trunk got sawed and shaped into the main part of a cross. Not many of the disciples were on board with that direction either.

We’ve come to a point in our world where people think they have to agree with everything, and if you don’t agree with me, or me with you, we need to part company and post about “the stupid people” on social media.

Two of my best friends in ministry, Tom Bayes and Chuck Moore, didn’t agree on a number of issues and, in like manner, didn’t agree with me. We were three American Baptist pastors leading three different ABC churches in Michigan, each of us at different points on the theological spectrum. We met for lunch every other Wednesday for 7 years at Finley’s restaurant on the south side of Lansing. We came alongside one another in the difficult times of pastoring, giving advice on how to deal with whiney, irritating people who may very well have given Jesus a migraine. We laughed with one another about the comedy of being clergy. I’ll never forget the story shared about a dog that jumped up on the couch during a pastoral visit, started humping one of our arms, and the owners sitting across the living room and smiling.

We never felt like we had to agree with one another on a variety of theological issues. However, we always were committed to respecting one another. Even today, maybe even more so, the three of us see differently on certain issues that other people separate over. At one time or another, each one of us has been that weird branch that looks like it’s heading to the beer tent instead of the sanctuary.

And you know something? I miss my two brothers. One’s down in North Carolina and the other is on his way back to Chicago after a nine-month interim pastorate in Foxboro, Massachusetts. There is a void in my spirit because of our separation by distance. Every time I see my backyard Larry tree, I think about them.

In my formative years– that as, about the time I realized a pair of clean underwear in the morning was a good decision, not one of several options– I discovered the value of having kids in the neighborhood that I could play outdoor games with. In our Wliiamstown, West Virginia backyards, Mark Dobbins, Jeff Pyles, and I would play 1-on-2 tackle football, grass-staining our blue jeans and white t-shirts. We didn’t know how to tackle. Mostly, it was a grab-and-fall brand of tackle. Ripped t-shirts were common. Hiding them from our moms was next to impossible. We tried to emulate running back Jim Brown, the best of all-time and the hero of the Cleveland Browns. Unfortunately, we fumbled the ball more in one afternoon than Brown did in his whole career.

Whiffle Ball was our other go-to. We’d play until someone hit a bomb onto the roof. As it went whistling into orbit, we’d begin to pray. It would hit the roof and begin a slow, descending trickle back down the shingles. Our prayers were asking for the miracle of a bump, a hop, and a fall back to earth. However, miracles rarely happened in our backyards. Instead, the plastic ball would come to the edge of the shingles cliff and tumble over into the eavestrough, staying there in the mud and sediment until the next heavy rainstorm. That translated into our form of a rain delay. “Game called because of gutter”, would be groaned by whoever had not been the batter, as our whiffle ball supply was thin to begin with: One! A home run trot would be toned down by the insults and anger of the others. A right field single was more valued than a 90-foot-blast onto the Green Roof Monster. Right field was our neighbor’s backyard in a era when there were no fences.

Our exploits took place in our backyards, where reputations were made and we became legends in our own minds. Jeff, Mark, and I rarely went together inside one of our homes. If we did, it was usually because we needed to hydrate at halftime. As kids, we played outside in sun or snow. Rain might mean we’d scuttle into one of our home carports, maybe not. Tackle football in the snow was a treat, the snow acting like a soft blanket to fall upon. After football, even though we were soaked to the bone (No snowsuits for us!), we’d build snow forts and go to war. Mark Dobbins had an arm, Jeff Pyles not so much. Me? I was erratic and unpredictable.

Backyards were where it was at. Our front yard was small and un-masculine, landscaped with our moms’ flower beds and puny-looking bushes. Backyards were our stadiums and we were our own cheerleaders.

Those were the golden years of our youthful innocence.

A few miles outside of Colorado Springs, there is a sign to indicate that if you want to travel on Elbert Road you’ll need to follow the detour signs. Since I was heading to speak at the Colorado Cowboy Camp Meeting (which is another story in itself), I needed to go through Elbert, which, in case you’re wondering, is where Elbert Road in Elbert County leads to, and then on to the Camp Meeting grounds another 30 miles or so past that.

I followed the detour signs on down the road for a few miles until I reached Peyton, turned left as the sign instructed me to do, and proceeded this way and that way until I met up with Elbert Road again. So far so good until…

As I approached the intersection that brought me back to the continuation of Elbert Road, the detour sign pointed to the left, except I knew Elbert was to the right. What to do? Follow my instincts and turn right? Assume that the county highway workers getting close to the end of the work week were weary, a little lacking in detail, and not reading the signs (Bad pun!)? Did they forget what was their right and what was their left, or had run out of detour signs pointing to the right, and made the directional mistake?

Or should I continue to follow the signs, even when I knew this one was wrong?

I turned right.

After I made the turn, in my rearview mirror I could see flashing lights. I pulled over to see what the lighted sign said underneath the flashing. It said, “Road Closed Ahead,” which was now behind me.

Most of the time, following the signs is the way to go. Once in a while, however, there is a person, leader, group, or organization who decides on the direction and has no clue as to what he, she, or they are doing. Suddenly, theres’s an abrupt closure up ahead.

It might be a county roads worker who is short on sleep, hot, and sweaty and, as a result, brings a temporary uncomfortableness to those trusting in what the signs say, but sometimes it’s a simply movement or a whacked idea that leads to the edge of a cliff. The side of a cliff is fine in a Far Side cartoon or Roadrunner cartoons, and even for a herd of demon-possessed pigs that are running away from Jesus, but when the cliff is ending and a shred of misguided people are approaching it at full speed someone needs to get on a bullhorn and say the sign was pointing in the wrong direction.

I can recall a whole volume of times my decisions lacked common sense and my life was heading in the wrong direction, but most of the time I’ve been able to figure out what seems to be a bad idea, what leads to misery, and what is just plain stupid. I mean, there is a reason why they titled the one TV show “Jackass” instead of “Genius”

When I headed toward the cliff there were consequences connected to the nonsense. In our culture today, bad decisions with cliff-teetering results seem to get blamed on someone or something else. As someone sprints towards destruction, it seems that he rationalizes that there will be someone who will throw him a rope as he’s losing his balance.

Sometimes we need to be perceptive enough to detour around the detour. That, however, may be asking a bit too much of some folk.

Today, June 18, would have been my dad’s 94th birthday. I’m wearing his blue University of Kentucky polo in honor of him. Laurence Hubert Wolfe passed away on February 15, 2018. He was a man of God, wise, respected, and dependable.

I could write the facts about him, like how many kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids he had, where he worked… stuff like that , but that doesn’t tell you who my dad was.

My dad was a caring person. That seems kinda descriptively non-descriptive. But you see it entails a multitude of stories. He and my mom were married for 65 years before her passing. Her name was Virginia Helton, youngest daughter of Dewey and Nettie Helton, and a bit strong-willed and determined. Add her married name to her first name and she became Virginia Wolfe. As we would say in our teenage years, “Who’s afraid of Virginia Wolfe?” We would raise our hands. Not that my mom was mean or dictatorial, she just liked things done her way, like expecting all the dinner food to be consumed by us so the dishwater didn’t get dirty. There were more than a few times where I had another serving of mashed potatoes plopped on my plate in consideration of what it would do to the dishwater. The whole scenario was confusing to me, but now I rarely take a plate to the sink with food on it that I haven’t consumed. Wasting food was something you didn’t do, even if it was canned carrots (which I believed were from the devil).

Dad cared for my mom, honored her, sometimes let her talk to the point that she made no sense, before offering her his thoughts which always followed the trail of common sense. In her final years, struggling with Parkinson’s that gradually caused her to lose the functioning of her arms and legs, my dad and my sister (who lived down the street from them) became Mom’s caregivers. That required taking care of he diapering, feeding, keeping her hydrated, and listening to her conspiracy theories about things she had become confused about. The one that we’ll always remember is that Mom believed Dad was having an affair with Rachael Ray. She could see the TV personality reflected on the mirror in her bedroom off of the TV positioned a few feet away from her bed. It greatly upset her, so Dad, kind and considerate, solved the problem by draping towels over the mirror. He had to find a different mirror to stand in front of to comb his hair.

When the Parkinson’s also took Mom’s ability to speak, Dad became her conversationalist, talking to her about the kids and grandkids, what she’d like for dinner…even though she couldn’t tell him, and the latest news stories. He honored her in his caring, as he had committed on their August 13, 1947 wedding day, “for better or for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health.” That’s who he was, how he was, and what he was about. His father, my grandfather, had been killed in a mining accident when Dad was still a kid. Perhaps not having him around, and the severity of the times in the late 1930s, caused him to help his mom and his two siblings keep the family together. He never really talked about those days very much, which tells me they were a difficult time, yet also a foundational time for him. They solidified many of his virtues and values.

He loved a good story. The front porch of the Helton farm home, outside of Paintsville, Kentucky, was a gathering place for stories listened to and told by Dad, my uncles, and my PaPaw Helton. I swear I heard some of those stories more times than God Himself, but they never became tiresome, and each telling prompted rebuttals and revisions from some of the listeners.

“Now, Milliard, that’s not how it happened. It was a Tuesday and he was driving a Ford pickup with one of the taillights hanging down from its frame like it was trying to get away.”

In his later years, with the front porch gang all gone on to Glory, Dad would pass on stories to us…again and again, always slapping himself on the leg as he came to the uproarious, humorous ending. My brother would offer his perspective as a result of 28 years with the Associated Press and several years as the speechwriter for the Kentucky governor, and my sister and I would sit there taking it all in, laughing at just the right moment to encourage the spinning of Dad’s tale.

And Dad was wise. Might I add, patiently wise. He’d hear my mom out: her struggles at her bookkeeping job at J. C. Penney’s that day, who said what to whom, should she go ahead and buy some Towncraft underwear for the boys for Christmas since it was on sale that week, and what did he think about how quickly her new shoes had started to wear out? Dad would listen and, not too soon, offer his thoughts and advice on the topic at hand. When I came home from college for my Christmas break with my hair grown out and parted in the middle, my mom’s reaction was “Lord, have mercy!” Dad’s reaction was to hug me since he hadn’t seen me for almost 5 months. I do recall him escorting me down to Morris’s Barbershop the next Monday morning, but the importance of having my hair trimmed and looking more like a Baptist was on a different page from letting me know how glad he was to see me.

So today would be his 94th birthday. I trimmed around the lawn today in honor of him. He liked a freshly-mowed and well-trimmed yard even more than a trimmed-up son. Maybe I’ll ask my oldest daughter to bring her hair clippers over tonight as a tribute to Mom. It would make her happy, which, in turn would make Dad happy.

Happy birthday, Pops!

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” (Romans 15:13)

I live in Colorado, where we’ve had drought conditions for the past few years. Each year our local officials, in collaboration with the public utility departments, decide if there needs to be watering restrictions put into place. For example, this year we’re restricted to watering our lawn three days a week. As another deterrent to using too much water, the price for each gallon has been used, as well as higher prices during certain times of the day.

The reservoirs around the state are low. The snowfall, that is so necessary to keep the water level up, was minimal this past winter. The ripple effect of that can be seen in the dried-up patches of grass in our backyard. The dry Colorado climate often causes me to feel parched and wanting.

That picture of depletion could be used to characterize the search that many people have these days for hope. Hopelessness has dehydrated our passion for life and purpose for living. It has sapped our energy and scorched our optimism.

When a person or a culture is in the midst of a hope drought, the despondency causes people to look for people and systems to blame it on. Whose fault is it that there is no hope in sight? In sports the coach, manager, players, or even the fan-base get blamed. In financially-stressed times the rising costs of products and services become the focus. In relational tensions, the focus can shift to perceived injustices, the inability to communicate, and structures that cause division and unrest.

Looking for someone to blame, however, never leads to hope. It just leads to hopelessness being reshaped. It does nothing to quench the thirst for hope. It distorts the thirst for hope into being a thirst for justice or a thirst for vindication. There is a mentality that runs through our culture that seems to believe that the absence of hope can be rectified by the presence of equity and fair treatment. There is nothing wrong with such things, but they are artificial sweeteners for the sweetness of hope.

In Scripture, where the word hope appears, it usually is in conjunction with the Lord God Almighty, Jesus, and/or the Holy Spirit. Psalm 42 begins with the phrase, “As the deer pants for the water, my soul thirsts for you, O Lord.” And then a few verses later, the psalmist writes, “Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.” (Psalm 42:5)

The Apostle Paul, after he had been taken to Rome to face Caesar and, ultimately, his execution, met with some of the Jewish leaders in Rome and said to them, “For this reason I have asked to see you and talk with you. It is because of the hope of Israel that I am bound with this chain.” (Romans 28:20) The hope of Israel, Jesus.

In a day and age of anxiety and unrest, a time of spiritual and personal drought, the answer for our lack of fulfillment and despair is the hope that we are offered in Jesus Christ. After all, Jesus described Himself as “The Living Water”.

When I was moving into eighth grade…we were moving! My family had been living in Williamstown, West Virginia for several years, but my dad, who worked for the Social Security Administration, received a promotion and we made a move to Zanesville, Ohio.

The middle school years are awkward enough, but when you are the new kid at a school (South Zanesville Junior High) where almost everyone already knows one another it makes it even more uncomfortable. Add to that the fact that I was the shortest kid (4 feet 8 inches) in the whole eighth grade, and maybe even in seventh grade, I felt invisible one moment and thought everyone was staring at the new kid in the next.

I went out for football and looked like someone’s little brother who had wandered onto the field. I remember one practice where Randy McDaniels, our 6’1″ running back took a pitch and was running to the outside. I tried to tackle him and I bounced off of him like he was a windshield and I was the bug.

Terry Kopchak was a lineman on that team and he took me under his massive wing. He was kind and smart. Although he’d never brag about it, Terry was a straight ‘A’ student, one of those kids who worked hard and always seemed to do what was right. He ended up being a teacher, a principal, and then a school superintendent. Instead of seeing me as someone who got obliterated by Randy McDaniels, he saw me as someone who needed a friend.

The eighth and ninth grade years are hard enough. In fact, as I look back on those days I view them as years of personal insignificance. They were a time where I felt I had no value, I didn’t ‘t matter.

Terry Kopchak and another classmate named Mike Bowman told me I mattered. After a football season where my stat sheet registered zero tackles, zero receptions, and, as I look back on it, I think my uniform number was zero, basketball season came. The three of us were teammates on the school team, and the main player was the same guy who had trampled me during football season. Mike, Terry, and I were players who had support roles. We supported one another on the bench and encouraged each other in the minutes of playing time we’d receive. (By the way, Mike Bowman was also a straight ‘A’ student! If I ever received an ‘A’, it was in physical education.)

When I look back on it, now 55 years in the rearview mirror, I am increasingly thankful for these two friends who mad such an impact. After my ninth grade year, my dad received another promotion and we moved from Zanesville to the river town of Ironton, where two other guys (Dave Hughes and Mike Fairchild) took up where terry and Mike left off. I wonder where I would have been without those guys. Their handprints were upon my life.

In recent days, Terry has had some health struggles. He’s had to go through dialysis and physical therapy, battled through Covid illness even though he had received the first three vaccinations, and has gone through a long recovery. One of the results of friendship is a heart swell of empathy, compassion, and love for an old buddy, even though we haven’t crossed paths for decades.

A ripple effect of having friends like Terry and Mike can be seen in the first three books of my RED HOT novel series. One of the main characters, a short bespectacled kid named Ethan Thomas, needed a friend, just like I did. A new boy named Randy moved across the street from him and became that friend who believed in him.

You see, everyone needs a friend…or two, because a friend can let you know that you matter even when you’re filled with doubts that you do.

Thanks, Terry…Mike…Mike…and Dave!