A Beacon of Light

“Your name is the most important thing you own. Don’t ever do anything to disgrace or cheapen it.”~ Ben Hogan In early May 1986, Kathy and I experienced the birth of our first son. We named him Thomas. My paternal grandfather’s name was Thomas. My father’s name was Thomas. My brother’s name is Thomas. And one of Kathy’s…

“I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren’t trying to teach us.”~ Umberto Eco In the right-hand photo above, you’ll see a yellow Post-It note with the date May 15. I placed that note prominently at my desk two months ago. I had an idea for another…

“No one you love is ever truly lost.” ~ Ernest Hemingway When I received my class rosters prior to the first day of teaching at St. Augustine’s College in Nassau, I had no idea that one of the students on those lists would become a lifelong friend. Kim Brohier was in one of my 10th grade classes.…

“Constant attention by a good nursemay be just as important as a major operation by a surgeon.” ~ Dag Hammarskjöld Other than the time of my birth, I’ve been fortunate to have avoided frequent hospital stays. In my early elementary school years, I had my tonsils removed at Saint Mary’s Hospital in San Francisco. In the pediatric…

“A sense of humor is the ability  to understand a joke  — and that the joke is oneself.”  ~ Clifton Paul Fadiman On a sunny San Francisco day in the early 1970s, one of my best high school buddies and I went for a bike ride. I had purchased a Raleigh Grand Prix 10-speed touring…

“Hope is being able to see that there is a light despite all of the darkness.” ~ Bishop Desmond Tutu I once heard that the word HOPE is actually an acronym: Have Only Positive Expectations. I guess there’s something to be said for this. The dictionary tells us that hope is a feeling that what we want to…

“We were seventeen, but we were never their age.”  ~ Unknown I wasn’t planning to write a blog post today. I’ve been preoccupied of late working on another project. While taking a quick look at Facebook to check messages this afternoon, the image above caught my attention and reminded me of this quote. The source of…

“It is not what you do for your children, but what you have taught them to do for themselves that will make them successful human beings.” ~ Ann Landers Two years before the birth of my first son, the world changed — at least, here in the United States. On February 10, 1984, Kevin Collins, a fourth-grade student at Saint Agnes School…

“The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.” ~ Mark Twain Growing up in San Francisco, two weeks of each summer of my childhood would be spent as a camper at Silver Tree Day Camp, located in Glen Canyon, just a few hundred yards behind Glen Park Playground on Elk Street. My Dad…

“The nice thing about living in a small town is that when you don’t know what you’re doing, someone else does.”~ Immanuel Kant My life could have been much different. The same could be said about anyone’s life. Why was I born into my family of origin and not some other family? Why was I born into a…