Jim's Blog

I’ve had my share of heroes over the years. When I was a kid they were mostly movie stars and baseball players, make believe characters that taught me about winning and losing in broad strokes without a lot of subtlety. I loved what I thought was the biggest and best. I was a huge fan of John Wayne. And I lived and died with the Yankee teams that featured Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra. If those folks had flaws I didn’t know about them, and probably wouldn’t have cared. They were my heroes and I wanted to be just like them. Nothing wrong with that I guess, just the way a kid thinks.

Heroes at my age are a trickier thing and I have to say I don’t have many. But with thinking about Memorial Day and Father’s Day I’d like to mention one, my father-in-law Bill. Bill was a genuine war hero, a decorated medic who risked his life saving others in both WWII and Korea. But you’d never know it from talking to him. He was a humble, hardworking man who put his family and country first, an inspiration to me and everyone around him. Bill’s been gone several years now and we all miss him every day. The good news is there are thousands of men out there like Bill for people to look up to, people who serve and inspire. I hope you have the good fortune to know one of them. Bill’s the one I knew and he’s still my hero.

God Bless,