Nephew Number One Graduated!
Yesterday we sat in the bleachers of one of the local high schools, watching the class of 2003 traipse across the stage and receive their diplomas. That scene will be played out in countless venues over the next couple of weekends. It's a moment of great joy, and of great sentiment.

J.J. is my brother J.R.'s boy. It amazes me how true the cliche is: wasn't it just yesterday that we watched J.R. manuever up the stairs of the old Civic Center auditorium stage and clomp across the platform on his crutches to the embrace of the principal and board of education president? It probably wasn't just yesterday. J.R. is gone, the old Civic Center is torn down, life is irrevocably different.

And yet graduation is still the same and that is a comfort. It is a marking of a moment of entrance into a new stage of life.

Yay for you, J.J!!!!