Friends and Family
The one treasure we possess in our lifetime that lives beyond it is the relationship we build with our friends and family. All the rest of my possessions are inconsequential in comparison to this treasure.
Friends
As I think back through my life I am fortunate to have had many people whom I have considered close friends. Beginning with Mary Beth Tuggle and Jan Jolly who were very early childhood neighbors and friends and graduating to my high school best buddies, Del Jones and Frank Avery, I have felt especially close to such friends. In college my roommate, Kent Anglin, and I became quite close for those eventful four years.
As happens too many times in many friendships such as these, my friends and I went on to pursue our life's goals and time and eventually geography separated us. Yet I still think of them fondly and wonder what they are doing and how they are. But today I don't really have any contact with them any more.
When I moved to Knoxville in 1979, that move was one of those landmark events that seemed to separate me from another set of friends, the ones I had had in Georgia, and in particular The Fun Addicts -- Phil Petty, Forrest Umberger and Bob Wilson -- with whom I had become quite close during our years of singing together. And for almost 20 years after that move, our group didn't have much contact each other. But then eventually Phil and I began to communicate by computer and our quartet reinitiated our sometimes get-togethers. And today we all keep in touch by computer.
Family
As is too frequently the case, I have left the development of a page devoted specifically to my family until I had done other things. Perhaps it is inevitable that it should be so, and maybe it is a parable of how these things seem always to occur. Nonetheless, I am now getting around to doing what I probably should have done much earlier.
Having been a fan of Harry Chapin since I first heard him sing Mail Order Annie and Get On With It on the Johnny Carson Show, his most famous song, Cat's in the Cradle, seldom failed to bring tears to my eyes during the time I was going through my divorce from Carole after I moved to Knoxville in 1979. My sons, Jeff and Mike, were 14 and 10 respectively at the time. And as I pursued my career and my own needs, the song too accurately depicted the separation that my "doing my thing" imposed on the time I spent with them. Of course, as the years have gone on, the reversal of fortunes that the song "predicts" has also taken place. Perhaps the accuracy of the sentiments it expresses for so many families accounts for why it became so popular. Both of my sons are now fathers and can appreciate more fully now how the demands of their lives impose limits on their availability to their children.
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