A Tale of a Boy

Once upon a time, a baby boy was born to two young people. He was blonde-haired and blue-eyed and always looked so clean that his mother thought he should be in magazine ads. Soon the little boy was joined by a little sister and later still a baby brother and another sister.

His parents moved to Springfield and he went to Southern View Elementary and Southeast High School. He played baseball and was a Boy Scout. When he was in high school he was in a rock band and had a girlfriend. He graduated in 1971.

After he graduated from high school he worked at Fiat-Allis and eventually decided that factory life was not for him. So he went to Lincoln Land Community College at night. After he graduated from junior college, he went to Western Illinois University at Macomb. Around that time he got married to a girl that he'd gone to high school with. He graduated from Western and came back to Springfield. He had one of the first degrees in information technology and that made him very employable. He worked at Horace Mann and then for a company that had gas stations in the area. He worked hard and invented the first gas pump that talked to the cash register inside. He also got to travel some including an overseas trip to Holland.

Unfortunately, his marriage didn't last, and he started running around with two other guys, going to the bars even though he didn't drink much. Once he was at a bar with his friends and a woman about his age walked by. She thought he looked interesting and asked about him. One of his friends said "You won't find anybody better than him." The woman asked him to the dance. He said no. Despite this refusal, the woman and the man started dating and eventually were married.

The woman had been married before and had a young daughter. Together the man and woman had their own child, another daughter.

The man and the woman's marriage had ups and downs but they stayed together. The man was never bored -- he had hobbies that included magic, woodworking, guitar playing and photography. The woman didn't have any hobbies and she had a number of weaknesses that caused lots of problems, but the man stood by her anyway.


One day the woman was diagnosed with a progressive incurable illness. Instead of leaving her, the man took care of her as she gradually lost many of her capabilities. He took her to church every Sunday, cooked meals because she couldn't, washed his own clothes, and never complained. Everything he did said he cared about her.

The guy in the bar was right -- I couldn't have found a better man than my husband, Ron.

Happy birthday!