A friendly nudge led me to the Grand Master of Adventure and a lifetime of reading

When I was a boy of about 12-13 years old growing up in the village of Niwot, Colo., my town had a tiny strip shopping center and in the far back was my favorite store.
It was a bookstore that sold new and used books and I believe it was called the Niwot Book Emporium.
I was never a good student in school but the one thing I excelled at was reading. When it came to turning pages, I was miles ahead of my classmates, which puzzled my teachers because I was so far behind them in everything else, especially math and grammar. (Remember when they taught grammar in school?)
I would visit that old bookstore as often as I could and I got to know the lady who ran it pretty well (although I no longer remember her name). Eventually she noticed a trend in my reading habits. She would often guide me to books that stretched my interest and reading level. There was one book in particular that she suggested to me that was literally life-changing.
She showed me a paperback copy of Clive Cussler’s “Raise the Titanic.” I had always been interested in the story of the tragic shipwreck and my curiosity was piqued. I took it home and devoured it. The next time I came back, the bookstore lady asked me how I liked it. I loved it! She pointed me to a couple other books Cussler had written. One was called “Iceberg” and the cover showed a ship encased inside of an iceberg.
I flipped the book over and read the back cover. It was another adventure about Dirk Pitt and Al Giordino, my new heroes from “Raise the Titanic”! I voraciously tore into that one and it wasn’t long before I was reading the first book in the series, “The Mediterranean Caper”. As I waited for the next book in the series to come out, my attention turned to novelizations of major motion pictures. I had already read every Star Trek book I could get my hands on and even read some of them twice.
Finally the wait was over and “Vixen 03” came out. It was the last book I bought at the bookstore, as it reached its last chapter and closed. By this time, I was a die-hard fan of Clive Cussler, who has become known as the Grand Master of Adventure. I hated waiting two years between each book, but that was the life of a serial reader.
In my high school and college years it became difficult to do much recreational reading outside of all the books I had to read for class. When it comes to reading, no matter how much of it I do, I have one major problem. I’m slow. I can only read at about the pace as if I were reading out loud. In my early adult years my reading pared down to what I could page through at the gym as I strolled on the treadmill or the stair-stepper.
Eventually my reading habit narrowed down to about four or six books a year. By 2005 I had almost stopped all recreational reading. I had become clinically depressed and not only had I lost interest in reading books, but I found that they quickly put me to sleep. We had moved to Amarillo, and although I wasn’t reading books I soon realized that I was reading even more than ever via articles on the Internet. I was also obsessed with all things Lone Ranger and was staying quite busy publishing a quarterly newsletter about the masked man and his faithful Indian companion.
Another life-changing moment came in the spring of 2008 when I lost my job in Amarillo but was hired as the editor of the newspaper an hour away in Hereford. If you’ve ever spent any time driving in the Texas Panhandle, you will know that radio reception is spotty at best and your choices for music are very limited. That’s when I decided to give audiobooks a try.
The next thing I know, with a two-hour round-trip each day, I was listening to an average of a book about every seven to 10 days. By this time Cussler had his second and third character series going and I had a lot of books to catch up on. I made short order out of those. I also plowed through the Harry Potter books, the Left Behind series and as many Louis L’Amour books as I could find at the local library.
We moved to Rosenberg at the end of 2008 and my new job was still an hour away in Hempstead. For three years I got to continue to listen to books to my heart’s content. I expanded my interests in many directions. I discovered new authors and branched out into different genres. I went from being entertained to being inspired by listening to the works of Zig Ziglar, Dave Ramsey, Tony Robbins, Napoleon Hill, Stephen Covey and more. I listened to biographies, got into history – especially Texas history and the history of NASA. I found new favorite authors in Brad Meltzer and Brad Thor.
The best part, however, has been keeping up with Cussler. He now has five series going with the help of co-authors, including his son, Dirk Cussler. Rather than publishing a book every other year, he now does about four or five a year. He has a few non-fiction books out and a couple of children’s books.
I try to read about two or three printed books a year, but with a daily commute of an hour or more, I still do most of my reading by ear. I’ve discovered several favorite readers (or narrators), including my very favorite Scott Brick, followed in no particular order by January LaVoy, Bronson Pinchot and Armand Schultz.
I guess my purpose in sharing this bibliophilic journey is to make the point that not only is reading good for you and makes you a better person, but that you never know where inspiration will strike. I was a book lover before I walked into that book store in Niwot (otherwise I never would have walked in) but I wouldn’t have branched out into a real world of books had not the kindly bookstore lady gently coaxed me to discover worlds I never dreamed possible.
I just want to take a moment to tell this lady thank you for changing my life. And to Clive Cussler, I want to thank you for giving me a lifetime of adventure. I owe more to those two people than they will ever know.

Fathers must rise up to the challenge of being a dad

Who are these kids and why are they calling me Dad?
There are four of them and I can’t seem to get away. Backing away slowly or making a mad dash, it doesn’t matter. They always seem to find me.
Seriously though, being a dad is the greatest thing in the world. I just wish there were many more who felt the same way. If every father took his role seriously, there would not be a need for groups like 24:7 Dad, a program of the National Fatherhood Initiative, operated locally by Catholic Charities in Richmond.
Thank God there are groups like that, because fatherhood has never been under such fierce attack in America as it is right now. There are more men today who shirk their responsibility to their children than ever before. It’s a trend that must be reversed — now!
When I first became a father in August of 1992, I was still trying to figure out what it meant to be a man and a husband. I thought I was ready for fatherhood, but I was woefully unprepared. I had a baby girl and I was not ready for a baby or a girl. As the oldest of three boys, I never had a sister or any real experience living with the female of the species other than my mother and my wife.
I tried hard to be a good dad, but I was a workaholic who was rarely home and barely awake when I was. It took the end of that marriage for me to see that my work was nowhere near as important as my family. I fought hard to keep my daughter, and I won a few battles but ultimately lost the war. It was in that struggle that I finally learned what it meant to be a father and why fathers are so vital in a child’s life.
I became fully engaged in Promise Keepers and immersed myself in what it means to be a Godly man. I learned the importance of being a good husband and father. I learned that caring for your family is what truly makes a man a real man.
Then I met and married Sandy, who was a single mom raising a little boy. I did a stepparent adoption of Wesley, but my relationship with him was nothing like the one I had with Heather. Wesley pushed my buttons and challenged me at every turn. Sandy and I had very different children and different parenting styles. When Luke and then Colton came along we had to move from man-to-man to zone coverage. More than that, it put us on the same parenting playbook.
We now have two adult children, each living hundreds of miles away, just as we are from our parents. We still have two teenagers at home and despite all my knowledge, I still struggle to relate to them. They spend more time with their phones than they do me or Sandy, no matter how hard we try to put God and family first.
The point is, being a father – or a parent in general – is not easy. It takes hard work and commitment. Unfortunately, there are more fathers than not who won’t put forth the effort or make the commitment to be the dad they need to be. There are some who want to, but are blocked by the mother and/or the courts.
It doesn’t help that our culture frowns on fatherhood. The sexual revolution and women’s movements have empowered women with the myth that they can do it all without a man. Generations of men have grown up with little or no influence from their fathers and have no real role model for being a husband or a father.
The only example of fatherhood many young men see is what they are exposed to on TV. Most of those dads are cartoonish buffoons and those programs only reinforce the stereotype of the do-it-all mom. When you look at the huge imbalance of traditional male/female, mother/father and husband/wife roles, it’s no wonder we see a rise in the number of children with gender identity issues and men who are disconnected from their families and lacking the skills to form normal, healthy relationships.
We need men to rise up and be the husbands and fathers that their wives and children need and deserve. We need a society that values men and fathers again. If we really want to make America great again, let’s not worry about walls and politics; let’s make our families – the foundation of all society – great again.
So again I ask, who are these kids and why are they calling me Dad? They are my kids and I am their dad and I couldn’t be any prouder. Thank you Heather, Wesley, Luke and Colton for being such great kids! And thank you Sandy for being such a wonderful wife and mother. Our family – it’s what we do together!

Houston’s Super Bowl Week capped by spectacular game

An overtime thriller was a fitting end for Super Bowl LI and the year of build-up and anticipation as Houston hosted the biggest annual sporting event in history.
Without the Houston Texans playing in the big game, there was little for Houstonians to cheer for other than a great game and a good time. In that regard, the Bayou City came away a big winner. The Houston Super Bowl Committee, the City of Houston and the entire region came together to put on a show unmatched by any single sporting event this side of the Olympics.
From the starting of the countdown clocks and the Touchdown Tours to the numerous events highlighted by Super Bowl Live on Discovery Green and the NFL Experience inside the George R. Brown Convention Center, the city and the region stepped up in a big way to showcase the city and play the role of a gracious host.
As a relative newcomer to the Houston area (I’ve only lived here eight years), I wasn’t around the last time Houston hosted the Super Bowl in 2004 and I’ve never been to a host city during the big game. Coming from the Denver area, I have covered back-to-back Super Bowl celebrations but this was my first experience at ground zero.
When the Houston Super Bowl Committee put out a call for 10,000 volunteers last year, my wife Sandy and I thought it would be fun. She jumped in, filled out the application, interviewed and was accepted. I gave it second thought, realizing that I would be too busy covering events to spend my time as a volunteer. It turns out that was a good call on both our parts.
For Sandy, it was an opportunity to have an insider’s perspective to a major event. She did four shifts over the course of Super Bowl Week. Although she spent most of her time handing out maps and giving directions, she got to interact with a lot of wonderful people and made several new friends from her fellow volunteers. She also got to go places and see things the general public doesn’t normally see. On top of that, the committee treated its volunteers like royalty. They were well fed and received a boatload of swag, including shirts, jackets, backpacks pins and special medallions.
As a member of the credentialed media, I had amazing access to all the “week of” events, but not the game itself. Still, there was a lot to see and experience. I went to press conferences for both the Patriots and the Falcons. The Patriots were crammed into a hotel conference room. The Falcons had the ice rink at Memorial City Mall and had plenty of space and better player access.
I had to limit what activities I covered because I still had a regular job to do at the office and I certainly didn’t have the budget to shell out $30 for parking every time I went somewhere. I did go to the media party at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. Admittedly I was more interested in touring the museum than I was the party scene, but it was nice to be wined and dined with several hundred of my colleagues.
The big day for us came on Saturday. Sports writer Bill McCaughey and I went to the annual Celebrity Sweat Flag Football Challenge. The event is a charitable fundraiser held each year near the Super Bowl site. This year it was held at Rhodes Stadium in Katy. Although not a formal part of the Super Bowl activities, the event features many current and former NFL players and other athletes.
The game featured retired quarterback Doug Flutie against Washington Redskins quarterback Kirk Cousins. Team Flutie won 40-35. There was a friendly scrimmage against military veterans before the game, which the veterans won with the help of celebrity quarterbacks, including Katy’s own Andy Dalton. Houston Astros pitcher Dallas Keuchel played for Team Flutie and was a local favorite.
Saturday evening, Sandy and I took our boys Luke and Colton – who are most decidedly not sports fans – to Discovery Green for Super Bowl Live. Sandy was working her last volunteer shift and I was covering the activities for the paper. Just moments after the boys and I got in, they closed access to Super Bowl Live because attendance was at capacity. With the gates closed, Sandy and her crew got moved into the NFL Experience where she spent the evening shagging footballs in one of the passing competitions.
I sent the boys to find food while I shot photos at the NFL Experience. I then went out to join them at Discovery Green. When ZZ Top took the main stage, I shot a few pictures and then left with the boys to explore other parts of the venue. It was much less crowded with the masses gathering around the stage for the concert.
I had originally planned to cover the Taylor Swift concert at the portable Club Nomadic that night, but opted instead to turn down my pass and spend the time with my family. It was a good call. By the time we got home that evening, we were sore, tired but still buzzing from all the fun activity.
On Sunday, we were pretty much vegetables on the couch watching the game. It was interesting seeing players and coaches who I had seen and photographed in person just days before playing in a venue where I had photographed 10 home games for the Houston Texans. It gave me kind of an insider’s feel even though I was way outside the game. As the lopsided game wore on, I had a funny feeling the Falcons 28-9 lead going into the fourth quarter wasn’t a lock. Sure enough, Tom Brady and the Patriots rallied back to tie the game and send it into overtime for the first time in Super Bowl history. They won it on the opening drive of OT 34-28.
It was an exiting end to an exciting game that capped an exiting adventure for Houston. Next up is Minneapolis. It will be interesting to see if the Twin Cities can come close to matching Houston’s super spectacular. The bar was set really high, which is something Houstonians can be really proud of.

Historic legends gather to release one of their own back to the heavens

I walked among the gods, the superhuman beings in the aging shells of mortal men who touched the face of God.
Gathered at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church in Houston to pay their final respects to one of their own, these heroes of old shone brightly beneath the veneer of mourners garb and the thin, gray hair that betrays their age and mortality we all must face.
I was but a trespasser, a lone interloper stealing a moment in time among the great and powerful men who broke the bonds of earth and traipsed among the heavens. I didn’t belong with them but there I was, clad in a cheap suit and outdated tie, nearly indistinguishable among the distinguished. These men rode giant, thunderous rockets, floated in the vast void of nothingness and placed their footprints in the gray, powdery dust of another world.
What they accomplished, they did for all mankind. They did it for me, for you and for generations unborn. They are a dwindling fraternity of space pioneers who traveled where no one had gone before or since. On Tuesday they were united once again to memorialize Capt. Gene Cernan, the 11th of their ranks to step upon the moon and the last to leave it.
The funeral service for Cernan was open to the public, so I came, appearing staid and sorrowful yet wide-eyed with wonder. I was but a lad in my single-digit years when these men went to the moon. Their adventures were my adventures. Too young to fully appreciate what they were doing, I grew up with an ever deepening respect of not only the astronauts themselves but also the countless men and women who worked tirelessly on the ground to propel these mighty men on a journey through space and history.
I am blessed to have two of these ground-based warriors as my in-laws. I’ve been privileged to have met and interviewed many who worked at NASA during the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo eras, as well as those who shuttled to low-earth orbit.
What these adventurous space pioneers accomplished, they did out of a dream turned goal turned reality. I’m but a lowly chronicler — a watcher, not a doer. Yet in watching, I do. My dream, turned goal, was to meet as many of the surviving moonwalkers as I could. I realized in 2012 when Neil Armstrong died that time was getting short. Then last year Edgar Mitchell left us. That added a sense of urgency to my quest. I made a plan to write a story about the men on the moon. It was an excuse to at least reach out and try to meet them before they were all gone.
My plan was to begin seeking them out this spring after the Super Bowl. It’s a very busy time for me and not a good time to put a major project like that on the front burner. Then on Jan. 16, Cernan slipped the bonds of earth a fourth and final time as his spirit soared back into the heavens. That created even more urgency — and an opportunity. His funeral service would be nearby and open to the public. I knew many of his fellow spacemen would be there. I determined I would be, too.
I arrived early. Although hundreds of people attended the funeral, very few seemed to be from the general public. Most knew him. I only knew of him. I took a seat in the first pew that was not reserved. I sat and marveled. St. Martin’s is an incredibly beautiful church and its magnificent organ produced mesmerizingly stunning music.
As the service started, the world about me began to change. Sunlight streaming through the ornate stained-glass windows slowly crawled across the sanctuary, alternately painting with vibrant colors and splashing bright light. It was as if the heavens were beckoning Cernan home.
As the speakers began to recount Cernan’s life and their portion of his journey with him, a new realization washed over me like the sunlight’s luminescent beams: I don’t belong here.
This isn’t some public ceremony, this is a funeral and these are close family and friends. They are not paying tribute to some great historical figure, they are saying goodbye to a husband, father, grandfather and friend. As Fox News anchorman Neil Cavuto, Apollo 13 Commander James Lovell, and retired Navy Commander Fred “Baldy” Baldwin spoke and the Rev. Dr. Russell Levenson Jr. gave the homily, it became apparent that I was privy to the private side of a public man. This was as “inside” as an average man could get to these rare and mighty men.
As the service drew to a close, a new feeling washed over me. I do belong. I may not be one of them or part of the family, but Cernan’s extended family was all mankind. He knew and understood that by walking on the moon, that he and the 11 others went there for all mankind. History demanded that they forever be shared with the billions of us who will never do what they did. He was a man of the people and I represented the people.
At the conclusion of the service, as the crowd filed out of the sanctuary and over to Bagby Parish Hall for the reception, I became star struck. Walking by me were many of the men I had idolized and longed to meet. Some I had met before and many others were distant legends from television and books.
I followed them to the hall. There, I ate their cookies and drank their coffee and wondered among these aging stars. I felt simultaneously at home and out of place. They all knew each other. They talked and hugged and laughed and shared stories and caught up on what one another was doing now. Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon, was holding court, jovially visiting with a circle of friends. Next to him was Harrison Schmitt, the 12th man on the moon and Cernan’s moonwalking partner. I couldn’t resist but to casually stroll between them.
Everywhere I turned I encountered another historical figure. All but one surviving moonwalker was there: Aldrin, Schmitt, Alan Bean, Dave Scott and Charlie Duke. Only John Young was missing. Several others who had flown on Gemini and Apollo missions were present, including Lovell, Walt Cunningham, Fred Haise, Gen. Tom Stafford and Michael Collins. Flight directors Gene Kranz, Glynn Lunney, Gerry Griffin and Milt Windler were there along with NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, JSC Director Ellen Ochoa and former Deputy Administrator Dava Newman. There were many others from the NASA family present than I can recall or recognize. You could tell they were NASA because of their bearing and character.
I experienced ecstasy and agony during the few minutes I was among them. Signs and audible warnings made it clear that there would be no photos, autographs, videos, etc. I was aching to do just that. At one point I snuck out to use the restroom. As I exited the men’s room I held the door for an elderly man and he thanked me. I did a double take. It was Michael Collins, the command module pilot from Apollo 11!
As the hour grew short and the crowd thinned out, I knew it was time to leave. I had arrived with trepidation but I left with my head in the clouds. I doubt my feet touched the ground. I felt so out of touch with reality that I could have been on the moon myself. I came home and watched Cernan’s autobiographical documentary, Last Man on the Moon. It was like living the afternoon all over again, except this time hearing the stories from the man himself.
Even now, days later, I find myself transfixed on that moment in time when I walked among these gods of history and space and realize that someday the time will come for each of us to be released from our mortal bonds and then we too can reach out to the stars and touch the face of God.