What's on your bucket list?

 

I used to have a poster on a wall of my college dorm of an elaborate sandcastle that had the caption, “Fashion a dream and make it come true.”

I was reminded of that years later when I saw the movie “The Bucket List.” That movie popularized the term “bucket list,” meaning the things you want to do before you kick the bucket.

Whenever someone mentions a place they’ve gone to or a thing they’ve done, it’s not uncommon to say, “That’s on my bucket list.” But really, do any of us have a list or are there just a bunch of random things we say we’d like to see and do?

As the saying goes, a goal without a plan is just a wish. Like most people, I have never written down a list of things for my bucket list and that’s probably why I haven’t accomplished many of them. But it’s not enough to just write them down, although that is a very good first step.

When it comes to creating your own bucket list, it’s best to divide it into two categories: Things you want to see or visit and things you want to do or experience. Looking back over my life, had I written down a bucket list, there is an incredible number of things that would already be crossed off it. I’ve been tandem skydiving, ridden in a hot air balloon, gone on cruises to Alaska, Hawaii, and the Caribbean, met numerous celebrities, photographed professional football and baseball games (including a World Series!), and most recently I’ve crossed visiting Mount Rushmore off my list.

Although I never considered this as a bucket list item, I think the greatest thing I’ve done is to marry Sandy and raise four exceptionally wonderful children.

Looking ahead, there are still a great many things on my bucket list(s).

On my list of places to go and see:

• Visit every continent
• Visit all 50 states (just four more to go)
• Visit too many cities and countries to list here
• Visit the Louvre and all the Smithsonian museums
• Visit all of the presidential libraries
• Visit Yellowstone and many other national parks

On my list of things to do and experience:

• Finish writing my reenactment photo book
• Write other books
• Photograph every NFL team (three more to go)
• Experience weightlessness
• Go scuba diving
• Go on an African safari
• Fly in a blimp
• Go on a deer hunt (and other big game)
• Appear in a movie
• Dive on the Titanic

These lists pretty much scratch the surface of my bucket list, but at least now I have them down in writing. It’s something you should do, too. Keep in mind that the list is fluid. You cross things off as you do them and you add to it as you discover more things you’d like to see and do.

The most important thing for me is to do as many of these things as I can with Sandy and to help her do as many of hers as I can.

Once you have your list in writing, it’s much easier to make a plan to do some or all of them. I know there are things on my list that I will probably never do, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to do them. The thing is, none of them happen without a plan – set a date and a budget to do it.

You don’t want to get to the end of your life and discover that your bucket is still full, and you’ve missed out on the opportunity to experience your life to the fullest. You need to fashion your dream and make it come true.

Ultimately, when my time has come and I finally kick the bucket, there is one thing left that I want to experience – the joy of coming before the glory of God and hearing, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.” And I want that for you as well.

Still Trekkin' after 60 years

 

I have been and always shall be a Trekkie.

Space: My first frontier was following the voyages of the starship Enterprise on her original series mission to explore strange, new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no television show has gone before.

I was a year and a month old when “Star Trek” debuted on television. I don’t know if I watched it, but “Star Trek” populates some of my earliest memories. Clearly my mother must have watched it because I was well aware of it three years later when astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the moon.

I was a toddler minding my own business when Mom called me over to watch the TV when Armstrong took that “giant leap for mankind.” I was reluctant to join her because I didn’t understand what all the fuss was about with men landing on the moon. After all, the USS Enterprise was well beyond the moon and Kirk, Spock and the others routinely visited other planets. Certainly, we have been to the moon before!

That’s when I received my lesson about science fact and science fiction. I watched the moon landing with her, but I was much more impressed by Captain Kirk. As I got a little older, “Star Trek” ended its run and went into syndication. It aired on weekdays after school and I watched it religiously.

I know my father wasn’t a fan. He doesn’t care about science fiction. That’s how I know my mother was the original Trekkie in the family. My interest in “Star Trek” was far and away greater than the rest of my family and lot of my friends. I had all the action figures, models, shirts, books, magazines, posters, and anything else I could collect.

My classmates thought I was weird with my Trek obsession. Ha! My fandom pales compared to people I’ve seen at comic cons and sci-fi conventions. Over the decades I’ve seen William Shatner (Capt. James T. Kirk), Leonard Nimoy (Mr. Spock), James Doohan (Montgomery Scott), George Takei (Sulu), and Walter Koenig (Chekov) at different events. DeForest Kelley (Dr. McCoy) is the only original cast member I never got to see. I even had the privilege of interviewing Doohan and Koenig.

I was so caught up in “Star Trek” that I had little interest when this new science fiction movie came out called “Star Wars.” Seeing it for the first time in the theater changed my life, but it put my dad to sleep (shh, don’t tell him I told you that). The year after that “Battlestar Galactica” came out. That’s when I knew I was very much a sci-fi fan and not just a Trekkie.

During the 1980s I was fed a steady diet of “Star Trek” and “Star Wars” movies. Then “Star Trek: The Next Generation” came on TV and I moved to a whole new level of fandom. That was followed by “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,” “Star Trek: Voyager,” and “Star Trek: Enterprise.” About this time I was really getting into science fiction conventions and got to see and meet many of the actors.

Even now there are new Star Trek programs coming out, but it’s been difficult for me to keep up with them. It’s not that I’m not interested, it’s just that I don’t pay the streaming services they’re on. Someday I’ll hunt them down, but right now my life is too full to keep pursuing those next generations. Besides, there are other TV shows from 1966 that I love and want to make time for. It was a banner year for TV with shows like “Star Trek,” “Batman,” “The Monkees,” and “Batfink.”

I became a Monkeemaniac when MTV aired the reruns in 1986. And if you haven’t heard of “Batfink” I’m not surprised. It was a short-lived cartoon spoof of Batman, but I loved it!

Now all of these programs are marking their 60th anniversary and it’s making me feel old. Even so, I will continue to watch the shows when I can and visit with the actors at conventions. Like I said, I have been and always shall be a Trekkie!

Let's be Sept. 12 people again

 

Nearly everyone old enough to remember recalls where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news about the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

I was in the shower when the first tower was hit. When I got out, Sandy had the news on the TV in our bedroom. I was half watching while getting dressed for the day when the second tower was hit. That was no accident! I rushed to get ready and by the time I reached the office of the Longmont (Colorado) Daily Times-Call the Pentagon had been struck.

As the first reporter in the newsroom, I immediately started calling city officials. They were all huddled in an emergency meeting but returned calls right away. I spoke to a few of the community leaders and put together a story about their response, their concerns, and any action being planned.

Joyce Davis, our features editor, was the next reporter in the building and she took the lead on listing prayer vigils and services that were hastily being organized. Our stories were cobbled together with wire service coverage, and a very rare extra edition of the paper was produced within the span of just a couple hours.

It was one of the finest moments of my career, not that a tragedy is a fine moment. Our response to it was incredible and life-changing. What stood out to me about that day 25 years ago, however, is what happened the day after. We changed as a people and the spirit that emerged was beautiful. All of our petty squabbling and political differences were shoved aside as this country truly became the UNITED States of America.

Neighbor helped neighbor; strangers held hands and prayed. We discovered that we have more in common with each other than we do things that divide us. The sense of patriotism was overwhelming. American flags were hoisted that did not come down until they were faded and tattered.

Sandy and I were living in a mobile home at the time and the people next to us set out candles that were still burning on the morning of Sept. 12 when I left for work. A couple of hours later, Sandy called me in a panic. The wind kicked up and the neighbor’s house was on fire. She rushed in, woke the neighbors and got them out. She then turned on our garden hose and started spraying the flames until the fire department arrived.

Sandy suffered smoke inhalation and was taken to the hospital for treatment. She was later honored by the fire department with a plaque recognizing her as a selfless hero and a lifesaver. Her example is just one of many that illustrate the commitment and resolve that Americans everywhere felt and experienced in the days that followed 9/11.

We cared for each other. We took care of others. Churches were packed. We were frightened, not knowing if another attack was coming, but now we were ready.

I, like millions of others, lined up to donate blood. I donated as frequently as I could for years afterward. I still donate, but less frequently. This is a reminder that I need to step it up again. If you’re not a donor, you should consider doing it. The need is great all the time.

Out of the horrific tragedy of 9/11 came the beauty of Sept. 12. It’s sad to see how hateful and divided this country has become just 25 years after our darkest hour. It’s as though we never learned the lessons from Sept. 12.

We now have declining trust, political intimidation, dehumanizing rhetoric, and threats to our constitutional liberties. Political extremism has become polarizing. A deep political divide has formed and been reinforced in the echo chambers of social media.

This isn’t the kind of tragedy that I can rush into the newsroom to report on. It’s the kind of tragedy that requires every one of us, me included, to carefully examine our beliefs about our country and who we want to be. Is the reality we are living in today the reality we want to pass on to our children?

I think we can do better. We must do better. Let’s not wait for another 9/11 to turn us back into the people of Sept. 12. Let us rise above the rhetoric and be the compassionate, courageous and generous people who truly make this nation great.

For the love of football

 Each fall, the start of the football season brings a lot of hope, stress, and anxiety.

It has nothing to do with my favorite teams and their quest for a championship. It has more to do with my access to those teams and all the off-field shenanigans going on. For some time now I’ve been telling myself that I’m done with football. No more. But like a moth to a flame, I keep coming back.

At the end of the football season last year, I told my wife I was not going to cover any football games this fall so I could focus my time on finishing the book I’m writing. Well, the book isn’t done, but once again I will be trolling the sidelines of Kyle Field photographing the Aggies in action for a company called Image of Sport. And once again I’m on a game-by-game basis for credentials to photograph the Houston Texans. Considering that I have not been approved for Texans credentials in two years, I’m not holding my breath for it to happen this year, but you never know.

Sports photography, and football in particular, have been both vocation and avocation for me. I’ve never worked full-time as a photographer, but photojournalism is what got me into this profession and it’s something I’ve loved doing as part of my job and as a hobby.

The first professional football game I got to photograph was in 1985 at old Mile High Stadium when the Denver Gold took on the New Jersey Generals in the United States Football League (USFL). Since then, I had intermittent access to the NFL until 2016 when I received season credentials to the Texans. I covered the Texans for more than seven seasons until our move to Aggieland brought it to an end.

Each season and each game I find myself getting caught up in the excitement of the up-close action. Likewise, I find myself becoming disillusioned by all the off-field crap going on at both the pro and college levels. I think the NIL (Name, Image and Likeness) deal and the transfer portal have wrecked college sports. Team loyalty is pretty much gone. For all the talk about Aggie loyalty, the transfer portal is proving that to be a weakened pillar of character.

College football, like the pros, has become mired in greed. The whole thing has become so convoluted that you now have players trying to leave the NFL to return to college. I’m sorry, but once you’ve gone pro, your amateur status has ended. The infusion of gambling into the sport just makes things worse.

Another thing that sours me on football is the lack of patriotism and respect for our country. It’s at all levels. If you’ve ever watched players during the performance of the national anthem, you will notice that most of them assume a protest stance. They refuse to place their hand over their heart and stand at attention. Many of them will lower their heads or look elsewhere. They’ll keep their hands down or else grasp their shoulder pads at the neck opening. Some won’t even bother to stand.

That behavior bothers the heck out of me. It’s one thing to stand up for racial equality or whatever your cause may be, but it’s quite another to disrespect the flag and the country that affords you all the privileges and glory that you’re receiving. In other words, don’t bite the hand that feeds you.

It’s all of this off-the-field, behind-the-scenes stuff that puts a damper on the thrill of the game. Still, I wade through the muck and disgust of the politics of it all and yearn for just one more season, one more game in the limelight. Is this the year the Aggies win a national championship? Is this season the Texans go to the Super Bowl? If it is, I want to be a part of it. I enjoy the hype, the hope, the excitement, and anxiety of a new season. Football is back, baby!

Gig ’em, Aggies!

Dolly Parton and other celebrity deaths

 

The passing of Dolly Parton on Tuesday was one of those celebrity deaths that hit particularly hard.

I grew up listening to her music and watching her on TV and in the movies. She had that mix of sass and class and a radiant charm that few people possess. She was so intertwined in pop culture that her loss feels like losing a family member. Rarely did a day go by that I didn’t hear a song or see her on TV or in a social media feed.

I think the thing that hurts the most, however, is I never got to see her in person. For decades she was on the top of my list of performers I wanted to see in concert and, if possible, meet in person. It never happened.

Her passing reminded me of all the celebrity deaths that affected me the most. Tops on that list are astronaut Neil Armstrong, country singer Loretta Lynn, actors Clayton Moore and Robin Williams, actress Carrie Fisher, Elvis, and President Ronald Reagan. Like Dolly, they were all celebrities that I admired and wanted to see or meet in person but never did.

There are numerous other celebrity passings that have also hit hard, including Peter Mayhew, Leonard Nimoy, Gil Gerard, Richard Hatch, Robert Urich, John Denver, and Mickey Gilley, to name a few. I can at least take comfort in knowing I have either seen them or met them in person.

We all feel the loss when a celebrity passes away. These are people who have come into our homes through radios or television sets or people we have paid to see in concert or on a movie screen. We have a personal attachment to them, even if we never personally knew them.

The same day Dolly Parton died, we lost actor Tim Curry, but the family withheld the news for a day, presumably out of respect for Dolly. Locally, we recently lost Chuck Norris. It seems celebrities have been dying at a rapid pace this year, but that’s not unexpected. We have more people than ever before who fit the definition of “celebrity.” The more we have, the more we’re going to lose.

Think about it. With the massive increase in mediums, the more celebrities we’re going to have. When I was a kid, celebrities were actors (film and stage), musicians, athletes, authors, and politicians. We only had enough TV stars to fill three or four networks. Musicians vied for airtime on radio, limiting their exposure. There were far fewer sports teams, thus fewer pro athletes.

Now we have more networks and streaming services than you can shake a stick at. There are many more sports teams (and leagues). We have so-called “influencers” on social media. Having more media outlets gives more people the exposure needed to become household names.

A lot of the stars who became famous in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s are getting up there in years. Sometimes when a celebrity dies, they have been retired so long we’ve forgotten they were still alive. Take actor Abe Vigoda, who was rumored to have died so many times that when he finally did pass away 10 years ago people were surprised because they thought he was already dead.

Then there are those who die young and unexpectedly, like Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, Robin Williams, Whitney Houston, Heath Ledger, and most recently Hayden Panettiere. Of course, there are those celebrities that we think will never die. As the meme says, we need to start thinking about what kind of world we’re going to leave Willie Nelson and Keith Richards.

The thing is, even when a celebrity dies, they continue to live on in their work. We listen to their music, watch their performances, and appreciate their continued contributions to our culture. Even though I never got to see Dolly Parton in person, she remains present through her songs, films, books, and philanthropy.

And yes, Dolly, even though I never knew you, I will always love you!

Family reunion and Mount Rushmore, too

 

The last time I saw my dad’s siblings and their children, there were a whole lot more of them than there are now.

My dad was the seventh born of 10 children to Roy and Wanda Southern. Two weeks ago Sandy and I were at a family reunion in Colorado where my dad and his sister Jacquita (nine of 10) were the only remaining siblings. I don’t know what my cousin count is down to, but it’s a lot less than it was the last time I attended a Southern family reunion in 1994.

Attending reunions has not been easy. My dad is from California and my mother was from Omaha. Our family lived in Colorado. Every summer we alternated which set of relatives we visited. We became very familiar with Interstate 80 between the late 1960s and early 1980s.

When I grew up and moved away, I lived in Minnesota and North Carolina before returning to Colorado. After nine years back in Colorado, we moved to Texas. With time, distance, and finances, it was extremely difficult to attend reunions in California. Each year I said the same thing: Next time.

The next time came and went and I made the same promise. Over the years aunts, uncles and cousins started passing away. Finally, last year my cousin Colleen announced she wanted to have a family reunion in Estes Park, Colorado, instead of California. That works! Without kids at home, Sandy and I could afford to go. We stayed with my parents, who live just 45 minutes from Estes Park. My Aunt Jacquita stayed there, too, so we got extra visiting time with her.

Colleen and her husband Neil and her brother Danny and his wife Linda brought their RVs and made camp in an RV park. Although we were just a fraction of the Southern clan, it was a joyous time to be together. My daughter Heather (who lives in Colorado) joined us for the second day, becoming the only representative of that generation of the family.

Being with family again lifted more than 30 years of guilt of missing reunions and being out of contact with my family. Having reconnected, I’m more determined to stay in touch.

After the reunion, Sandy and I took Heather and her roommate Maria for an overnight trip to see Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. Of the four of us, only Heather had seen it before.

As we made the five-hour trip up, I braced myself for disappointment. Over the years I had a lot of friends say they were surprised at how small the carvings of the presidents’ heads appear and how there is nothing to do there once you’ve seen them. They were wrong!

After checking into our motel room, we drove toward the monument as the clouds thickened and rain started to fall. We unexpectedly drove by the Crazy Horse monument, which was a huge bonus! When we rounded the corner into the parking lot at Mount Rushmore, the sculpture seemed to burst through the clouds and loomed large overhead. It was much bigger and more majestic than I ever imagined.

After we parked the car and walked in, fog settled over the mountain and the faces disappeared. We got one brief break where we could see all four at once and then they were gone. We walked around the site, checking out the little museum and bookstore there. We watched a short film on the creation of the monument and then settled in for the ranger talk. At the end of the talk, they turned on the spotlights and lit up the fog where the faces should have been.

The next morning we got up and stopped at the Crazy Horse monument site, which was a great experience and well worth the time. We then drove back to Mount Rushmore and this time the weather was perfect. We hiked the Presidential Trail, toured the Sculptor’s Studio and took hundreds of photos. We stopped in the gift store on the way out and picked up a few souvenirs.

After discovering all of the things to see and do in the Black Hills area of South Dakota, we determined that we want to go back some day and tour some more. Come to think of it, it would be a great place to have a family reunion. I just don’t want to wait another 30 years for that to happen!

The book the government doesn't want you to read

 

“Spies in Saigon” is the book the CIA and the U.S. government tried to keep secret from the American people and the rest of the world.

Written by Houston author and historian James Bevill, the book recounts the story of his father-in-law, Paul Springer, who worked for the Central Intelligence Agency as the first station chief in Vietnam, long before the United States became embroiled in the conflict there.

The book traces how American intelligence officers worked under diplomatic cover beginning in 1950. Bevill tells how those operatives gathered intelligence on the Viet Minh, Communist China, French colonial authorities, and competing Vietnamese political factions while helping establish the foundations of the CIA's espionage network across Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

I asked Bevill, who is a friend of mine, what was the most interesting thing he discovered while working on the book.

“Just how deeply the CIA and the U.S. government were involved during the French Indochina War, and the fact that it was it was Harry Truman that sent the first U.S. forces over there,” he said.

At nearly 500 pages, “Spies in Saigon: CIA Covert Operations in French Indochina and South Vietnam 1950-1963” was published in June by Schiffer Military. It is the result of nine years of extensive research by Bevill and includes first-hand accounts from Springer’s personal letters and unclassified CIA documents that Bevill had to sue to receive.

“The way the whole thing came about was when we moved my wife’s father from an independent apartment to a to an assisted living. We found a trunk full of letters, just file cabinet after file cabinet of original letters from the 1930s to the 1960s,” he said. “And it ended up being 595 separate documents that I scanned and put them in order because I wanted to read through them. The family just wanted to throw them away.”

Bevill said he was fascinated by the history that unfolded through the letters.

“But I read that – and this part of the story is when he’s writing home from Vietnam to his mother, ‘We had lunch with the King of Cambodia today.’ And ‘Oh, you should see the pictures of Angkor Wat that I took from the side of the airplane. And then we went to Laos and we met with those guys over there.” And so he’s writing home and telling about things that he’s doing on the diplomatic side as an embassy officer. He never wrote about CIA business in there,” he said.

In addition to the letters, Springer also had a large collection of photographs, several of which are in the book.

“One of the most valuable things we had were photographs in in picture albums. … We had a lot of other pictures of people that were CIA and non-CIA and Vietnamese that were in the photos. And thank goodness, my mother-in-law labeled them either on the back of the photo with a pen or a pencil, or she labeled some of them in the photo album,” he said.

Although Bevill and his wife Jodie had a pretty good idea of what Springer went through in Vietnam in the 1950s, the picture was incomplete.

“We made a Freedom of Information Act request, and after two and a half years, they had denied everything,” he said. “And then we got a hold of the right attorney, and he said we’ll sue the CIA and we’ll sue the State Department because we had an outstanding FOIA requests with them. The State Department records were actually more helpful than the CIA’s because a lot of that was redacted, but they did help us unlock and link together things that we thought were true and were in his writings and his assignments.”

Bevill said a lot of his information came from things he was told by his now late father-in-law on Christmas Eve in 2007.

“I was able to interview two of the other officers that he served with, one in Saipan and one in Vietnam. I had two rather lengthy telephone interviews with both of those guys, and then you’ve got to just string it all together. And the deeper that I dug, the more interesting I found the story to be, especially when I got to the part about the two Vietnamese counterspies that come in the story in the second half of the book. Actually, there were three of them,” he said.

Although there are many books and documentaries about American involvement in Vietnam, Bevill’s book is the first and most complete telling of the precursor events leading to the war.

“If you’re going to start something like this, a book completely breaking ground, you have to have something that no one else has, and what that was all those letters that came from my father-in-law and my mother-in-law. And then we’re able to match them with declassified CIA records, and we used the information from the lawsuit to confirm that, and through friends of the family … we’re able to get in touch with two other retired CIA officers that were in that period, and then we used the memoirs and the oral histories of the other guys. So, you want to get as close to the original source as you can,” he said.