Brushing off a mid 2020 draft post and noticing what’s not changed much with an entire administration returning and resetting the US. Read More…
My dad, Jim Walsh, died suddenly on September 26, 1997. Three days prior I spent my last night with him at a Tiger game.
A couple days after his October 1st funeral, I wrote the following, wanting to record as much significant memories for what was, at the time, not too significant a day. But I can still feel his final embrace and the laughter and mutual support we offered each other that evening.
Jim Walsh (1940-1997)
Tuesday September 23, 1997
Dad called me from his car phone with his standard, “Hi Kev!” amidst the static of the … Read More…
Most people don’t really consider themselves to be experts in much–for example. My kids once accurately defined our specialized fields: “Dad’s kinda funny sometimes and mom finds stuff.”
But when it comes to hammering out that brief description of yourself in LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram it can be surprisingly difficult to find much to really brag about–let alone translate it to a full-blown resume.
It’s a lot easier to look at your reflection and see that one tiny zit rather than combed-hair, clean teeth or at maybe even someone who remembers to clean the mirror once in a while.
Lynn Eads, … Read More…
I was looking for a Father’s Day picture to put on Facebook today. The upside of cracking a rib last winter while wearing socks on carpeted stairs was pooling all my family photos into a server. Flipping through them I realized the lessons that can be found from each one.
Jim Walsh was only 57 when we lost him 22 years ago but his love of the moment, his family and a good laugh stay with us each day–and his “dad jokes” were passed down from father to father decades before that term became a household term about five years ago.
I’ve looked at this picture a hundred times, mostly to see us kids–and to try to remember Katie’s full-sized doll’s … Read More…
“You’ll be hit by these big waves that’ll sneak up on you.” That was what Fr. Jack Trese told us about grief at my dad’s funeral in 1997. But a week ago I got clobbered by one those waves in the form of a showtune I couldn’t stand–driving south in the middle of Ohio.
These days, my go-to stations on Sirius include “On Broadway,” “The Beatles Channel” and “The Seventies on 7,” especially on Saturdays they reply Casey Kasem’s “American Top 40” broadcasts from the same week from 1970-79. I was very excited one weekend brought back my transistor radio tied to by handlebars as I listened to WDRQ delivering my newspapers at 5:30 AM.
In addition to the Saturday Night Fever‘s stranglehold on the airwaves that spring … Read More…
Twenty-five years ago, I was playing tennis the morning of my marriage. I don’t normally whack myself in the forehead with my tennis racquet but that was what happened. Look carefully at my wedding pictures and you’ll see the little knot. My blushing bride Patrice couldn’t stop laughing and said, “Well that was a dumb thing to do!”
Twenty five years ago–and it just happened–that tennis game, wedding, birth of two kids, two houses, eight cats, four barbecue grills and 4,000 students just happened,
Somehow our marriage keeps moving along at light speed–after just a quick two week period of dating and six month engagement. We’d eaten lunch together for the first two months of the school year in the teacher’s lounge but it started … Read More…
My dad had three puns that were so bad, they were only permitted on his birthday–and one was pretty challenging to employ on June 28th.
Jim Walsh would have been 76 years old today. He came from a long line of punsters and its with mixed emotions that his grandchildren also subject unsuspecting audiences to his legacy.
At his funeral, 19 years ago, we passed around two leather-bound green books for folks to jot down their favorite memories of my dad, a precurser to the amazing testimonial strings found on Facebook at the passing of a loved one.
My college buddy Dan added two of his favorite groaners from my dad’s visit to campus on his tri-state route, often in the South Bend area selling windshields to … Read More…
I was sifting through my students’ essays when I came across this undeniably true thesis statement…
“If it weren’t for my mom, I wouldn’t be the person I am today.”
I resisted the urge to add to the margin in snarky red ink, “No kidding.”–maybe even with a little smiley face. After 25 years, that line is still is one of my favorites along with “UFOs are possible” (which is true, they are unidentified) and “Mr. Walsh, you don’t really read these journal entries, do you?” (to which I added, “No”).
But on Mother’s Day, I’ll borrow a bit from my student’s paper and tweak it a bit…
“If it weren’t for the mothers in my life, I wouldn’t be the person I am today.”
When my wife laughs that I’m often … Read More…
I don’t think I am alone here. When you reach a certain age and stage in life, you come to the table with a certain level of common sense and experience that you think backs up your values, beliefs and opinions. So, there are many areas of life that I have experience in but I am not a professional. I take my combined experience — mother, wife, sister, daughter, friend, lawyer, teacher, book lover, movie and theatre lover— and I use it all when I process the world around me. Situation dependent, certain parts of this experience may overshadow others. Many have seen my mama bear take charge; others the lawyer, teacher, friend etc. Whichever controls, I universally try to follow the signs.
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One of the longer hours you can put a teacher through isn’t monitoring lunch or that final 60 minutes before spring conferences are over–it’s at an in-service, the mandatory training that the state, city, superintendent or your principal inflicts upon educators. Topics can range from the terrors of airborne pathogens to the correct way to open your laptop. Michigan teachers are required to attend 30 such hours by law and most fall under the same sad irony found in the half-day seminar on the twenty-minute attention span.
But somehow, in 1991, I found myself at a training that stays with me to this day. Its metaphor was the playpen. Al Dicken, who would later become my administrator when I changed school districts, was the trainer at … Read More…
“Me too!”
My mom actually had a dress decorated for my three year-old daughter with her all-inclusive expression painted above a daisy.
Abby came into my life five weeks before my father left it. She was kind enough to arrive ten days early, at the respectable time of mid-afternoon for Patrice, who doesn’t mind a good night’s sleep. Abby’s is a good old soul and today she’s done with high school.
We were … Read More…
Ladd Biro has loved music and been a performer his entire life–but never wanted to be a starving artist either. For 40 years he has worked in the entirely non-9-to-5 world of the track–and been in bands and created albums.
He contacted Kevin Walsh about creating a music video for “In Days Gone By,” a song that a friend of his wrote for his niece’s wedding–dedicated to the special relationship between a father and daughter.
Ladd joins Kevin as they discuss:
At the end of the 98-hour day that my father died, it surprised me that the hardest part wasn’t hearing “He didn’t survive surgery,” but instead having to tell others–the slow pressing of numbers of the phone, knowing that someone’s life is going to be changed right after, “Hi Kev. What’s up?”
In a strange twist of fate that afternoon, my three sisters, Katie, Colleen and Maureen were all en route to Detroit Metro within an hour of one another. When they had left Chicago and New York, after our call from the hospital, they knew only what we were told—“Dad’s been in a bad accident—he’s in surgery.” By the time they were air-born, my mom and I were told of his passing and taken upstairs to see his body. … Read More…
I hadn’t seen this smile from my son in a long time…
As you might expect, we don’t dress this formally around the yard most days. It was prom night last Thursday and Aidan and his date Katie had just finished twelfth grade two days earlier. And, aside from the $200+ to rent the tux, we also got this pretty rare expression thrown in with the shiny shoes. In fact, perhaps the last time we’d seen that smile was right before Aidan started his career as a student…
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* Non-Surprising Update After 7 Hours since this original post: “The U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, after first signaling it would not intervene in Michigan’s gay marriage case until Tuesday, posted a new order late Saturday imposing a stay in the case until Wednesday.’ (link)
The Oklahoma land-rush scene from Far and Away, best illustrates what’s happening this morning in many county clerk’s offices in Michigan. Desperate families given a brief window of opportunity to give their children the same rights and opportunities as other American kids–fully expecting the window to be slammed shut at any moment.
Free land–if you can out-run or out-wit your opponents. Unfortunately, families in line right now are finding their opponent their own state leadership. You need to … Read More…
I’ve had some pretty memorable conversations at the checkout counter at Radio Shack:
And my favorite, when I was buying a 25-foot audio cable…
The guy was implying that purchasing an audio cable to run video through a non-gold-plated triple-insulated cable may not only ruin the quality of my picture but perhaps offset the precarious balance of the Middle East peace talks.
Radio Shack has survived, somehow, by cornering … Read More…
It’s just six minutes of random videotape from thirteen years ago as the kids decorate a Christmas tree. It’s funny what passes for nothing at the time but turns into family legend. Thanks to my kids for letting me post these brief video clips and for not minding an interview on-location a couple days ago (final clip).
The 2000 model of Abby (3) and Aidan (5) had decided it was time to add the candy canes to the tree. As a kindergartener, it was very clear to my son what the pecking order would be–and not just for tree-trimming . My daughter, in a calm “no,” simply vetoes the maneuver and moves to the front of the line when dad asks for a song.
She … Read More…
Today is my wife’s birthday and, like a true Facebook lurker, I can’t help but drift into her page and see the many greetings coming from all walks of her life. Patrice is one of those rare people whose default setting is funny, matter-of-fact, wise, generous, caring and, somehow, so modest she thinks she isn’t really any of these. Small wonder that she’s had the same girls in her scout troop for over ten years. Reading the posts of all the lives she’s touched, I’ve am impressed by how many agree with her wise husband.
Facebook has made it incredibly easy for me to be considerate. It sends me nudges about my friends’ birthdays and has moved their big days to the top-right of my … Read More…
Perhaps Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday because it’s front-loaded. All the work is done on the first day and the rest of the weekend is comprised of football, avoiding the mall and general digestion.
Throughout the late 1970s and into the early 1990s,when the above couch wasn’t full of random cousins it served as my bed. In 1984, I was a college sophomore, stressed out completely, and couldn’t wait to drive with my family five hours north to my Aunt Joan and Uncle Bill’s cottage on Oden Island, just north of Petoskey, Michigan.
We’d load up the station wagon, pray … Read More…
Yet another victim has fallen into the hungry maw of bullies. Another Rebecca Sedwick? Another Phoebe Prince? Thankfully, this is a man who did not die by his own hand, but still martyred himself to make us aware of an insidious problem. Jonathan Martin, an offensive tackle for the Miami Dolphins, endured a hardscrabble life, with nothing to go on but the example of a struggling Harvard professor for a father and a mother scraping by as a corporate lawyer. He grew to be a whisp of a figure, a mere 6’5″, 312 pounds, living no doubt on Ramen noodles and … Read More…
