After putting it off for five years, I finally got a cellular phone last week. I used to mock those who enslaved their every waking moment to being constantly in touch ... now I have become one of them in this piece, which appeared in The Katy Times on January 23, 2002.
Remembering a Friend
When I first started working in Katy, the athletic director was a man named Jack Rhoads. He had been head football coach at Katy High School for many years and athletic director since 1981, finally retiring in 1998, with his last day coming unfortunately the day Katy was kicked out of the state championship game for using an ineligible player. Some 18 months later, Mr. Rhoads killed himself, having been a long-time sufferer of depression, a fact very few people knew before his untimely death. This is a piece I wrote concerning my own memories of him which appeared the Wednesday after his funeral, which packed the largest church in Katy.
Return of the Jedi
One of my earliert memories of childhood was from 1977, being in a crowded and hot movie theater and having everyone complaining that the film was not starting on time. I was 3 1/2, my brother Adam was 7. Seven turned out to be the number of times we saw "Star Wars" in the theater that year along with my dad, and it was the defining point of my imagination as a child. In 1999, George Lucas brought the saga back with the first of three prequels, depicting the rise and fall of Anakin Skywalker and the birth of Darth Vader. I ventured over to The Katy Times' opinion page for a cameo appearance, to let out 16 years of impatient waiting in this . piece, which appeared on May 19, 1999, the release date of The Phantom Menace.
Too Cool for School
I have never had as much fun writing a column as I did with this one, the idea of which came from a late-night discussion among friends after we watched Robert Rodriguez's Latino-Western movie "Desperado" at Texas A&M's Rudder Auditorium one Friday. The idea of me as a machine-gun toting, loner bandito making my way to campus for a 9:00 a.m. class has been known to make more than a few people giggle. It appeared in The Battalion, Texas A&M's student newspaper on Feb. 5, 1996.
Public Enemy No. 1
This column, in no small part, led me to where I am today. It was the first controversial thing I ever wrote. It was written because of the events of September, 24, 1994, at the halftime of Texas A&M's football game at Kyle Field. A band reunion was the halftime enterainment, and in blistering heat, one of the band members, a 56-year old man named Jack Jernigan, had a stroke and collapsed, having to be rushed to the hospital. He lived. So too, did the sentiment, popular on the campus that weekend, that had he died, at least he would have died on Kyle Field, surrounded by all his fellow Aggies. That sentiment made me sick to my stomach, so I wrote about it. It appeared in The Battlion on September 26, 1994. I got 37 pieces of hate mail that day, impressive in the pre-email era, and that number rose to near 100 by week's end. Seven months later, I won the first two journalism awards of my college years for it, first place from the Southwestern Jounralism congress and second place from the Texas Intercollegiate Press Association for best sports column.
