The boy was four years old, yet he would remember one particular cloudy, overcast, gray day more than half a century later. It was Thanksgiving Day, and he and his mother were home alone.
Thanksgiving is upon us once again. It seems to come quicker and quicker each year.
Thanksgiving is observed on the fourth Thursday of November. In 2024, it will occur on November 28, the latest date possible. That means the span between Thanksgiving and Christmas days will only be twenty-seven days, the shortest span of time possible between those two holidays.
I find it interesting sometimes how I can have read something all my adult life and never have thought of an obvious question.
I was in Sunday School yesterday, as I have been hundreds of times. The unit being studied reflects on family conflict, to this point as experienced by families in the book of Genesis.
Imagine a company that has been in business 146 years whose current CEO has few scruples. Imagine the company’s most trusted advisers meeting frequently with the current 29th CEO to gamble (in some instances gambling property owned by non-participating company stockholders) at the CEO’s company-provided residence.
True story—A gentleman was sitting in my office a few weeks ago discussing an upcoming medical procedure. The man said his doctor told him, “We’ve performed this procedure on a dead person and it was successful.”
Had I been this man, I would have asked my doctor, “Was the person alive before the procedure was performed? Was death the desired outcome for the patient? Did the procedure somehow restore the dead to life?”
Who would have thought that a hurricane that made landfall in Florida could have such devastating effects more than one thousand miles away in the hills of Appalachia?
So it is with life. Just as the literal devastation of places so far away from the origination of Hurricane Helene in late September 2024 wreaked destruction, ill-advised life choices can have consequences for not only those who made the choice, but others who might be collaterally affected.
The young lady caught her high school principal’s eye the moment she walked through the door of the building. She was seemingly swarmed by a crowd of boys who were more than appreciative of the dress she had chosen to wear to school that day. They were checking her “out” for sure.
The principal, who was in a race to reach retirement, was born in the “old days.” It seemed to his students and a lot of the community that the hospital, the nursing home, and the grave were in a race to see which would check him “out” first.
It was a wonderful day in January for the twelve-year-old boy. He was home from school on an unexpected snow day. Was there anything more wonderful to a boy a half century ago than an unexpected holiday from school?
I have been writing articles for about 12 years. I wrote for a few years for the Union County Shopper until it ceased publication after it was purchased by the Knoxville News-Sentinel and/or Scripps Howard.
Then my good friend Aaron Russell gave me the opportunity to write for Historic Union County, which is published weekly online at historicunioncounty.com and monthly as a free newspaper.
I was privileged to have opportunity to speak at the August 2024 meeting of the Union County Historical Society. I shared with them the following story about the legendary Union County educator Florence Chesney.