Grandparents – Page 3 – Perpetual Adoration

September 1, 2018

Categories

The Beatles, Cadillacs, and Aretha Franklin

In the marketing world, the phrase “passion brand” refers to a product that has a passionate following among its customers. In addition to being loyal to the product, the customers also personally identify with it. If necessary, they will expend the time and energy to defend the product when someone criticizes it. The ownership of the product becomes a statement in and of itself — a statement that the customer has achieved a special status because of their affiliation with the product.

March 17, 2018

What Can I Do? I’m Only One Person…

I’ve written before about how I graduated from Saint Louis University Law School in May 1982, moved back to Peoria with my wife and child during the summer of 1982, and opened my law practice in January 1983. A month after I started my law practice, my wife and I had our second child.

February 10, 2018

The Death of a Special Christ-Like Priest

Georgette and I met on August 4, 1978, when we were both 21 years old. We were married in June 1980, while I was on break from law school. Ten months later, in March 1981, we had our first child, Harry. I graduated from law school in May of the following year.

January 27, 2018

Categories

Why is That Church in a Music Video?

I’ve written before about how I was involved in music during my high school and college years. When I was a senior in high school, I formed a barbershop quartet with three of my friends. I did the same thing in college. While my high school quartet had a limited number of performances, my college quartet performed at several community functions and events.

October 21, 2017

Categories

Wildfire Halted by the Prayers of an Old Lady

On October 14, 2017, a headline on a news website caught my attention: “As everything around him burned, one Napa man’s house somehow survived.” The headline — and the article that followed — was published on the SFGATE.com website, a sister-site of the San Francisco Chronicle. Here’s how the article began:

May 27, 2017

Categories

The Death of a Storyteller

During the summer of 1986, I attended a seminar in Chicago that was hosted by the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association. At the time, I was 29 years old.

February 4, 2017

Categories

Communication for Beginners

One of the first things I do when I hire an associate attorney is teach the attorney how to build rapport with prospective clients. The definition of “rapport” is “a close and harmonious relationship in which people communicate well and understand each other’s feelings or ideas.”

December 24, 2016

Categories

A Special Christmas Gift From God

I’ve written before about my younger sister, Kathryn Mary, who was born on September 13, 1972. Within a couple of days of her birth, her doctors discovered that she had Down syndrome and a heart defect that was going to eventually need to be corrected with open-heart surgery.

November 12, 2016

Categories

An Unlikely Tag Team

Last month, Georgette and I attended a retirement party for Dr. Ed Kaizer. The party was at Bradley University, where Dr. Kaizer taught music for 45 years. We got to know Dr. Kaizer during the early 1990s, when our three oldest children — Harry, Anna, and Maria — were students at Bradley. They were all involved in the music program at Bradley and each of them had the opportunity to take piano lessons from Dr. Kaizer.