Last weekend, a Christmas gift finally “paid off,” sort of. On Christmas morning, I had surprised our family with plans for a quick weekend trip to St. Louis to watch a basketball game and to go eagle watching over the Mississippi River. Well, the weather did not cooperate, so we headed south, instead, and just enjoyed visiting some old favorite spots in Nashville. It was still a great trip, even if it did not have any new experiences. It was something that was said on the way there that has had me doing a lot of thinking, though. As we were nearing Nashville and talking about what we were going…

He was one of the players on a baseball team posing for a picture. He was kneeling on the front row. He was the one holding the bat. His first name was the same as my middle name. I was told that my mother wanted me to be named after him, but that he didn’t want to saddle his son with the name “Delmar.” When I consider the kind of man he was, I can think of a lot of things that would have been a whole lot worse. [Editor’s note: The picture is the one used above for the header of this article.] I knew Delmar Faughn from the time I became aware of…