Hurricane Charley Five Years Ago

On Friday afternoon, August 13, 2004, Hurricane Charley headed for our area from the Gulf of Mexico. At the time, Joyce and I were staying in a 50-year old house by the river in Fort Myers while our new home was being built. The hurricane would directly hit about 20 miles north of Fort Myers, and that put us in the southeast quadrant of the storm which is the area of strongest force. As the wind and rain started to increase, we took refuge in a small bathroom that was almost too small for one person. Despite the fact that front side of the house faced the most rain and wind, none of the windows were broken. The power would be out for several days – the humidity from all the rain plus the high heat and humidity made it a real challenge. Floridians are resilient – there were four hurricanes that passed through that year (Frances, Ivan and Jeanne, coincidentally in alphabetical order), but we picked up and moved forward each time without whining and blaming.

Skydiving Five Years Ago

Here's my first and only skydiving jump back in 2004. What an incredible feeling! We departed the plane at 13,000 feet, and it must have been in the 40's up there with no humidity. We had less than 60 seconds of freefall until we came through the cloud layer. I could smell the humidity as we came down into the clouds and all the way until landing. We have a few minutes of floating down before we landed back at the airport. The video guy kept falling so he could get on the ground before me to shoot my landing. I wasn't scared at all...I always knew that the ground was there to break my fall.

Notre Dame Football

I was raised on Notre Dame football. Being a native of South Bend, my mom and dad would take me out to games on fall Saturday afternoons. When I was old enough, I would go out by myself, and that continues to this day when Joyce and I will go up on vacation every October to see a game or two.

In the span of years in the late 60’s and early 70’s, Joe Theisman was the QB for ND. When my two brothers and I would come home from school in the afternoon, we would throw the football around in the front yard. Joe was dating the girl next door. He happened to drop by when we were out there, and we threw the football around with him. Obviously, the things he learned from us that afternoon propelled him into the great NFL career that he had. I did tell him to go out and “break a leg”, but it wasn’t meant literally.

Trivia: Joe pronounced his last name “THEEZ-MAN”, but when he was at ND, a dorm hung a banner out the window that said “Theisman for Heisman.” He kept that pronunciation. Now if I had gone there, they could have changed the “Heisman” to “Leyes-man”, and no pronunciations would need to be changed.