While doing this blog I take the time to meet lots of great people. In many cases we would all benefit from knowing them. I think these people are the kind of folks that we all should get just a little acquainted with. Let's get to it.
There are few things that please me more than to see a father doing something fun and/or worthwhile with his children. I was driving down Belle Ave and saw this dad and his son mowing the lawn together. I thought it was very impressive. I was running an errand and so I hoped they would still be mowing when I was able to get back. They were and they seemed to enjoy having their picture taken together. This is Tom Mize and his son, Will. Tom works at Dulles Airport with the airport authority. In addition to Will, Tom and his wife have two daughters.
These two ladies have a handful of boys. Each one of them has one son of their own plus they were tending two more for a friend or maybe a relative. They are true Culpeperites being born and raised here. They are Qiana Staten and Tori Faulkner and have brought this crew to the park to enjoy lunch outdoors. Let me tell you......these ladies dress when they go to the park. Just look at them, makeup....perfect; hair.....great; ....clothes....fine; and though you cannot see them....there are some serious high heels going on here. Here is a surprise....Qiana loves to work with kids. She used to be Marketing Coordinator for the Merrifield branch of Phoenix University. Tori is a cnc operator (whatever that is, I failed to ask) and loves to do hair. You can tell by looking at her hair that she has some skills. These boys were well behaved!! I was impressed.
I like to check out Mountain Run Park when I am looking for pictures for my blog. Not always, but quite often I find someone who is interesting. This is Coleman Walters (sounds like the name for a starting quarterback at Harvard) enjoying fishing. He says he comes here every time he has a day off. He works at Coffewood Correctional Institution (he called it, "The Wood") as a corrections officer. I understand why he would want to fish a little just to relax. He has been married just over one year. I can only assume that he married a very understanding woman. Nice guy!
This is John Harden and he is a carpenter. I caught up with him in the parking lot of Lowes. He mostly does smaller jobs since he is a one man band. He has been doing this independently now for over three years although he has twenty five total years of experience and is a VA Class "A" General Contractor. His business is called Reva Ridge Construction. You can reach him at 540 547 3787 or on his cell at 540 308 0610.
Here is Ron Collins and his daughter Anneliese. I ran into them at the grand opening of Ace Hardware. I quickly discovered that Ron is another Idaho boy and so we bonded easily. He came here with Micron. In addition to Anneliese, he has a wife, an eleven year old daughter and a fifteen year old son.
You meet the nicest people at the park. Andrea and I took two of our grandchildren to Yowell Meadow Park to burn off some energy. I took my camera because as I have noted, I am paying special attention to parents and their kids this time. This young mom was playing with her kids for quite a while before she was joined by her husband who had slipped away from lunch to spend a little extra time with his family. These folks are Dave and Danielle Wheatly and their children, Phoenix and Wren. Danielle is a full time mom and Dave is the Associate Pastor for the Church on the Rise which is the Free Methodist Church at 522 North St. They are originally from the Eastern Shore and they love Culpeper.
This lady was having so much fun with her daughter that I could not resist getting a picture of them. I started to tell her who I was and why I wanted to take her picture but she already knew me because of my "Snapshots of Culpeper" in the Culpeper Times. She is Nicole Harmon and this is her daughter Millie.
Nicole's son Matt was also at the park, but he did not want to be in a picture. I hope he won't be too mad at me for sneaking this one.
It seems like there are often occasions when I come oh so close to missing a shot that I want...this was one of those. On our little visit to the park with our grand kids I had been hoping for a father/child picture. I had no luck, but just as I was getting in my car in the parking lot on the far side of the park, I spotted Greg Gause and his four year old son Demetrius heading for the slides. They were exactly the picture I had hoped to find that day. I drove over to the main lot and walked over to talk with them. As you can see, Greg was very gracious about allowing a picture. For the past eight years he has been in Field Services.
My wife and I were on our daily walk when as luck had it I saw a perfect picture for this particular blog. That is the good news. The bad news is that I had no camera, no business card, no pen...in other words I was totally unprepared to take this "perfect picture." Here was a dad and his young daughter (going into the seventh grade next fall) working on her batting for softball. They were really working and it was fun to watch as he helped her understand batting from both sides of the plate. I must note that this girl can already really tag that ball. My wife reminded me that she had her phone and that you could get good pictures with it. I went to the car and dug around in the console and found a pen, a business card with notes on the back and a "blood sugar diary" for keeping track of my diabetes and thus armed we headed over to these two. The father lives here in the Pepper and works at Mike's Glass and Mirrors. His daughter resides in Fauquier County and he coaches her softball team there. Thank heavens for cell phone cameras. If you don't know it....this is a perfect picture....a perfect picture of love and devotion.
I think that will do it for this time. I have spent the last couple of weeks in Idaho and Utah. I went to Boise for my class reunion and had a chance to bring together a few members of my sixties band, The Fabulous Chancellors. When we hit the stage the magic was still there. So much fun....how many people get the chance to be 18 again? One of the people told me that we were so good in part because we played the music of the early sixties the way it was played then and is meant to be played. I think she was right. The people in bands now often take a stab at our music, but they miss the heart of it. It is and was basic rock and roll from the infancy of the music. Long live rock and roll!!!
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Enjoy the summer!!
Hey Cousin Rich! I love ALL the pictures you share on this blog--just haven't commented before. You're doing lots of good in the world:-)
ReplyDelete(Cousin Larrie)