Tag: Grindrod

In thinking about our summers, my thoughts always turn to man’s favorite topic, the weather. And, if the summer is bad enough (although, really, compared to what we’ll soon face, are any summers actually bad?), I’m always relieved I won’t hear a couple of sentences, one, an interrogative and one a declarative, for a while, as in “Hot enough for you?” and “It’s not the heat but the humidity.”

Before I begin Part 2 of the John Heaphy story, I’d like to clarify something from last week’s column when I used what I thought was a pretty clear figure of speech, referring to John as the valedictorian of The School of Hard Knocks. It seems I unwittingly misled some who were reading perhaps a bit too quickly and thought I referred to John as the valedictorian of his 1978 LCC graduating class. Certainly, John didn’t say that in the interviews we did, and I would never on my own attempt to polish a résumé that, given his subsequent entrepreneurial successes, certainly needs no embellishment.

While this year’s Olympics in Paris dubbed Noah Lyles as the world’s fastest man, the American sprinter might get some competition from John Heaphy, if it comes down to getting him to sit down and answer some interview questions about his dual mission to give back to the city that raised him and to grow his company, Good Foods Restaurants. Now, to clarify, it wasn’t that John, who I’ve known for years, is uncooperative with the media. It’s just that he’s indeed far more than a figurehead to the more than 1,200 employees who call him “Boss” in 22 restaurants across Ohio and Indiana.

As detailed last week, identical twins Mary Kelly and Erin Mulcahy had quite a thrill this past summer when Mary Kelly was invited to play for the United States against a team of top international amateur golfers in the most prestigious of annual amateur golf events, the Palmer Cup, on the first weekend in July.

While University of Findlay seniors Mary Kelly and Erin Mulcahy are a bit too old to be asked to produce a composition on what they did on their summer vacation during this school year’s start, should any English teacher ask for such an effort, would they ever have a story to tell. Mary Kelly was selected to play in the prestigious Palmer Cup, an annual tournament that was held July 5-7 which pitted the top amateur golfers in the United States against a team of top international amateurs, this year, played at Lahinch Golf Course in County Clare, Ireland. Mary Kelly also qualified for the British Ladies Amateur, played the week before at a course just outside of Dublin, Portmarnock, where Erin caddied for her sister. Mary Kelly used the tournament to ready herself for the Palmer Cup.

On this day each year when my thoughts inevitably turn to 8:46 a.m. when the first plane struck the World Trade Center’s North Tower, I also think about my mom and dad, who left this earth many years before the attack that killed almost 3,000 of our citizens. Had you told my parents years before that such an attack was even possible, they simply would not have believed it.

While many are already back in school, I’m not, as this year marks the 20th anniversary since I last addressed a class of 17-year-olds with the intent to make them better practitioners of the language they inherited at birth.

On our final Wyoming morning on a national-parks vacation, Lady Jane and I packed up, ready for another 500-plus-mile driving day to get to West Glacier, Montana, and Glacier National Park.

When many people hear the word “Yellowstone,” the first thing that comes to mind is the wildly popular TV series that has starred Kevin Costner for the first four seasons as John Dutton, the patriarchal figure of a ranch in Montana by the same name, one estimated to be just shy of 800,000 acres.

For my lady Jane and me, travel, both here and abroad, has helped to bond us together for these past 23 years. So, it was after a pretty rough last 18 months for me that Jane and I both thought the best way to celebrate what I hope is my good health following some cancer scares was to take a national-parks road trip.