The "C" Word

Get your mind out of the gutter.  I am not talking about THAT “C” word.  I am talking about cancer. 

My exposure to cancer was when my grandmother was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was in the 4^th grade.  My understanding of it didn’t progress past knowing that my Mom had to drive her Mother to Nashville every day for a treatment and that my Grandmother was living with us.  I also realized the ugly side of cancer as it took my Grandmother from us about six months after diagnosis.  Through the years there were others who I knew that had cancer.  Some won, some didn’t.  Either way, it took its toll on those impacted – the patient and the patients’ families. 

Fast forward to the fall of2010.  We received word that a good friend of our family, Allison, had been diagnosed with breast cancer.  That one kind of hit home - she was one of us.  She wasn’t an older person or a grandmother.  I am happy to report that she is recovering nicely and well considered cancer free. 

As I was moving my friends, David & Kristina, my cell phone rang.  The number I saw was not one that I see daily (Momma Squire, etc.) on my phone.  It was my neighbor, Jim.  He told took a deep breath and told me that he was with his wife, Sue, at the E.R.  They were at first thinking that she may have been having a stroke due to the severe headaches.  Long story short – they discovered two tumors in Sue’s noggin and three in her lungs.  She underwent brain surgery to remove the two tumors and it was successful in that they are gone, they weren’t attached, and it appears they will stay gone.  Sue is undergoing chemo on the three tumors in her lungs and the tumors keep shrinking. 

The main thing I want to write about with Sue is her attitude and strength.  Her whole family and friends as well, have leaned on God and His strength to get them through these months.  I can’t think of a better way to show her attitude than to show you two pictures of Sue:

This picture of Sue (2^nd from right) was taken during a celebration of Kingston Springs Elementary School reopening in July 2010.  Note the large smile…..

The next picture was taken a couple of weeks ago at Sue’s pool.  Notice the ever present smile though she has undergone brain surgery and almost eight months of chemo.

Not a large difference in the two smiles is there?  Attitude is everything.  Sure she has her good and bad days, but don’t we all. 

Not long after Sue’s diagnosis, we got word of lung cancer recurrence for another friend and even more recently, one of our former Youth at church was diagnosed with Lymphoma.  When it rains, it pours. It is a shame that when I log into Caring Bridge, there is more than one site to visit.

Why am I writing this?  To whine about friends’ medical woes?  Nah, I can’t whine.  I can do nothing but look with admiration at my friends, especially Sue, at how they handle whatever life throws at them.  Maybe I wrote it to help me and you realize what we have and to be thankful for each and every day that we have. 

Hug those you love and make that call you have been forgetting and tell them you love them.

Zach, a thankful Tennessee Squire

P.S. Sue has been documenting her journey on caring bridge.  Her site can be found at http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/suehasse2010

One Year Ago....

As I dropped the boys off at school this morning, I pondered on the fact that the road I was driving on was under 8 feet of rushing water a year ago.  The irony that it has been raining for the last couple of days was also not lost on me.

What is different a year later?  A lot:

• Where there were houses, there are now empty lots and new homes.
• Many flooded homes are still unrepaired.
• Many homes are just now being finished or are still in the process of reconstruction.
• We all probably pay a little bit more attention when Nancy VanDiaster says "Flood Warning"..
• People are now friends who never knew each other pre-flood.
• We empathize a little more with those anyone we see on the news after a natural disaster - like the folks in Alabama.

These are the quick ones that come to mind.  I know there are many more, should I take the time, but we can't dwell on the past.  We need to learn from the past, build on it (literally) and move on.  We all have changed and are still changing.

Take a moment and remember.  To help you remember, my blog from that time is included below:

http://squireponderings.blogspot.com/2010/05/wow-this-might-get-bad.html

Peace.

Zach, A Tennessee Squire

The Big Year-Ender

A radio show I used to listen to always had what they called “The Big Year-Ender” where they had guests, brought out every gag they ever had, etc. and closed out the year of live broadcasts.  My goal was to do a “big year ender” for my blog and try to recap 2010 before the end of the year.  As you can see by the date, that didn’t exactly happen, but hey, you have to finish the year before you can reflect on it, right?  I know that as soon I post this blog, I will think of something to add.  Thank goodness for the “edit” function.

This past year was pretty eventful, but then again, aren’t they all?  If our lives aren’t eventful, we really aren’t living, are we?  So, in no particular order, other than the order I thought of them, are the things that stick in my mind for 2010.

The Flood – First and foremost for anyone living in the Middle Tennessee area, this has to be the event that defined 2010.  Not only the flood itself, but the relief response, the bonds made, and the lives that have to be rebuilt because of it.  Hundreds of people are still dealing with flood issues these many months later.  For my thoughts on the flood, see http://squireponderings.blogspot.com/2010_05_01_archive.html 

Illness – Within the last quarter of the year, Momma Squire & I have had two friends receive the diagnosis of the “C” word – yep Cancer.  While, we are used to hearing of people receiving this diagnosis, it is always the older folks we know at church or in the community.  This time the people were our age.  Really hit home with us on how precious life is and how we should relish every moment.  But, we shouldn’t need a cancer diagnosis to make us do this – we should do it every day.

The Vols – what a year for my beloved Vols.  First, we find out that Lane Kiffin is bolting for the left coast and then we finish the year realizing that our basketball coach, Bruce Pearl, lied to the freakin’ NCAA.  Hopefully, we have a solid football coach in Derek Dooley and Pearl gets his poop in a group.  I predict that all of these just opens the door for Mike Hamilton to exit his spot as AD.

Family – Continue to be amazed at how my boys are growing up.  Will is a freshman in high school, playing basketball with the big boys, and now has his learner’s permit.  Kyle continues his work in the band and keeps growing up way too quick for Momma Squire & I.   He has taken over virtually all of his diabetes management which brings a new set of issues to deal with for us, like “No, I didn’t get your kit.  I am not the one with diabetes.”  Momma Squire decided to embark on another career path and is taking some classes at Trevecca to enable her to be a certified teacher. 

Travel – We had the pleasure of taking a couple of extended pleasure trips this year.  We went to Seagrove Beach back in the summer for a week and dodged the BP oil spill.  We also got to go to Ft Walton Beach after Christmas with the Harpeth Basketball team for a tourney.  Any time spent at the beach is golden to me.  We also got to see a lot of Middle Tennessee as we traveled to Will’s AAU tournaments in the spring.  From Bell Buckle to Shelbyville, we saw it all.  We even worked in a trip to Atlanta and Six Flags before one tourney. 

Music – For the first time in many years, I didn’t attend a concert in 2010.  I did get to see a couple of club shows involving one of my favorite singer/songwriters – Jaime Kyle.  Maybe 2011 will bring some acts to town that I want to see.

Work – Had a very good friend make a huge move regarding work.  Quit his job and embarked on a business venture where he is his own boss, well, except for the wife who is working with him.  I made a move, but nothing that drastic.  After 23 years as an Internal Auditor, I am now working in the Corporate Accounting department and loving it!  It is good to be excited about new challenges at work.

In closing, when I look back on 2010, it was a year of realizing how precious life is.  Whether it was seeing flood damages, helping in the flood relief, watching friends undergo medical treatments, or just spending time with family; I guess even more than ever, I see God in so many places and people.  No one knows what 2011 will bring, but I do know that I have it good and appreciate my family, friends, and the Community I live in. 

Happy New Year

Zach, A Tennessee Squire.

School Pride

Well, Kingston Springs Elementary had its 15 minutes of fame on Friday, October 29, 2010 when it was the subject of NBC’s School Pride (http://www.nbc.com/school-pride/episode-guide/season-1/48294/rising-from-the-flood/episode-103/52245/).  For those who don’t know, think Extreme Home Makeover for schools.  NBC chose Kingston Springs Elementary (KSES) because of the flooding we received back in May.  The school was under about 8 foot of water and everything in the school that wasn’t concrete was destroyed.  Both of my boys attended that school from K-4 and Momma Squire and I have numerous friends who work there or have children attend there.

I am not naïve enough to think that everything I see on TV is true nor do I believe everything I read on the Internet.    It was very interesting to see the show, how they portrayed our town, and wonder if who you could pick out on the TV.  Yes, there were viewing parties all over Kingston Springs that night.  Now, don’t get me wrong – I am very appreciative of what School Pride did for our school and our county.  Our county can’t fund the schools sufficiently to buy copy paper (another blog for another day), so I know that our county couldn’t have afforded to refurbish the school the way School Pride did it.  In fact, because we had insurance, the insurance proceeds were able to be used for basic items and donations from around the country and the School Pride project were able to outfit our school with items (think technology and creature comforts) that normally wouldn’t be available.  For that, I thank you, NBC. 

But, I love it when media or music folks “pull back the curtain” and tell or show us how things really happen.  Well, here is my chance to “pull back the curtain” on some things.  None are really bad, but mostly attributed to staging, etc.   Basically, the folks on the show are a muscle-bound dude, nerd dude, big black comic lady, and a former Miss America. 

Momma Squire, the eldest offspring, and I volunteered during the week the “build” was occurring and here are some tidbits from ”behind the curtain".

• The show opened with the team driving to KSES and Kingston Springs for the first time.  Well, based upon the clip, they were about 1.5 miles past the school and driving away from it!  As the team was talking about the damage, they showed clips of River Plantation damage in Bellevue – 10 miles away .
• The team had a huge countdown to start the clock ticking from seven days.  The problem was that the clock start was filmed in June at the announcement and the build was in late July.
• They showed and promoted that Lady Antebellum performed a concert for the school on the reveal day.  Well, only Axel Rose would count it as a concert. They played one song and then did a second take of the same song.
• During the week of the build, we “had” a huge bake sale in the city park to raise money for the build.  Well, we down there in the 100 degree heat to watch brownies melting.  They filmed the bake sale, even having the sale change its time to accommodate their filming schedule.  They had the teachers play in the splash pad with a local photographer taking their pictures to hang in the teacher’s lounge.  None of this made the show.  None.  Notta.  Zip point squat.
• Kingston Springs overwhelmed these folks with our volunteer spirit.  They actually cut-off the volunteer sign up.  There were over 1,500 folks who came out and volunteered the week of the build.  I had a problem with the fact that they showed the team “working” and not any of the volunteers working.  The team would trot out, film a scene, and then go back into the RV (donated by a local resident). 
• The show also leveraged local businesses into donating items such as landscaping, sound system and then when asked for a free plug – they were told that $100k got them on the banner and much more would get them a shot during the show.
• Speaking of shots on the show – here is my favorite blooper.  We have a coffee shop (www.redtreecoffee.com) run by two sisters, Amy and Katie.  These ladies served as the volunteer deployment center immediately after the flood – well before the various governmental agencies responded.  The School Pride team decided to profile the coffee shop and sisters for all their hard work.  Well, Nerd guy jumps in his car, pushes the OnStar button and asks for turn-by-turn directions to Red Tree Coffee.  Don’t need that GPS feature.  Turn left out of school, go maybe a mile and the shop is on your left.  Right after that, the OnStar commercial came on.

There you have it.  That is your behind the scenes look at a reality show.  I am very very grateful to School Pride and what they did for our elementary school and our community.  Speaking for that, sales tax collections for the month of July were over budget.  Thanks – our city and county needed that.  I just wanted to shed a little light on the subject.

Zach, A School Pride volunteer and a Tennessee Squire

"Wow, this might get bad."

These words were uttered while sitting in Buffalo Wild Wings in Hendersonville on Saturday May 1, 2010. Little did I know how prophetic these words would be as a friend & I sat watching TV in between Will’s AAU basketball games. It had been raining hard all day Saturday and I had witnessed several wrecks throughout the day as the rains continued to pour down. We were watching the soggy Kentucky Derby on the large screen while keeping an eye on the local weather on some of the smaller TV’s. There were sporadic thunderstorm warnings flashing across the screen as the local weather folks went into “let’s see how many ways we can show you what a thunderstorm looks like” mode with their state-of-the-art radars, Dopplers, and spotters. There was one image from an interstate traffic camera (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5gYhLKwSp4) that will always be associated with this flood – the sight of a school portable building floating beside the interstate and then slamming into the interstate which was full of stalled vehicles with water almost submerging the cars. At that precise moment I uttered “…wow, this might get bad”. Luckily, the remaining game was cancelled and we headed home. I called a neighbor who told me that one of the two bridges into our section of the Ranchettes had been damaged and the creek by our subdivision was the highest he had ever seen. As I pulled into the driveway, I could hear the creek across the golf course. I normally can’t.

As Sunday dawned, it was still raining and as I checked Facebook, I noticed some friends from my hometown, Waverly, were posting that Main St was flooding due to Trace Creek rising. I saw some pictures of my hometown flooding.

As bad as it was, little did I realize that the flooding in Waverly would literally be a drop in the bucket compared to what South Cheatham would be facing. As the day went on, more & more pictures and stories were posted to Facebook. The picture was becoming very clear that the rain was continuing and Kingston Springs would not be the same when it quit. We went to the golf course by our house to see how high the creek had gotten. We quickly saw that the golf carts that were supposedly on higher ground weren’t high enough. We called some neighbors and we pushed about 15 carts to even higher ground. Pushing golf carts in 3 foot water is very difficult. It got a lot easier when we found that there was a neutral, just not labeled! Here is what the clubhouse looked like on Sunday:

We got word that one of the main roads (yes there is one) in Kingston Springs was flooded at both ends; leaving two large subdivisions essentially on what was called Island 249. Right after that, the cable went out, so we were forced to monitor Facebook mobile. Thank goodness for the Blackberry! In addition to Island 249, Kingston Springs itself was literally an island. With the interstates and Highway 70 closed due to flooding, travel out of our town was severely limited. We didn’t realize how bad it was until the next day when we ventured out a little. Then pictures started coming in:

These are by the City Park over the Harpeth River

 

The next image we saw was a video clip taken by Kyle & Will’s school that slammed home to me how bad this flood was:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVYPnTp-k9g.  This first picture was taken during the flood along the road by the boys’ school that I described earlier about being washed out.

Here are shots after the waters have receded. Note the sections of road that were moved around. The areas where you see people standing is where the three houses once stood.

This last picture is of a house which was moved off its foundation. If you see where the items are sitting in the cleared-off area that is where the house once stood.

The flood not only closed our schools down while the waters were high, it closed them down for the remainder of the year. In our community, the Middle School was being used as a disaster relief shelter and here is our elementary school:

 Here are some interior shots. Look closely and you can see the waterline.

One silver lining is that NBC is producing a makeover show similar to Extreme Home Makeover that focuses on school. They are considering our elementary school to be one of the ones made over.

Well, the flood came, it destroyed, it wasn’t picky about who it impacted, it showed no mercy, and made my town learn a lot about itself. You’ve seen the destruction in pictures above; now let me tell you about how Kingston Springs reacted.

Through Facebook, word went out that if you could make it to our little coffee shop, Red Tree Coffee (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1644043794), some folks were organizing help for folks impacted by the flood. Immediately, a network of folks planned a response to this flood. The two sisters (Amy & Katie) who run the Red Tree started a list of needs and began matching them with volunteers. All details were covered from feeding the volunteers to childcare for volunteers. My church, Kingston Springs United Methodist, became sack lunch and potluck dinner central serving an estimated 3,500 meals over the course of a week. Leave it to the Methodists to feed folks! A work day was organized for the Saturday after the flood. Additionally, volunteers were working during the week as well helping people gut homes, clean out, haul off rubbish, and feed them. A local TV station came out and did a story on the Red Tree (http://www.wsmv.com/video/23562193/index.html) that sums it up pretty well. Additionally, our middle school was established with as a shelter and supply center where people could come and pick up needed items such as brooms, shovels, food, personal hygiene products, and even pet food. Once again, social media came to the rescue because a Twitter account was set up to send out requests and information. A Tweet would go out for needed items and folks would get the tweet as they were shopping and bring it to the school.

As a town, we didn’t immediately start blaming others nor did we go Detroit and burn cars or loot our businesses. We stood beside each other and helped our neighbors. We met people whom we have seen for years, but never knew. It didn’t matter where you lived or what you did for a career – we just helped. We didn’t whine and immediately hold out our hand and wait for the government to come in and help. As a matter of fact, the Red Cross volunteers said that our town was an example of what to do and that we really didn’t need them. I am glad that we didn’t wait on the government because I lost a lot of faith in our government because of this (not that I had a whole lot to begin with). Some government officials seemed to be more concerned about meeting and posturing than helping. As Momma Squire told a group of them one night who were watching us prepare hot meals to deliver – “if you are gonna be in here, you need to put some gloves on and get to work or leave.” Love that girl!

I saw God a lot over the last couple of weeks. I also saw some folks not doing the right thing – thankfully, God won by a landslide. Below are the times where I personally saw God:

• Wondering how we were going to feed extra volunteers we hadn’t planned for and out of the blue a Nashville restaurant calls and said they had a catering job cancel and wondered if we could use the food.
• The seven year old girl who had lost her home coming into the shelter wanting a toothbrush to give to her Mom for Mother’s Day.
• The kids in our town out volunteering day in and day out. They were pulling drywall, loading cars with supplies, unloading supply trucks, and delivering meals.
• The sight of Kingston Springs Volunteer Corps shirts all over the community on our big volunteer day.
• The sight of our middle school commons area being filled with supplies.
• Hearing my oldest son tell Momma Squire that he knew he needed to mow the neighbor’s yard, but he just couldn’t when there was volunteer work to be done for people who had lost everything.
• Being in the coffee shop when a group of volunteers came in and said they were from Ohio and wanted to help. They said they got in the car and prayed on where to go and God led them to Kingston Springs and the Red Tree. They showed up with trucks, tools, and trailers and immediately went to work. Ironically, they own a coffee shop in Ohio.
• Delivering meals and supplies to people who had damage, but was told to give it to someone who needed it more.
• And finally, I saw God in everyone who helped their neighbor after this disaster.

Well, I know this is long, but if you want more information on how to help, more pictures, more videos, or see other stories, here are some links for you:

• Flood pictures from our local paper (http://www.scadvocate.com/flood.html)
• http://www.youtube.com/ (search Kingston Springs Flood)
• Facebook (Red Tree Coffee or Zach Clayton)
• Website set up for information clearing (http://www.southcheatham.com/)

Proud to be from Kingston Springs, TN

Zach, A Tennessee Squire