I feel blessed to be able to live in the town that I grew up in. I have found a way to make an honest and rewarding living in which to support a family and do all the things I feel are important in life.

I'm not sure there is a better place to raise a family in this world. McCook is not perfect, but it works for me.

I have changed my life from one of recklessness and self-indulgence to one I can be proud of and one that is focused on Christ and my family.

I am the tresasurer of Sinners Sanctified Motorcycle Ministry in McCook. Most of us are alumni from McCook. We believe in the forgiveness of Jesus Christ even for the lowliest of sinner and we focus our efforts on helping those in the worst of need.

I am still into cars. I still have the '67 Ford Fairlane you see here. I also have a '67 Mustang fastback that needs major work just to be a car again. It will happen someday after I aquire a few more Harley's.

My boys are my life. Since I became a father almost everything has changed for me. I try to balance growing my business with raising my sons to be great men. My goal in life is not be to rich, admired, envied, or better than others. My goal is to provide the opportunity for my sons to be great men in the eyes of God and other men. T0o be leaders and humble servants.

I have been involed in things I never dreamed about until they came along. We have fielded a T-ball team the last few years and I coached. Wyatt is now going to be in Dad's Pitch. I will try to field the team, but won't coach. I'm trying to get better at being a Cub Scout den leader. Cub Scouts is something else we've become involved in and feel that it is extremely important to boys growing up. Lane will be in T-ball in 2011 and I may return to coach his team. We are supporters of youth baseball as I played baseaball as a kid when it was fun, before it got to the age of competitive fathers and serious business. Those are good memories.

Not too many great memories of high school. Wasn't the best time in the world as I didn't know what I wanted out of life and was focused on having fun about all and that got me into some trouble towards the end.

The only time I was ever in the school library was for Saturday detention I got for skipping Spanish to get some Beowolf props done on time in Mrs. Hauxwell's English Lit class. Mr. Everts didn't care why I skipped only that I did. I guess that made up for coming to the first day of my senior year intoxicated and not getting caught. Oh the stupid things I did and regret now.

My favorite memory is just having senior economics with Randall Datus, maybe one of the best teachers MHS has ever had in its hands. He taught me everything I would later need to be a successful person, a free-thinking individual, a business owner, a person who would later achieve better grades in college, and someone who realizes the need for personal responsibilty.

He did this through his weird teaching methods and how he challenged us to think. He never once indoctrinated us with ANY politically motivated lesson. I developed political thinking on my own later in life due to the lessons he taught and my personal life experiences, not the ones I grew up with.

He gave my everything I needed that did not come from a text book I would need to get through a college, life, and become a business owner. He is still affecting me today in what I am teaching my boys about personal responsibilty and the importance of being involved in government.

I was not even qualified to get into this class, but because of the recommendation of older freinds that had taken it, I put in on my class schedule during sign-ups. He personally wrote on my sheet, "will require great endeavour." I knew it would not be easy at that point, but I wanted in regardless. My classmates were all better students than I was, but I kept up just fine.

I always thought Mr. Datus was a conservative Republican because at the time, only republicans seemed to know anything about fiscal responsibility and the economy. Yet, he gave us all Newsweek magazines every week to read and that's what really got me into politics. I even got my own subsription right out of HS and kept it until about 1999 when I realized it may be the most rediculously liberal piece of crap magazine in the world. No journalistic integrity at all. Nothing but a mouthpeice for the liberal progressive movement, and I canceled my subscription. So who knows his political leanings. The fact is this: he taught us to read, analyze, and think for ourselves, not to let someone else speak on our behalf. That allowed us to take everything else we learned at MHS and apply that to the real world, helping us transition into it better and more successfully. That's what made him the greatest teacher ever.

I learned a lot from other great teachers such as Mrs. Gordon, Mrs. Jones, Mr. Gumb, Mr. Briggs, Jim Steinke, and Terry Zuelow. Everything else is just a blur.