Giving thanks

Dear loyal readers,

Last week I observed my first "anniversary" of learning that I have a mass on my pancreas. I am still carrying it around today.

It was a day or two before Thanksgiving 2011 when I became fully aware of this unwelcome guest in our home. What irony! Thanksgiving? I remember how sobering and sad the news made me. It put me in a funk. I remember we had guests for Thanksgiving dinner but my mind was somewhere else and I don't even remember who our guests were.

Now, one year later, I was much better able to handle Thanksgiving. I have much to be thankful for. We had a wonderful dinner with John and Michelle Hillegass, their one-week old daughter, Greta, and visiting parents and grandpa Bill from Elkhart, IN, and Davidsville, PA. John is director of Mennonite Central Committee's portable meat canner and works in Barb's Donor Relations dept. at MCC. Michelle was on a MCC Learning Tour that Barb led to Ukraine in 2005. It was a traditional meal with our guests carrying in side dishes. Greta let us eat while she slept peacefully in her grandpa's arms at the table. Thank you Hillegasses and extended family for sharing the special day with us!

Another great Thanksgiving story this year started when I came home from work at 8:30 Wednesday evening to a very surprising and wonderful message on our phone answering machine. Barb and my financial advisor, Dave Weidman, left a message that he had four tickets to the Penn State/Wisconsin football game at State College on Saturday that he was unable to use due to family obligations AND THAT HE WANTED TO DONATE THEM TO US!! I was blown away. Nittany Lions vs. Badgers. Wow!! I knew of Dave's love of NCAA BCS football. His office is filled with football mementos and if you start talking to him about college football Barb will start to zone out completely and it is hard to get him back on track.

Anyway, earlier, during a visit to discuss finances I had mentioned to him that while not a rabid fanatic like him, I have wanted to experience a BIG college football game sometime (I don't have a certain team that I am loyal to) and before I knew it he starts painting word pictures of us at a tail gate/game in either Louisiana, Texas or Athens, GA, complete with the nuances of each game experience, since he has already been to games all over the country.

So 8:30 the eve before Thanksgiving I am frantically trying to think of who might be able to join me.  First off - none of my friends or acquaintances I could think of are football fans, much less graduates of Penn State. I made a few calls, but it was Thanksgiving weekend and people already had plans. I gave Barb a sales pitch on experiencing the "theatre" of a Big 10 game, that's it's much more than just football. Barb says she likes to watch people and I told her there would over 90,000 people there to watch! Bless her, she agreed to join me. Then we tried to fill the other seats. We felt we would be wasting the tickets — about 25 rows up on the 40-yard line. Did I mention the "package" included reserved parking sticker about 60 feet from Beaver Stadium? And, oh yes, it also included a seat cushion package and sure enough the four spots on the aluminum bench seat had a blue cushion across them. Very very nice.

On a lark we called another couple with whom we've enjoyed being on adventures not necessarily in our character and they were free and said would love to join us. Voila! 

The weather all week was glorious but was forecast to turn cold and windy with a high of 37°F on Saturday so we put on many layers and added considerable size to ourselves making the seating somewhat crowded. 

Me donning my new PSU cap and four tickets. This cap was the only piece of clothing that indicated we were Penn State fans. Thank you Bill in Elkhart for thinking of me and buying me a cap so we didn't look to conspicuous in our street clothes.

Notice the layered clothing. 

Our blue Toyota van and Beaver stadium. I told Dave it would have been nice to be a little closer!!

We walked through parking lot to an indoor stadium for 1 pm pre-game pep rally featuring the Blue Band (Penn State marching band). No pictures, but amazing and warm. Also some incredible baton twirling including a world champion man baton person who was crazy good throwing the baton 30 feet in the air, maybe higher. 

Nice seats.

The obligatory smartphone self-shoot of Barb and me while we still had some body heat.

We enjoyed a real precision half-time show.

Unfortunately the cold weather convinced us to bail at the end of the third quarter due to cold hands and feet and faces. It was the last game of the season and Penn State won 24-21 in overtime!! Drats. We missed it. I tried to listen on the radio but the station faded about 20 miles out of State College. So we missed the incredible ending to the game and season. With all the troubling news about the football program here this past year, it has been an important year for the program to get back on its feet. They had a winning season with a new coach and players that had an opportunity to seek healthier established teams but decided to stay.

Here are some of my impressions/highlights of the day:

•Attendance was 93,505. What an amazing feat to coordinate an event with that many people coming to town. Acres and acres of vehicles.

•The athleticism of the players (TV does not convey the speed and agility), marching, baton twirlers and mascot (in mountain lion costume). The players seem to be much more normally fit than many pro players. The musicians made some crazy backward marching while turning moves.

•We sat in and participated in what was billed as the world's largest stunt card event. Twice during the day we held up large white or blue sheets of paper that were taped to our seat. It was senior day and when I looked at the stadium TV I saw we spelled: "Thank you seniors".

Look for us somewhere in the 'O' of 'SENIORS'. Barb had a blue card and the rest of us had white cards.

I had heard about some impressive crowd "waves" in the past including very slow motion, but that didn't happen Saturday.

I became more fully aware of the intense fan base and how damaging the Sandusky scandal was to the program. For many this is "church". The lion mascot stood in the middle of the field and with huge gestures was able to coax each side of the stadium to "roar" like a lion, starting low and quiet and ending loud. He had such power! Pretty amazing.

We made quick stop in Belleville on the way up to connect with Betty Hartzler at the Mennonite Heritage Center and pick up a night stand table Barb had bought at the MCC Peach Cobbler Relief Sale in Georgia and Betty hauled back to PA.

All in all, a most memorable experience. Thanks Dave for thinking of me and for your generosity. I feel like a "make-a-wish" kid. This was kind of a far-fetched dream of mine that became very real. And I enjoyed dealing with this real. Hmmm ... what else should I wish for. 

PS: By the way, I still feel great and keep praying that the cancer is not deciding to start getting active or packing its nasty bags and start traveling. Cheers.