A Day I'll Never Forget

May 18th, 2018... A day I will unfortunately never forget.

I'll never forget mowing the lawn the day before and my daughter Ashlyn informing me that she had put off taking her last entry level college exam so she would have to miss her first half of the next school day to finish it. I got upset with her for not managing her time wisely and in my house "I don't miss work, you don't miss school" is our motto... The following morning I was working in my office upstairs when all of a sudden my phone started going crazy with texts and phone calls asking if "Ash was okay", then looking up at the muted TV to a headline that read "Active Shooter in Santa Fe High School, Multiple Fatalities"... Running downstairs, waking Ashlyn up and telling her to call Skylar, Cassidy and the other kids that I've come to know hanging out at my house.

I'll never forget my best friend Gregg coming over and breaking down to me because his brother Tripp was the 3rd officer onsite and in the building, how he and his wife had been on the phone all morning calling and texting their staff to make sure everyone was alright.

I'll never forget that afternoon the entire town it seems met at the center of town for a candle light ceremony, complete strangers from every background, race and social status all holding hands, crying and trying like hell to make some sense of the madness that had happened that morning. Praying for the lives lost and hurt along with their families who were going through a situation I hope no one ever goes through again.

I'll never forget telling my daughter to invite all of her friends and their parents to our house for dinner that night, cooking an endless amount of burgers, letting the kids take the golf cart, rent movies and relax simply to take their minds off of the day if at minimum for a couple of hours. Learning that two of the kids that were sitting in my living room were in the very room in which the shooting took place, one young man the boy that lives around the corner who my daughter took home from school every now and then.

I'll never forget that night Gregg and I sat around the kitchen table and devised a plan to help raise money for the families affected by the tragedy, using his restaurant "Pook's" as a home base similar to the other fundraising events we did after Hurricane Harvey. A week later with the help of many volunteers we hosted our event raising over $86,000.00 for the families affected thanks to so many generous donations from the community, folks we do business with and absolute strangers simply trying to help the cause. Letters to the family of the foreign exchange student Sabika who perished were being written and collected to be shipped to her family in Pakistan expressing our deepest sympathy.

This article isn't to give you insight to the hell we went through, it is simply to remind everyone that in a blink of an eye your entire world can change. We have good days and we have bad, some weeks we feel like there is no way we can make it through but we can. In life and in business you will fall, you will get frustrated and you will sometimes want to give up but just remember it could always be worse. I heard a speech the other day and the gentleman said "always remember you have no idea what the person next to you is going through"...

Hope you find something in this article that helps you get through those hard days, please continue to keep our town, the families directly affected along with the teachers/staff and first responders in your thoughts and prayer.

SN