My Story: Life Before Tragedy (Part 5)

During my transition time (from college to full time) the company hired a young woman to work as the Human Resource person.  Her name is Christy and is very beautiful. Being the HR person I did not go with my feelings and have much to do around her.  Eventually we did go out on a date in October.  We went to a haunted house of all things together.  Our haunted house date was on the Friday before hunting season opened here in Arkansas.  I was supposed to be back home that night to hunt Saturday morning with my dad.  I got to my parent’s house later than usual then went hunting the next morning.  I learned later my grandpa said about me being late,  something was up because I would not normally be late, especially before an opportunity to go hunting.  We kept our relationship quiet and were not seen in public together.  Like I said she was HR and all I ever heard was HR would cause you trouble.   Boy was that ever the truth. 

Our aerial photography department became its own business around this time so Christy and I no longer worked for the same company.  We let our relationship become public knowledge and after six months since our first date we became engaged.  Christy and I were married in September 2009.  Our wedding was eleven months after our first date.  Christy and I are blessed with two amazing kids. Christy and our kids have taken amazing care of me while in the hospital and in recovery.

I had the opportunity to be a programmer and support person for a customized web based mapping system first designed and programmed by the company I worked for. This system is utilized by counties/parishes and cities in four states plus special use implementations. The team builds, programs, and provides support for system users. The system users are as varied in the use of the map as they can be, in most cases it has quickly become the source of record for many of the local map “layers”.  The map users are clients and very good friends.  They prayed for me a lot during my time out.  I came home to  boxes of cards at home and cards on my desk from them.  This relationship is a work relationship but a very special personal relationship as well.

I say all that as an introduction because I believe this system was an answered prayer personally. While I was in college I made it all the way to my senior year in GIS (Geographic Information Systems) . Our class had gone from a room full of students in freshman year to two students in the senior year. It was myself and my good friend Jack in the class. 

Jack is another one of those friends I wish I could tell stories on but there are too many.  Not only were we classmates but he has blessed me with friendship more than I could mention.  I cannot tell of all the conversations we shared while in a computer lab and many more outside of class.  I was blessed with the opportunity to be a groomsman in Jack’s wedding.  Today he is serving in the ministry.  When it came time for my wedding we asked Jack to be the pastor who officiated it, it was an honor for Christy and I to have him be a part of our wedding in this role.  I was able to visit with Jack for the first time in a while a few weeks ago.  It was just like the former days when we visited.

When it came time for us to take the final class (Advanced GIS II) the class wasn’t offered due to the low amount of students and teacher schedule so a self study research project for us two was designed and implemented in its place. I was beside myself, when I talked to our team at work about my concern they told me we’d figure out a way to gain experience in web/server based GIS which was the main focus of the class.  The class was supposed to be where all the other classes were combined and knowledge was to culminate into a final project where the students put their maps online and made them available virtually.

Now fast forward several years and the custom map system was designed and bought by its first user. Let me highlight it was years later.  One of my jobs was to program and support the system for many users across the country in many types of applications. This system gave me the opportunity to meet and work with some amazing people. Not only did it allow me to learn the technology but I am still learning it today as it’s implemented in different cases. The users of the map have become my friends and offer their prayers often, most of these users I would never meet if it hadn’t been for this system.  Now fast forward to today and my career has changed but I’m still programming and supporting custom map systems.  What I thought at the time was not going to happen did happen years later and only was a speed bump.

Whatever you’re going through, let me remind you as I have to remind myself often (the emotions of it all get the best of me and take my attention), though it may be years later, the Lord hears your prayers today. As I look back my prayers weren’t answered as I imagined but they were answered in ways beyond what I ever imagined. Although I don’t realize it at the time God knows what’s coming and works to make everything come together.  This new job is new.  I do not know all the ways it will be used but in it I am challenged by new technology and have the opportunity to work with some great people all the while working on outdoor projects with technology, talk about it all coming together.

The absolute hardest part of my time in the hospital was COVID-19 restrictions on who could visit.  During this time I was not allowed to see my kids.  Christy would try but it was not allowed to bring them to the hospital.  When I was moved from the hospital to rehab Christy brought me my cell phone. I had been “out of it” for all of July and most of August.  With my cell phone I was able to Facetime with the kids a couple times each night.  This became a key part of each night during my time in the rehabilitation hospital. We probably did a call a couple times each evening.  In a coming post I will write about a surprise I received in September.

When we were married we were planning on going on an Alaskan Cruise as our honeymoon.   I remember in college talking with friends about wishing we could get into photography.  Digital cameras at the time were way too expensive and film was just too much trouble plus I would go with the excuse of “I could never”.  Growing up photography was a big interest to me.  When we were young my sister and I were given some film cameras.  There is no telling how many pictures we took with the Playskool cameras.  As I grew up I would take another film camera with me outdoors.  This camera was a small 110 film camera that my mom used for family pictures (nothing fancy).  Again there is no telling how many rolls of film I went through. My mom probably still has zip-lock bags of film that we took growing up.  Here I was working for an Aerial Photography company where I had learned to use Adobe Photoshop to modify image histograms (a big part of photography) but could not buy a DSLR camera myself.  The excuses were over!  I told Christy that if we were going to Alaska I had to buy myself a DSLR so I could photograph memories of the scenery of Alaska.  Having a DSLR on the trip to Minnesota would have been awesome because we saw so many neat sights.  I bought my first Canon DSLR right before our wedding so I could take it with us to Alaska.  I don’t know how but I did come home with a few pictures I like.  One of my favorites is a breaching Humpback Whale.  Today that picture is on the wall of my office.  There is not a whole lot I remember from Alaska but I do remember the beauty.  I remember on the cruise us coming down to the end of the trip.  We had completed two excursions but had one day without anything planned.  On the trip we talked more about this day and decided while we were up in Alaska we should go on another excursion for the experience even though it really was not in the budget.  At the last minute I checked with the cruise ship and they told us they had some openings on a whale watching trip.  We went on that trip and boy was it a treat.  Watching the breaching Humpback Whales was awesome and I even got to come home with some cool pictures of some.  This is definitely one of those I am glad we took the opportunity kind of moments.

On this trip to Alaska the cruise ship left the inside passage and went up to Hubbard Glacier.  This was another one of those amazing moments.  I was able to get some very interesting photographs of the glacier.  It was very scenic.  Our cruise ship was able to get the closest to the glacier that it had been all season.  This trip was in September and was the last cruise to Alaska for that year.  After this trip the ship headed south for the winter.

Years later I found that as life got busy my experience with photography was waning.  I did some research and learned about Night Sky and Meteor photography.  There happened to be a meteor shower coming soon.   The problem was it was December. I woke up early on the morning I was going out for the meteor shower.  I sat with my camera taking photos of the sky just in case a meteor came by as I had the camera taking photos.  The morning was cold and my camera kept on frosting over.  When I do meteor photography I like to point the camera at the sky and leave at that point instead of moving it around.  As soon as you move it you will miss one I have found.  As my time was coming to an end a beautiful “fireball” meteor came down right in front of my camera.  To date it is one of the few fireballs I have photographed.  Fireballs are the big bright meteors and are rare at least for me to catch a photograph.  When I got back home and looked at the picture I found the lens was out of focus, it was close but not focused enough to even be a very pretty picture.  After this I bought a new lens instead of the kit lens I was using.  I learned where the sweet spot for focus on the new lens was.  I also researched and found out about the Perseid meteor shower in September.  In my experience in photographing meteors I have found frost to be a challenge in winter months and dew being a problem in summer months.  I’ve not had trouble with dew or especially frost in September while watching the Perseids.  If you can catch the weather right it is a beautiful sight.  

Christy likes to say I like to make a photography purchase right before a big life changing moment.  Before we got married I bought a kit DSLR camera.  Before I became a dad I bought a zoom lens for my camera.  And before my son was born I bought a better DSLR camera.  Today my daughter is learning to use my first DSLR camera herself.  It is an honor for me to see her use it and to be able to teach her what little I know.  Maybe photography is my coping mechanism.  One of my most favorite pieces of camera gear is my Sigma 150-500 zoom lens.  Doing wildlife photography with that lens is my favorite thing to do.  Right next to the breaching whale photograph in my office is another favorite of mine, a whitetail buck picture that I took with that lens.  Unfortunately I did not have the lens on the Alaskan cruise but did have a kit lens that I bought with my camera that was 55-250 mm.  I can only imagine the kind of pictures I would have gotten if I had the bigger Sigma.  Friends see me with that lens and think I am a very serious photographer but I just use the big lens for a workout!  I have seen where other photographers call it the “bigma” . I sure am glad I took the opportunity to buy the lens because it has given me very many great opportunities.

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