April 25, 2008
Hi, Gloria!
As promised, here’s a replacement report on the Moseley clan.
My bride Norah and I have now been married for 33 years. She’s still beautiful. I’m pretty sure that I now have more hair on my face than on my head. We’re both retired and roughly split our time between the home where you and Danny visited us in northern Virginia and one that we built in a golf and boating community in the Cape Fear area of far southeastern North Carolina. We also do a bit of traveling, with our most recent overseas adventure a self-driven barge trip in southern France with three other couples. Norah and I both spent most of our careers at the House of Representatives on the staff of the Ways and Means Committee, where I ended up as chief of staff and Norah as a member of our tax staff that worked very hard to reduce taxes and preserve social security and medicare for aging Rohawks and other endangered species. I had a second career as a partner at Ernst & Young before hanging it up for good a little over two years ago. Glad I did. Don’t know how I ever found time for work.
Kendall and Clay
Our children are both doing really well. Daughter Kendall is completing her internal medicine residency at Johns Hopkins in June and will be staying there to do a specialty fellowship in endocrinology. She had gone to Rice and Baylor College of Medicine in Houston before moving to Baltimore. I won’t be surprised at all if Kendall spends her entire career there in a hospital-based practice and doing research in women’s health issues. It helps that the guy she’s been dating for quite a while is a young surgeon who was just put in charge of a growing practice area there. Our son Clay graduates from the UNC Wilmington business school next month and is starting a business of his own with a couple of bright classmates. Something to do with college students and bars – a subject he knows quite well. Actually, Clay has come into his own as a student, with two years of straight “A”s now and having led his university’s ethics debate team to a shut-out win over Clemson (the eventual national champion). Most importantly, he’s a lot of fun to be around and a great fishing partner when he has time to go out. The one thing I wish he’d do is quit demolishing me on the golf course. Come to think of it, I also wish he had quit growing before he hit 6’6” and started looking down at me.
My Trophy with Hers
Norah is the most certifiably accomplished golfer in the family, having won her nine-hole ladies’ golf championship at Army Navy Country Club the past two years. She only started five years ago so we could do something together after I retired. I wish she had taken up knitting. Now she humiliates me on a regular basis -- says it’s payback for all those years I was her boss at work. She may not drive the ball nearly 300 yards like Clay does, but she’s sneaky accurate. Fortunately, I’m enjoying success in the great fishing we have offshore here, particularly in the gulf stream along the outer continental shelf. We sold the larger boat we had while I was still working and replaced it with a 30-foot one that is just right for what I like to do. It can still get us out 65 miles and back safely with a boat load of tuna, wahoo, and dolphin (the “mahimahi” version, not Flipper), but it’s much less complicated to handle and more fun as a fishing platform. Not a day goes by that I don’t feel grateful for what we’re able to do in our retirement.
Clay’s the one smiling after a very long day offshore
I still get back to San Antonio a couple of times a year – but generally stay pretty close to my father who lives in Universal City with his wife Darlene. He re-married after my mother died back in the mid-80s. My youngest brother, John, lives in Cibolo with his wife Shelley where they are active in the church and with travel. He retired from the Air Force several years ago and was later diagnosed with a form of cancer that encouraged him to enjoy life to the fullest. He’s doing very well. Their daughter is a chef-in-training at a restaurant in downtown S.A. Brother Eric is living in the Palestine area with his wife Cindy. He was a few years behind us at RHS and went on to a career as a high school band director in East Texas. They are both still working in education for the junior college system and enjoying their young grandchildren. Ford and his wife Nancy (big sister of former Rohawk Jim Dieterich who’s a very successful lawyer in Denver) live near us in northern Virginia. They had a great career in the Air Force and now specialize in travel and grand-parenting. Their two daughters are also in the area, his oldest working as a family physician in the Air Force. Ford and John both have spent some time fishing offshore with me, but we haven’t gotten Eric over here yet.
Phil
Gloria, I regret that I’ve lost touch with our RHS classmates over the years. Hopefully we can time one of our visits home to coincide with the reunion you’re planning for the fall. It’s wonderful that so many of you have stayed together and continue to age gracefully alongside one another.
All the best …….
I did have one unfortunate adventure earlier this year. I went down to Hilton Head to spend a month in a fitness program to lose some sedentary flab and regain my flexibility. Was doing well, too, until I picked up an aggressive staph infection in my leg and wound up in a hospital bed for a few days before heading home to recuperate. I’ve now concluded that diet and exercise are way over-rated when it comes to having a healthy lifestyle. Having said that, I’m going back down there later this year to complete what I started out to do.
We flew to Barcelona and met our daughter and son-in-law (who live in Romania) and cruised with them. I've finished going through all the pictures and will begin the blogging today or tomorrow.
