Dare I hope?

When you live in Atlanta and follow sports, you learn very quickly to -- in the words of the Dread Pirate Roberts -- "get used to disappointment."

Atlanta is the home of the team that blew a 28-3 lead over the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl. Someone later commented that Atlanta hadn't been burned that badly since Sherman in 1864.

So when the Atlanta Braves made it to the National League Championship Series, I didn't pay much attention . . . until they started winning.

The last time Atlanta was in the World Series was 1999 (the year my son was born). The last time Atlanta won the World Series was 1995, the year after we moved here. In the years since 1995, Atlanta has done a good job of winning their division, the National League East, but just couldn't seem to "seal the deal" and get to the championships. 

The last few seasons have ranged from good to mediocre and just plain bad. 

This year, bleacherreport.com said this about the Braves at the All-Star break (a game Atlanta was scheduled to host but that was pulled due to controversy about Georgia's voting laws, a controversy I will not get into here): " Relative to preseason expectations, the Atlanta Braves might by baseball's most disappointing team in 2021 because of their 44-45 record . . . A year after coming one win away from reaching the World Series, little has gone right."

But they did go on to say, "The wide-open nature of the National League East division of the National League East division means they are still only four games back in the standings even with a sub -.500 record, and that could be enough to chase another postseason appearance, especially with [first baseman] Freddie Freeman headed for free agency."

Despite that sub-.500 record, Atlanta staged a comeback, and last week, they beat the Los Angeles Dodgers four games to two.  The morning after that game, I picked up my phone, dreading to see the results, and when I saw "Braves win!" I said to myself, "Yes!"

Now our city has been seized with World Series fever, everyone who owns any sort of Braves paraphernalia has dusted it off and put it on, and I'm sure that you cannot buy, beg, borrow, or steal anything with the name "Atlanta Braves" on it!

So dare I hope?

Dare I hope that this will be the year that the Braves will repeat 1995 and win the World Series?

Dare I hope that at least one of our sports teams will give us a reason to celebrate, especially in this year two of COVID?

Last night, in Houston, the Braves beat the Houston Astros 6-2. Game 2 is scheduled for tonight in Houston, and the Braves will come back for Game 3 on Friday. The slogan around there is, "Party like it's 1999!" and I'm guessing that Truist Park, the home field for the Braves, will blast the song so that it can be heard through the neighborhood at full volume. 

Dare I hope that the Braves will pull it off, despite the Astros having home field advantage?

Can Freddie Freeman and the guys do it?

I'm not much of a baseball fan, but when the Series comes around, I pay attention to who's playing, and I may or may not have a favorite team. 

This year, I'm rooting for the Braves.

If they win, I will treat myself to a large bowl of chocolate.

But, if my hopes are dashed, I will drown my sorrows . . .in a large bowl of chocolate.

So either way, I win. 

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

"He'll never amount to anything."

When my Uncle Jerry was a young boy, a teacher told his mother -- my Granny Mary -- that "he'll never amount to anything."

Why she said that, I don't know.  Maybe it was because he didn't know how to tie his shoes yet (a skill which, by the way, I didn't learn until I was eight.) My father stepped in and tied my uncle's shoes . . . while my uncle read a comic book. (He couldn't tie his shoes yet, but he could read!)

But he spent the rest of his nearly 82 years of life proving her wrong.

My Uncle Jerry was born in Harlan, Kentucky in November of 1939, into a world that was just beginning World War II. He was the youngest of five children, and too young to remember the personal tragedy that hit nearly two years later, when his father was killed in an accident. 

He grew up in a world without a father, and in a world shaped by World War II and its aftermath. 

I don't know what made him pick electrical engineering as a path in life. But Harlan, Kentucky was not the place to do it. 

So he went to college and eventually earned his doctorate at the University of Cincinnati. Cincinnati was a popular place for people from rural Kentucky to end up. One of his big brothers was already there. (Two of my mother's siblings also moved from Harlan to Cincinnati.) 

His doctoral dissertation had something to do with neutron-irradiated silicone. As an adult, I worked at a university library and used their interlibrary loan computer to look up Uncle Jerry's dissertation. When I found it, I read off the title to the other woman working at the reference desk.  She just looked at me and said, "Sure!"

The boy who would "never amount to anything" eventually moved to Clearwater, Florida, got a job at Honeywell, and taught engineering at the University of South Florida. He also traveled worldwide, visiting countries such as Israel, Japan, and Poland. I remember the slide shows he would have when he'd come back from one of his trips. I still have a pin he gave me after a trip to Moscow, an Olympic pin with "Mockba '80", It was the Olympics that the US ended up boycotting. 

Uncle Jerry would eventually live from coast to coast doing consulting work. He's lived in Colorado Springs, Bellingham, WA, Palmyra, New York (where he lived on what he described as "23 acres of weeds") and finally in Sarasota, Florida.

He and my father were very close, as befits the last two members of a family.  He once said about my dad that "he was my hero before I ever knew about heroes." 

My father fell ill with ALS in 1992, My now-husband proposed in May of 1993, and I knew there was a chance my father might not live to see me get married. 

So I wrote Uncle Jerry and asked, if Daddy can't give me away, can you?

He called me and said three words:  "I'd be honored."

My father died on September 11th, 1993. I was married on October 9, 1993, with my Uncle Jerry walking me down the aisle.  He also loaned Frank his wedding ring for our pictures because I had forgotten to bring Frank's. That is a funny story now. Then, it was tragic.

After his first marriage ended, he married again in May of 1980 to a woman who made him happy for many years. That marriage also brought him three stepchildren.  He had no biological children, but he stepped in as a father figure. 

It devastated my Uncle Jerry when his wife died several years ago. 

The last time I saw Uncle Jerry was right before my mother died.  He came to see her on the same day I did.  He told met, through tears, that you knew you were getting old when you started losing the people you loved. 

Uncle Jerry loved his work and contributed much. My father told me that Jerry was one of maybe ten people in the country that knew what he knew. 

In the end, all he wanted to do was go home. 

His health would not permit him to go back to Harlan, so he settled for assisted living in Ohio. It helped that his sister-in-law was at the same facility.  

Just a few days ago, I learned that he had a wound on his foot that was not healing. He made the choice to refuse amputation and signed paperwork for hospice care. He was going to leave the world on his own terms. 

Last night, at 11:15 p.m., October 20, 2021, he did just that. 

His stepdaughter, who's spent time and energy and love caring for him and keeping the family informed, told us that Uncle Jerry's body will be cremated and the ashes spread at Cumberland Falls, Kentucky, a place he enjoyed taking his grandkids (the children of one of his stepdaughters). 

So in a way, he will go home.

My uncle, Dr. Jerry Sergent, will be remembered as an engineer who traveled the world sharing his knowledge and who gave his knowledge to his many students. 

He will be remembered as a man who would live life on his own terms.  

He loved his family, his brothers and sister and sisters-in-law, and his nieces and nephews. 

Quite an accomplishment for someone who was never supposed to amount to anything.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Riot Reflections, 50 years later

Had the riots at Dixie M. Hollins High School in St. Petersburg, Florida happened today, I would probably be writing about a body count, who the shooter was, and what weapons he used.

But it was 1971, and what happened at Dixie M. Hollins High School resulted in fighting, injuries, multiple arrests, and at least one stabbing.

I was seven years old in September of 1971, the first school year when court-ordered busing went into effect in an effort to achieve racial integration. One of the school districting lines went down my street. Had I lived on the other side of the street, I would have gone to Northwest Elementary. Instead, I was able to walk four blocks to Westgate Elementary. 

I didn't understand the controversy about busing.  That first year, I mainly remember the "bus students" listed on the roll in my third grade class.  They were Tonetta, Rita, Lolita, and Valarie, they were placed at the end of the roll and called out separately. 

But during September and October of 1971, Dixie M. Hollins High School was embroiled in controversy, a controversy that would end up making national news.  

In December, 2015, Tampa Bay Times reporter John Romano looked back on those days. He described the students who lived through them as "kids who fought with fists and wounded with words . . . who saw cops on the school's rooftop with rifles and saw adults inciting violence from across the street . . . who saw football games and school days canceled for fear of race riots."

It started a week after the school year began, when Dixie Hollins' principal got on the intercom and announced that the Confederate battle flag, the "Stars and Bars", would no longer be permitted on campus.  

For a school whose fight song was "Dixie" and whose athletic teams were called the "Rebels," this spelled trouble. 

The next day, angry adults, Confederate battle flags in hand, stood across the street, protesting.

For the next couple of weeks, they drove up and down the street, the Stars and Bars protruding from the backs of their cars, flapping in the breeze, as Black students arrived on campus. 

Tension built.  Fights broke out.  Students were sent home early due to fears of violence. 

The week of October 11, 1971, all hell broke loose. 

On October 12, 1971, the school had to be closed after what the St. Petersburg Times described as a "fist-swinging, rock-throwing, slogan-shouting melee." Afterwards, the school superintendent was quoted as saying, "God, I'm tired. They didn't have any courses like this in school administration." 

The next day, a 16-year-old girl brought a steak knife to school and stabbed a deputy in the chest.  Fortunately, the wound was minor.

Eventually, things settled down, though not without simmering unrest under the surface.

In 2020, although the official name of the school remains Dixie M. Hollins High School, the school decided to brand themselves as "Hollins High", and gave themselves a new nickname, the "Royals."

The irony here is that Dixie Martin Hollins, the first superintendent of schools for Pinellas County, supported education for all students, no matter what race, and he often hired people from Black colleges and universities. 

But with the first name "Dixie", the nickname "Rebels", and a mascot resembling a Confederate colonel, "we'd still be tied to a past that we needed to break free from," according to principal Bob Florio.  

This school year marks 50 years since those days of tension and rioting. I remember little about it except reading bits about it in the paper and seeing bits of it on the news. Two of the people arrested during that October week of violence were the father and sister of a girl in my sister's Girl Scout troop.

That Friday, I went with my mother and sister to drop my sister off at weekend camp. The father was there, and he and my mother had a long discussion. I heard none of it. Instead, as a seven-year-old going on eight, all I wondered were two things:  1. Why was he here and not in jail, since he'd been arrested (he was probably out on bail), and 2. Where were the marks of the handcuffs on his wrists? 

Such is the innocence of a little girl. 

I'd love to say that we've progressed in 50 years. 

But school violence? Confederate flag controversies? Racial tensions? 

Little, if anything, has changed.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Tales from the Sickroom, Days 5-10 . . .

 I will just make it short and sweet:  

QUARANTINE IS DONE! 

I still have a mild amount of nausea but I can eat and nothing's coming back up.

And I will still wear a mask and wash/sanitize my hands.

But I can get out of the house.

Tomorrow I celebrate with a haircut!!

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.