Thank You Russell Rigby!

Susan and I are getting ready to sit down and enjoy following the NFL draft wondering where Colt and Earl and Sergio and some other Longhorns are going to land. We'll bounce around between that and the NBA playoffs. We stayed up late last night watching the Spurs beat the Mavericks. As we keep up with former Longhorns in the NBA, we were up late the night before watching Kevin Durant lead his OKC Thunder team to within a cat's whisker of beating the Lakers in L.A. We caught some of LaMarcus Aldridge and the Trailblazers and D. J Augustin and the Charlotte Bobcats. All this NBA playoff stuff comes after a period of withdrawal from watching wall-to-wall March Madness... all of it. Our brackets got blown up early but it was awesome fun! That event was the culmination of weeks of fussing and fuming over the frustrating Longhorns basketball team. Which followed a great season cheering the UT football team into the title game. We typically watch golf most Sunday afternoons. We have enjoyed a lot Grand Slam Tennis tournaments over the years.

Yes... this is what we do together. But what Susan and I now enjoy began years before we even met

I owe a debt of gratitude to Russell Rigby, my father-in-law. I was only 28 when he passed away in 1978 and I regret that I didn't enjoy knowing him farther into my adult life. My initial common ground with him was sports. He commented once that I knew almost as much about sports as he did. That was high praise for a kid like me. When he was living in Austin and we were living in the valley, he'd cut articles about the Longhorns out of the American Statesman and mail them to me. Sports was a great point of contact and gave us a lot to talk about. It helped us to really like each other and enjoy being together. And trust me, it didn't hurt to have that card in my deck as a suitor for his daughter's hand. I was in his camp! Waaay ahead those other guys who were smarter, better looking, and had REAL prospects.

What incredibly good fortune for me that early in Susan's life when she balked at being "dragged" to various sporting events, he said to her, "One day you'll likely marry a guy who loves sports and you'd better learn to love this stuff now if you want to be included in that part of his life." She was already an angel wearing skin but that she heeded that advice has made our nearly 40 years together even sweeter than it was already going to be. I can't imagine having missed all of that.

I didn't realize what I had until it was too late to thank him.

So thank those who have contributed to your life while you can.

Got to go! The draft starts in 5 minutes.