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A thank you note from Mark
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Wow, this weekend has been absolutely
amazing for me and many others. For those of you who took time out
of your busy lives to attend, much appreciation goes out to all of
you. The honors for the folks traveling the farthest would go to
two people.
Paul Frank and his family live in Germany,
but they were in the states and were able to make it.
Poly Vargas lives in Spain and he was not
as early as he had planned to be, but he made it in flying colors.
Others came via plane, train and
automobile. Well, no one can via train, but it fit in well in that
sentence. Let's see, folks came from Florida, Texas, California,
Missouri, South and North Carolina, New Jersey, Virginia and
probably a few other states.
The trip through the time warp was well
worth it. I hope others take the time to sit down and to write some
of the memories of this reunion.
Today, some of you are back home, a few are
still here in Staunton, and some of you are traveling today and for
the next several days.
Ah, some memories that were lost in my gray
matter were brought back to life from the memories of others.
Thanks, as they are all good memories. I'm sure glad we got our
ID's back that one night. That could have been bad, but it ended
well. <grin>
There were several of you that responded to
me and said you were coming, but couldn't make it for one reason or
another. I hope everything is ok. We missed you.
For the handful of folks who stuck it out
to the end, which was pushing 3 AM, thanks for the good time. There
were lots of jokes, stories, laughs, hugs and talks of a San Antonio
reunion and a San Antonio Book 'Em. If you are interested in
attending Book 'Em this year in my neck of the woods, the event is
taking place on October 22 and 23, 2005, which is a Saturday and a
Sunday. I recently contacted our First Lady Laura Bush and invited
her to attend, but I probably won't know until the week of the event
if she will attend or not. Check out
www.bookemfoundation.org for more
information on Book 'Em.
I'll be quite busy during that weekend, but
if anyone makes it I'll try to get together with you all for a
little bit.
There were lots and lots of pictures
taken. I hope all of you that took pictures will be comfortable in
sending as many of them as possible to Ron to be put on the IANTN
website,
www.iantn.com.
Those of you that could not attend can
relive the event vicariously through these photos. Yeah, some of us
have changed, but we are still the same people. Ahem, well, not
able to put away as much cerveza as before, but that's natural as
time progresses.
I hope to stay in touch with quite a few of
you. No matter if you made the reunion or not, think about
attending future ones. No matter if you we have one each year, or
if we have one every other year. I know it's not possible for each
person to make every single one, but try to make one when you can.
If you didn't make it this year, Barry, John, Ben and Jeff to name
just a few, double your efforts to make it next year.
I was telling my wife today that as much
fun we had talking with Bob Threm, I couldn't imagine throwing Barry
and Ben into the mix. There were stairs in the building, but
thankfully no one decided to sled ride down them.
It was a great time for me and hopefully
each and everyone of you that came. Let's try to do this again, and
hopefully not in 15 years, but in the next year or two.
Take care,
Mark Kearney
IANTN 1988-1990
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