George Brown
Last night it hit me. George retired on June 30th. He won't be to the Rural Schools Conference. In my three previous conferences George and I have attended together. It has been George that gets me to the golf course by 5:30 AM, with barely enough light, to squeeze in a quick nine before the keynote speaker.
I will miss George. Sometimes he was fun to tease. He would send a message about Steering Committee agenda topics and then send another the next day because no one had responded. These second messages usually started out, "Hello, is anybody out there."
George was insistent on having meeting early in the day. One particular meeting was to start at 7:00 AM. Laura and I rebelled and only after George agreed to providing waffles did we relent. True to his word, George cooked the waffles for us that morning. And he didn't stop there. We had bacon, juice, napkins, the whole shebang.
George would become impatient at times. His face would turn red. We liked to tease at him and I don't think he appreciated our sense of humor. In fact, he probably didn't think we had one.
Then there were the times that Troy and I got calls from the FBI. Someone on our network was involved in credit card fraud. Or a student was at a library trying to hack into the district office SIS server. George was always there to help us through these events.
And the copyright problems multiplied greatly over the last few years. George handled those, too, dealing with the MPAA and recording industry types. Freeing my time away from these tedious tasks.
Over the past few months George has gracefully taken a back seat at UEN. His responsibilities have gone to others. He has made his plans for retirement. The last time I saw George he was a bit embarrassed that we were making any fuss over him leaving. He hates goodbyes, and so do I.
We'll miss you George. Thanks for everything. Hit 'em straight.........
6:38:12 PM 
|
