Mr. (and Mrs. and Gareth) Poole Goes to Washington

You know, there is a shoe repair shop in the Pentagon. Go ahead. Ask me how I know that. So I’m walking through the Pentagon last week when my shoe falls apart. The sole just rips off from the heel and it’s flapping against the floors as I go through the halls. The shoe, by the way, was rented along with my suit. I don’t own a suit of my own because I clean up well, but not very often. As I’m flapping through the hall, we’re walking past soldiers, ranked sergeant or higher, at each hallway junction holding a little sign, leading us in the proper direction, because the Pentagon is a big place. And each time I passed one of these soldiers, he said, “You know, we’ve got a shoe repair shop here?” Actually, that’s not surprising as you might think. Unlike the White House or the capitol building, the Pentagon isn’t in Washington D.C. It’s in Arlington, Virginia, and most amenities aren’t within walking distance. Actually, from some places in the building, an exit isn’t within walking distance.

So to meet the needs of those working in the world’s largest office building, there is a veritable mall inside the Pentagon. They have a CVS pharmacy, a Redbox video rental location and several other shops, including a shoe-repair place. Considering that most of the people working in the Pentagon are uniformed military, whose career prospects depend at least in part, on the condition of their footwear, there should be a shoe repair shop on the premises. So after the fourth or fifth time one of the soldiers said, “You know, we have a shoe repair shop here?” I decided to get the thing fixed. As outsiders, we weren’t allowed to go anywhere alone, so they broke off a Special Forces major to escort me to the shoe repair shop. A freaking Green Beret. This guy probably led commando raids in Iraq and Afghanistan. I can imagine the conversation when he got home from work that night: “How was your day, honey?” “I had to escort some schmuck to the shoe repair shop.”

I was in the Pentagon – a secure building that restricts entry only to people who have business there. Or by invitation, and I was invited. My wife, son and I were among more than 100 people who turned up last week in Washington D.C. to attend the Medal of Honor award to Vietnam War hero Leslie Halasz Sabo Jr. Sabo, who was killed on May 10, 1970, might have prevented what would have been the largest mass killing of U.S. troops since the Malmedy massacre during the Battle of the Bulge. He was recommended immediately for the Medal of Honor, the U.S. military’s highest award for combat valor, but the paperwork went missing until 1999, when 101st Airborne Division veteran Tony Mabb found Sabo’s file in the National Archives and began pressuring to have the investigation reopened. He served in Bravo Company, 3rd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment – the same regiment that included Easy Company of “Band of Brothers” fame during World War II. I’m the author of Sabo’s biography, “Forgotten Honor,” which earned my invitation to the once-in-a-lifetime experience of attending ceremonies in the White House and Pentagon. As a prelude to the May 16 ceremony at the White House, I rented a business suit – and the aforementioned matching shoes – because I clean up well. Just not very often. I, my wife, Dawna, and son, Gareth – we left our 4-year-old daughter, Calista, with a babysitter because we deemed her too young to sit patiently through the ceremonies -- set off through multiple levels of security that gave us the right to be in the same room as the President of the United States.

After going through the first two, of four, levels of security, we waited in line to get into the White House with Ben Currin, a soldier who served alongside Sabo in Vietnam, and U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter (pictured above), a Democrat who represents the Denver suburbs in Congress. Perlmutter used some of his office’s discretionary funds to help some of Sabo’s comrades and family members with air fare and the $224-a-night cost of staying in the Sheraton National Hotel near the Pentagon, which served as staging area and a reunion venue for the veterans of Bravo Company. After the perfunctory introductions, Perlmutter said, “You look familiar,” and rifles through a handful of papers he was holding before producing a photocopy of this article. Currin, who stayed in the Army after Vietnam and was a team leader in the Army’s elite Golden Knights parachuting team, chatted with Perlmutter about the 1988 AFC Championship Game Currin and his team jumped into Mile High Stadium, then home of the Denver Broncos, as we enter the White House. We go into the East Room – where the president traditionally makes public indoor White House speeches and announcements. The address is typically eloquent for Obama, who mentions the shabby treatment Vietnam veterans received when they returned home. Fittingly, the ceremony’s longest and loudest applause is reserved for the more than two dozen veterans of Bravo Company seated immediately to the president’s left.

Then the president invited us to dine at a reception in the White House’s East Wing by saying, “I hear the food’s pretty good here.” And the food was good, if you like fancy dining. I stayed toward the Oriental chicken skewers and beef medallions-on-a-stick. Like most of the other 100-plus guests, I initially go for the champagne until I see the bottle of Yuengling Light at the open bar. As a Yuengling – but not usually Yuengling Light – drinker, I realized that the opportunity to have my brand of beer at the White House comes along, by my count, twice in a lifetime. Once when I had my first glass and then five minutes later when I had my second glass. Because I don’t always drink light beer, but when I do, I pay for it with my tax dollars.

The White House ceremony marked the third time I’ve been at the same event with a president, fourth if you count fictional presidents. I was closer to Obama than I was to Clinton, further away than I was from Bush. And further away than I was from Josiah Bartlett – there’s a close up of the back of my head in the opening shot of “20 Hours In America,” the Season Four opener for “The West Wing.” Barack and Michelle met with Rose Sabo-Brown, Leslie’s widow, and George and Olga Sabo, Leslie’s brother and sister-in-law, and I heard second-hand that Michelle cried when she heard Leslie’s story. For me, though, the highlight was getting the chance to reacquaint myself with the Bravo Company veterans, some of whom came home only because of Leslie’s sacrifice. One of the best parts of Leslie Sabo’s story is that he helped bring his comrades together – the unit started having reunions about 10 years ago, after Mabb found Sabo’s file and began contacting the Bravo Company veterans. Mabb’s inquiries coincided with an expanded growth of the internet. Bravo Company veteran Rick Clanton set up a web site that reconnected the soldiers who gathered last week in Washington, D.C. I was at Bravo Company’s 2009 reunion and the interviews I did there formed a large part of my book. Most of them are retired now, having spent the last four decades working, living and raising children in a country that had little or no respect for their sacrifice. On Wednesday night, between the White House and Pentagon ceremonies Bravo Company held a ceremony of its own to recognize Sabo along with the other 17 men the unit lost between Jan. 1 and May 10, 1970. The other two ceremonies, featured – for the most part – politicians who never knew the men of whom they spoke. Wednesday night’s flag ceremony featured the words of men speaking of the friends and comrades, whom they knew and lost. Impressive men, all.

During both ceremonies, the military provided us with several escorts, none of whom were ranked lower than sergeant. My wife and I were talking to a couple of lieutenant colonels who said being named to the honor contingent was a coveted duty – even the uniformed military don’t meet the commander-in-chief every day. On Sept. 11, 2001, one of the lieutenant colonels was working in the Pentagon when it was clobbered by a terrorist-piloted passenger jet. The other one was stationed just outside the Pentagon. For the most part, they served a ceremonial purpose, a reminder of the reason all those people in suits were there. At the Pentagon ceremony, they also were human GPS, keeping we outsiders on the correct path. The Pentagon ceremony was, personally, a little more gratifying than the White House ceremony had been. In sequence, Army Chief of Staff Ray Odierno, Secretary of the Army John McHugh and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta referred to my book during their speeches. Panetta had the line of the day, though. He said that Leslie and George Sabo had good taste because, “both of them married Italian girls.” Rose Sabo-Brown is the former Rose Buccelli – her father, Carmen, earned a Silver Star during World War II. George married the former Olga Nocera. The thing Panetta didn’t realize when he said that is, if you live in Ellwood City and you refuse to consider going out with Italian girls, you’re cutting your dating pool at least in half. For some people, following Odierno, McHugh and Panetta might have been a rough trick. But George Sabo delivered a heartfelt speech about his family and his brother, and upstaged three of the U.S. Army’s highest-ranking officials. Sabo thanked a long list of people he credited for the Medal of Honor award – modesty prevents me from providing a complete list. But if you get to the end of the 45-minute ceremony linked above, you can hear what he said about me.

While my shoe is being repaired after the ceremony, I’m strolling around the Pentagon dining room with only one shoe on during a post-ceremony reception. After a few minutes, I went back to get the shoe, accompanied this time by a sergeant from the Army’s public affairs office. On the way back, she said, “So what’s your connection to the Sabo family?” “I wrote Leslie Sabo’s biography.” “Oh,” she said. “You’re Eric Poole.” A few minutes later, a defense department employee entered the dining hall with an armload of my books, which were distributed to members of the Sabo families. Two of those copies were autographed by the President, Gen. Odierno and Army Secretary McHugh and distributed to Rose Sabo-Brown and George Sabo. Seeing that was really cool, but one thing occurred to me – those might be the only two books in existence whose value would decrease if they were signed by the author.

Blast from the past

This video has making the rounds on Facebook this week. The video's timestamp reads 2009, but it actually happened in 2006, because that was when I wrote this in the Ellwood City Ledger:


How would you like to be Jim Johnson? How would you like to be the basketball coach who let the best shooter on the team sit on the bench, wearing a shirt and tie, for three years, until finally turning him loose in the last home game of his senior year.

In Johnson’s defense, Jason McElwain didn’t look like a basketball player. In a big man’s sport, he stands a Lilliputian 5-foot-6, not even tall enough to make the Athena High School junior varsity team in Greece, N.Y.

And he’s autistic.

But he’s also the kind of kid who, for three years as team manager, did everything Johnson asked of him.

“He is such a great help and is well-liked by everyone on the team,” Johnson told the Associated Press.

So, as a reward, Johnson gave the kid a uniform for the last home game of his high school career.

By far, the best thing about high school basketball is that, on nearly every team, there is a kid who sits on the end of his team’s bench, working hard every day in practice, without the guarantee of glory on game night.

But as soon as the home team goes up by 20 points, the crowd begins to chant his name, calling for the last man to get into the game.

On Feb. 15, for the Trojans’ game against Spencerport, Jason McElwain was that kid, with students waving signs reading “J-MAC” in his honor. Johnson said he hoped to get the senior manager into his first game action, but with a playoff berth on the line, he had to worry about winning the game first.

Of course, winning the game might have been easier if Johnson had put McElwain in the game earlier, but he had no way of knowing his student manager would put on a shooting clinic.

With four minutes left in the contest, and a Trojans’ victory in hand, Johnson gave the crowd what it had asked for. After missing a long-range shot and a layup, McElwain went on the kind of tear that would have had Kobe Bryant shaking his head in wonder.

McElwain drained seven of his next nine shots – including an even half-dozen three-pointers – to finish with 20 points in Greece’s 79-43 victory. He had part of his foot over the line on one of his field goals.

Is it dark in here or did someone just shoot the lights out?

It’s possible that McElwain’s teammates were feeding him. And it’s equally possible that Spencerport decided to leave him open in a game that already had been decided.

But, even if that’s true, it’s not as if any of that would have diminished what McElwain did. If you think it’s easy to hit an open three-pointer, head on down to the Lincoln High School gym Monday and try to hit seven-of-nine from your favorite spot beyond the arc – you’re allowed to step on the stripe once.

You could try that for 100 years and not drain seven before missing three, even on an empty court. Now imagine doing it as a high school senior in front of a crowd of hundreds chanting your name in your very first varsity appearance. You’re likely to be throwing up nothing but airballs.

And your dinner.

After establishing himself as the straightest shooter in high school basketball, McElwain got a ride off the court on the shoulders of his teammates.

Then, the young man who didn’t talk until he was 5 did a creditable Dick Vitale impression.

“I ended my career on the right note,” he told the Associated Press. “I was hotter than a pistol.”

Little did Jim Johnson know 10 days ago that he would end up as the not-so-evil villain in McElwain’s Cinderella saga by keeping a marksman on the bench for three years.

But that’s not so bad. After all, not everybody gets to be a character in a fairy tale, even as the stepcoach.

For Jason McElwain, it must be even better. Even though he’s back in his suit and tie as his teammates head into the playoffs tonight, he’ll never again be the autistic kid at the bench’s end.

From now on, he’ll be known as just about the hottest hand high school basketball has ever seen, if only for one night.

The empty places

This column originally ran Sept. 28, 2006, in the Ellwood City Ledger.

There is something missing from the picture of New York Athletic Club's 2005 rugby team, but you might not immediately notice it.

Kind of like the void in New York City's skyline.

In Europe, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia, it's possible to make a handsome living playing rugby and get face time before the first commercial on overseas equivalents of "Sportscenter."

But in the United States, the sport is almost entirely amateur, so members of the rugby brotherhood in this country look out for one another. They lift furniture for teammates on moving day and bend elbows together at the local tavern.

They help their buddies find jobs, which is why Sean Lugano, Mark Ludvigsen and Brent Woodall were in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, working at the investment firm of Keefe, Bruyette and Woods.

"They were all looking out for each other." said Mike Tolkin, coach of NYAC's rugby team, also called Winged Foot.

I saw Lugano play in the last important match of his life, the U.S. 2001 Division I club championship. Based on its second-place national finish that year, NYAC won promotion to USA Rugby Super League, the sport's highest level in this country.

Lugano was a rugged and scrappy player, but for a scrum half, that's more a job description than a character assessment. Scrum halves are the rugby equivalent of a quarterback, only tougher, and few were better at it than Lugano, an All-American in college.

"He was definitely the heart and soul of this team," Tolkin said.

On that day five years ago when terrorists flew United Airlines Flight 175 almost right through the Keefe, Bruyette and Woods office windows, it tore the heart and soul out of Winged Foot.

It also erased a big piece of the club's past and its potential.

Ludvigsen, a former NYAC standout, went on to become the club chairman. Tolkin said he was one of the team's most effective recruiters because of his personality.

"He was the nicest guy there was," the coach said. "I can't remember him ever speaking badly of anyone."

Tolkin said Woodall was probably the best athlete ever to play for Winged Foot, where he was taking on his third athletic pursuit, and he competed at a high level in all three. He was a tight end for the University of California and reached the high minors in the Chicago Cubs system.

But rugby wasn't the only thing in his life. Woodall’s wife, Tracey, was pregnant with their first child.

In 2001, NYAC's first Super League season, it lost a spate of close matches in situations when just having some heart and soul might have been enough to turn defeat into victory.

Improbably though, Winged Foot managed to soar from the ashes of Ground Zero. The 2005 team – the one in that picture – won the USA Rugby Super League championship.

Tolkin said the team couldn't have claimed this country's biggest rugby prize without Lugano, Ludvigsen and Woodall, although that's exactly what happened.

Lugano's brother Mike played on the championship team. For years, the two lined up not far from each other in NYAC's backline. Tolkin said losing a brother was difficult for Mike Lugano.

But playing rugby means you're never an only child.

During matches, rugby players don't go anywhere alone. They are taught to run alongside the ballcarrier, ready to take a pass or protect him after the tackle. It's called support, and when a rugby player is in trouble, he knows to run toward his support. The same principle applies off the pitch.

"From a guy breaking up with his girlfriend to a house burning down to 9-11, you need support and rugby players have always been a part of that," Tolkin said.

Winged Foot memorializes its lost brothers Saturday with its annual Remembrance Cup tournament, but the greatest memories are in the things that weren't buried when the towers fell. For Woodall, it's a daughter he'll never see. For Ludvigsen, it's the friends he'll never again see. For Lugano, it's a trophy he will never hold.

And without them, there's a championship picture that will never be complete.

Amateur sports = hypocrisy

This article appeared originally Dec. 30, 2010, in the Ellwood City Ledger, and was purged from the paper's internet archives when it upgraded its website.

Early in the last century, there was little doubt that Jack Kelly was the greatest rower of his day. He won two Olympic gold medals and would have bagged more hardware had the 1916 Olympics not been pre-empted for World War I.

But Kelly was prohibited from entering one of the world's most prestigious rowing events - the Diamond Sculls in England - because his club had been accused of professionalism and also that, as a bricklayer, his work amounted to training.

Like the Olympic Games in those days, the Diamond Sculls was strictly for amateurs only, although the latter event was even more fiercely anti-professional. But the idea behind both was to enable the upper crust to participate in competition apart from the great unwashed.

In short, Jack Kelly's blood hue was tested and found not to have been blue enough to compete in the Diamond Sculls.

That turned out to be comically ironic when the bricklayer's daughter joined the ranks of European royalty as Her Serene Highness the Princess of Monaco - nee Grace Kelly.

As a business all amateur athletics is exploitative, elitist and corrupt because it's predicated on depriving the athletes of any financial benefit from their efforts. And the Olympic Games' history of hypocrisy is now repeating itself with NCAA football and basketball.

The modern Olympics were created in the late 1800s by the French Baron de Coubertin, whose intention was to establish the games as a pushback against professionalism in soccer, horse racing, baseball and boxing.

Initially,the Olympics' amateur rules were so restrictive that physical education teachers were deemed professional athletes and thus ineligible to participate. Coubertin's vision - he was a baron for goodness sake - was to limit the games only to those who could train long enough and hard enough to become an elite athlete without getting paid.

In other words, the idle rich.

As the Olympic Games became increasingly popular and generated huge profits for its promoters, that vision proved unsustainable. Ultimately, the lords of the Olympics discovered what everyone else knew - that letting athletes make money is infinitely more honest than amateurism.

Today, when people long for the days of amateur sports in the Olympics, what they're really nostalgic for is a system rife with hypocrisy that was rigged in favor of state-sponsored Eastern Bloc stars and the already wealthy.

A similar hypocrisy exists in major-college football and men's basketball, where athletes are getting punished for the same things that coaches and administrators do as routine.

Ex-USC running back Reggie Bush had to return his Heisman Trophy because he signed with an agent while still in college.

Ohio State University quarterback Terrelle Pryor is looking at sitting out five games next season after selling memorabilia that he received for prior bowl appearances.

Let me repeat that for you. Pryor and four of his Buckeyes teammates could be suspended for selling their own stuff. Of course, they'll be allowed to play a couple of days hence in the Cotton Bowl, so they can help generate income for the NCAA and its hangers-on.

The NCAA's rules, which seem designed solely to keep athletes from getting their hands on the great wodges of cash that goes to everyone else involved with college sports, foster corruption by driving players to seek under-the-table income.

Sometimes integrity is best served not by punishing corruption, but by making it legal. The International Olympic Committee learned that lesson. Now it's the NCAA's turn.

Lost "Brother" embodied military's virtues

This column appeared originally on Jan. 27 in the Ellwood City Ledger, but was never posted on the paper's website due to an editorial oversight.

There’s a scene in the first episode of “Band of Brothers” where Richard Winters where he reprimands another officer, Lynn “Buck” Compton, for gambling with the enlisted men.

Compton, who would one day lead the prosecution Sirhan Sirhan for the assassination of Robert Kennedy, thinks Winters – a religious tea-totaling non-gambler – is objecting on moral grounds. But that’s not the case.

“What if you’d won?” Winters asks, which temporarily baffles Compton. “Don’t ever put yourself in a position to take anything from these men.”

Winters, who died Jan. 2 just three weeks short of his 93rd birthday, distinguished himself as a young man during World War II. But fame found him late in life when he wound up as the hero of Ambrose’s book, “Band of Brothers,” and the follow-on Emmy-award-winning television miniseries of the same title.

In the anecdote above, Winters demonstrates a concept known to Christians as servant leadership – exemplified by Jesus when he washed the feet of his apostles.

During the invasion of Normandy, as depicted in the book and on TV, Winters led a force of 13 men in a successful assault on an artillery emplacement that was targeting American troops landing in the Normandy Utah sector. The guns were defended by 50 entrenched German paratroopers.

Earlier that day, Winters had taken command of Easy Company – of 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division – because the plane that was to have dropped the company commander in Normandy was shot down, and everyone on board was killed.

Winters received the Distinguished Service Cross, the U.S. military’s second-highest award, for combat valor for leading the attack. It’s probably not a coincidence that, going by the words of those who served under his command, he was the most widely respected of the Band of Brothers.

But where it relates to Winters, “Band of Brothers” wasn’t just a story of one exceptional soldier, but of a philosophy that has yielded an exceptional military. It wasn’t many years before World War II that the world’s armies parceled out officer’s status based on noble title.

It wasn’t uncommon, for example, command of a regiment to fall upon the man who provided the funds to outfit that regiment, which produced a mentality of entitlement on the part of military leadership.

In his book, Ambrose sets up Easy Company’s World War II battles as not just a clash of military forces, but one of systems, of American democracy and meritocracy against European tradition and aristocracy.

Winters matched wits and guts against German officers who won their commissions in many cases because their grandfathers happened to be barons. The German infantry were exhorted to fight for their country and social betters, while their American counterparts were compelled to battle for their comrades.

And the American system that Winters embodied proved superior, Ambrose wrote in summing up the 101st Airborne Division's heroic stand at Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge.

“It was a test of arms, will, and national systems, matching the best the Nazis had with the best the Americans had, with all the advantages on the German side … Democracy proved better able to produce young men who could be made into superb soldiers than Nazi Germany.”

A long time ago, Winters was one of those young men produced by that system. And the legacy of those young men is that in America, a nation created from the rejects of those European aristocracies, the American armed services are exceptional in large part because it embraces command the same way Winters did – as an obligation and a duty rather than a privilege to be exploited.

Eric Poole can be reached online at epoole@ellwoodcityledger.com

The simple-mindedness of Bryan Fischer

"Ironically in war, an enterprise more readily associated with killing, Medals of Honor are given more often for saving lives than for taking them."

"... the strongest, most powerful thing a man can do in this world is not to kill or destroy, but to sacrifice."

The first of those two quotes is from page 26 of my book, Forgotten Honor and the second one is the book's closing lines, on page 207.

And they're both directed at Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association, who wrote an article titled "The Feminization of the Medal of Honor," last week on the AFA's website.

In the article, he refers to last week's Medal of Honor award to Sgt. Salvatore Giunta, who was recognized for his above-and-beyond-the-call-of-duty efforts to save the lives of his comrades during an ambush in Afghanistan. Fischer claimed that Medals of Honor were once awarded for rushing the enemy position at places like the "Pointe Do Hoc" during the D-Day invasion of Normandy during World War II.

A couple of problems with that, Bryan. First, it's Pointe du Hoc. Second, none of the Army Rangers who scaled Pointe du Hoc received the Medal of Honor. Other than that though, you got it completely right.

In the face of criticism both from the media and from the choir of commenters he usually preaches to in his AFA column, Fischer said his words were twisted out of context, that Giunta deserved the Medal of Honor and he was merely pointing out that we no longer honor the kind of "rush the enemy" act that we did once.

OK, then let's use Fischer's words against him: "We rightly honor those who give up their lives to save their comrades. It’s about time we started also honoring those who kill bad guys."

He even revives Gen. George Patton's tired old saw - "You don't win wars by dying for your country. You win wars by making the other bastard die for his."

My response to that, from page 207 of Forgotten Honor, is that "You win wars by preventing you comrades from dying for their (country)."

I know a little bit more about this subject than Mr. Fischer does, primarily from researching my book, a biography of Sgt. Leslie Sabo Jr., who was killed May 10, 1970, in Cambodia during the Vietnam War. Sabo was credited with saving the lives of more than 50 of his fellow soldiers and was killed while providing covering fire for a medical evacuation helicopter lifting two wounded soldiers off the battlefield.

And Fischer is wrong. It IS more important to protect your comrades than it is to kill the bad guys - especially today, because this war is no longer an exercise where one group of heavily-armed men attacks an emplacements that are defended by other heavily-armed men.

The current war is marked by engagements where the enemy strikes quickly in ambush then breaks off before they can be routed by the Americans' superior training, firepower and technology.

But even in the wars to which Fischer looks back nostalgically when he talks about the Medal of Honor's "Feminization," heroism isn't about killing the enemy. It's about defending your friends.

Fischer needs to do what I did - crack a history book or two.

Sunny Sundays a memory to cherish

(From the Sept. 9, 2010, Ellwood City Ledger)

From the gorge bottom, about 40 or so feet below Breakneck Bridge, the sun doesn’t shine so much as stab golden shafts through the trees, polka-dotting the rocks and stream at our feet.

My son sees those sun-spotted rocks piled atop one another and clambers up while pretending to be a dinosaur, which sends me into a spasm of worry.

He doesn’t read the newspaper yet, so he’s not aware of McConnells Mill State Park’s history as a hazard to the imprudent. A warning on the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources website urges hikers in the park to keep to the marked trails.

The words “Your life may depend on it” aren’t part of the warning but including that phrase wouldn’t be alarmist in any way. Every year, a handful of people, either by accident or carelessness, wind up falling over one of the sheer rock faces that lie within feet of the park’s trails.

Last May, a Butler County man fell to his death in the park while trying to rescue another hiker who had stumbled and sustained a severe injury.

My son, enraptured with a sense of wonderment and oblivious to the possible danger, storms across the rocks bellowing a T-rex roar until I reel him in, even while admiring his sense of adventure.

“Come be a dinosaur over here on the path,” I say.

We’re coming up on the first anniversary of what was one of the best days in my life, on the second Sunday of last September. That afternoon, totally on a whim, I decided to blow off the Steelers game and take my son for a walk in the woods.

Well, maybe not totally on a whim. By this time of year, we’re all keenly aware that the number of beautiful weekend days remaining before winter is limited.

And while it’s impossible to say when the brilliantly sunny Sunday afternoons will run out, by this time of year, each one could be the last. So, as much as I like a good football game, I knew there would be another one next week and the week after that.

Even today, walks like this remind me of my own childhood, when I followed my grandfather and cousins through the woods where I picked up small smooth rocks and acorns, and put them in my pocket for a collection that my mom would toss out, just the way my son does today.

My grandfather – a World War I veteran – is long gone now, but I can still remember him taking us into those woods to teach us the virtues of spending sunny days underneath a leafy canopy.

The terrain in McConnells Mill is more rugged than in the woods where I grew up about 60 miles south and east of here. McConnells Mill and nearby Moraine state parks mark the southernmost glacial advance about a million years ago during the last ice age.

Those walls of ice carved out gorges and shoved massive rocks while lurching southward by a few feet every year until they reached the outskirts of present-day Ellwood City, then retreated, leaving behind the formations where my son can pretend to be a dinosaur.

I was probably about the same age then as my son is now, so maybe he’ll remember this himself some day. Maybe then, he’ll understand why that sunny Sunday afternoon last year was one of the best days of my life.

And maybe that memory will make it one of the best days of his life too.