Dolph

Did a little stand-up for a Serve Our Youth fundraiser last Friday night. I was the opening act for a guy from Des Moines by the name of Dolph Pulliam who was on the Drake basketball team when they went to the final four in the sixties, and then spent about twenty years as a newscaster in Des Moines for KCCI channel 8. Before he took the stage, I made sure to relate my story about watching him interview my great uncle Johnny at the Iowa State Fair and told him it was the biggest thing that'd ever happened to our family up to that point. He seemed pretty amused at that.

The guy is an amazing speaker. Born in Mississippi with eight (I think) other siblings, his parents died in a car wreck when he was young. He moved to Indiana with an aunt, got into basketball, and the rest is history. It was one of the best talks I've heard in a long time. He was down to earth, funny, and inspiring. The kind of guy who makes me wish I was a far better speaker.

Brother-in-law Kyle went with me to the dinner/fundraiser since Andrea was busy with some youth stuff. The meal was fantastic, and we had a pretty good time entertaining one another. I learned that Kyle is a praise band drummer that secretly loathes most of the music he has to play. I'd have to agree on a lot of points, but he's also a pretty stinking good musician and songwriter when he puts his mind to it, and hopefully it will inspire him to write some of his own music.

I travel to Michigan this weekend to speak at a Youth Rally at Gunn Lake Community Church. Mark Elgersma's riding along with me, and I'm expecting it to be a pretty good time. Hopefully Dolph will have inspired me a bit to bring my own game up a notch.

Till next time,

Jason

And yeah, I should try to take a camera along to finally get some pictures up on this blog.