John and Becky – A Love Story
John grew up outside of St. Louis, Missouri in a country schoolhouse his parents converted into a rural home. Becky grew up in Ottawa, Kansas, a small farming community southwest of Kansas City. John and Becky met each other in the summer of 1969. He had just graduated high school, she had just finished her first year of college. They were in Wichita with summer jobs working for the same company selling encyclopedias door to door. While plying their wares over the course of the summer, their traveling band of book peddlers set up shop in motels throughout Kansas, Colorado and Wyoming. By summer’s end they were in love but went their separate ways, he to Lawrence and she to Emporia, in pursuit of higher education. Love, however, prevailed and they got married in the summer of 1971. Becky left college and went to work so John could finish college, but then he tricked her by going to law school and she had to work three more years. In 1976 Becky became pregnant, John graduated from law school and passed the bar, they moved to Iola, Kansas, Stephen was born, and John won a hard-fought election to become County Attorney. He launched his legal career battling crime as a prosecuting attorney while also building a private practice. In 1979 Kimberly was born. In 1982 they moved back to Lawrence, taking the children with them. John hung out his shingle and Becky went back to work. The children grew up and moved to California. Becky finally retired from work in 2015. John took his shingle down in 2021 but continues to work some. Throughout it all, they remained madly in love, a condition that persists to this day.
So It Goes
I was logged in on the Chappell Family Blog to take care of some WordPress updates. The administrative “Dashboard” has sections with information that might interest an administrator. One of them is “Site Health Status” and I was gratified to see “Great job! Your site currently passes all site health checks.” I don’t recall ever seeing that before. There are usually at least a couple of “fails”, although one is usually about the absence of a recommended PHP module — something beyond my control.
Moving on down the Dashboard I saw various site statistics, such as total number of posts in the blog (248 – is that all?) and total number of comments (271 – that many?). For a few moments I pondered the greater number of comments than posts. Moving on, there were dates and titles of “Recently Published” posts. It listed five, dated from 10/10/2023 to 09/14/2022. This was followed by “Recent Comments”, showing the first line or two of the most recent five comments. They were dated from 05/07/2023 to 09/15/2010. 2010? Yes, five comments in about 13 years. Well, it’s not a very big family, and I suppose the posts haven’t been what anybody would describe as earth-shaking.
So it goes.
Indy 500
May 27, 2024
Life, Memory Lane, News
Comments Off on Indy 500
John Chappell
What an incredible Indy 500 today! It was rain delayed a few hours but they got it done before deadline and along the way it was one of the most intense nail-biting races I’ve seen in years. Maybe it wasn’t really any better than previous races and my impression was just the result of a culmination of unrelated things in my life (or lack thereof). I think it was the race, though. The announcers were hootin’ and hollerin’, especially during the last 20 laps. Also, I think it’s the first time I ever saw a second-place driver so emotionally crushed that he actually broke down in tears, for quite a spell, on camera. I could understand. It was intense for me, too, and I only spent the race settin’ in my armchair watchin’ it on the TV, not jockeying at 215 m.p.h. at close quarters with a dozen other racers hell-bent on beating me.
I have more important and meaningful things to write about, including some pictures, but I don’t have enough time. Nevertheless, I felt compelled to post something, and a blurb about Indy is the only thing I can squeeze out of the little block of time available at the moment. Hopefully, before it gets to be several more months of nothing, I’ll get something more important and meaningful posted, including pictures.
indyracing