Columns

What are you aiming for? Do you know? Research results show over 95 percent of people do not have clear-cut goals. When we get up in the morning and have nothing to aim for, odds are we will reach our destination.

The past year gave us many opportunities to evaluate and change the way we do things at the Terrell Chamber of Commerce. For instance, the July 4th celebration offered new attractions and a new location. After decades of hosting fireworks at Ben Gill Park, we relocated to Terrell Municipal Airport and added hot air balloons to the mix.

We are told that we are what we think. Is that realistic? If I think I am a great player, does it make me one? Of course, the answer is no but I think life is remarkably like an echo. You get back what you put in.

The Texas Legislature convened in special session last Thursday and GOP legislators introduced a fresh set of voting bills after Democrats blocked an earlier attempt during the regular session by walking out in May, preventing a quorum.

July 18: Journey of Hope – The Ability Experience will be stopping in Terrell as part of their 59-day, 3,600 mile cross-country journey from Santa Barbara, CA to Washington, D.C. July 18: Trail of Hope – Kaufman County will hold its Trail of Hope: Drive Thru Luminaria Ceremony from 9-10 p.m.

Thinkers disagree on almost everything. But one thing most deep thinkers agree on is the fact, people become what they think about. With football season about to begin, I guarantee you many players are thinking of a district and state championship season.

On this day in 1865, Greenville S. Dowell, a Virginia native born in 1822, and a group of local physicians formed the Galveston Medical Society. A few months later, in November, the trustees of Soule University organized Galveston Medical College, the first medical school in Texas, and Dowell was appointed professor of anatomy; he later served as professor of surgery and as dean of the college. The same year Dowell began making plans to publish the first medical periodical in Texas, the Galveston Medical Journal, which began publication in January 1866. When Soule University closed Galveston Medical College in 1873, Dowell and J. M. Callaway founded Texas Medical College and Hospital, where Dowell continued to teach surgery until his death in 1881.

My dad was born in 1921, in Panola County, Texas. He was the youngest of nine children, born into a sharecropper family. He grew up chopping, hoeing, and picking cotton. His dad died when he was 15 and as one of the few left at home, he took care of and helped provide for his mother. In 1942 he was invited by his Uncle Sam to see the world, and after his basic training spent until 1946 in the Pacific Theater where he learned to climb poles and string wire as a member of Company C, 99th Signal Battalion.

A year ago, the economy had begun to stabilize after two months of cataclysmic decline due to COVID-19 and the massive response. Almost overnight, millions of jobs disappeared, and an economy in the midst of a record-shattering expansion suddenly went into free fall.

There were times in the last year or so that I thought we were really having to sacrifice due to what was going on around us with the pandemic. Businesses closed down, no travel, difficult to find what you needed for your home. Of course, you follow that up with the snowstorm to end all snowstorms. The times were certainly stressful and, yes, there were sacrifices that had to be made. Who can forget the search we all made for toilet paper? Looking back, I have to ask was it really sacrifice or an inconvenience?