Merry Christmas from Phil Campana
Ashley, Caroline, Michael, Emily, and Grandpa Phillip at a park near Nashville, TN, April 1, 2021 (no foolin’!)
Another year of the pandemic, but unlike last year, I did not have another bout of SARS-CoV-2. Unfortunately, son-in-law, Douglas picked up the virus from his school just before Halloween, and Lisa followed shortly thereafter. They have both fully recovered, but Douglas did have to spend a few days in the hospital.
Douglas gets top billing this year because he received his Ph.D. in leadership, and shortly thereafter he was offered a job teaching math and science at Immaculata Classical Academy in Louisville, KY. For the past two or three years, Douglas has kept it a secret that he was even working on a Ph.D., and apparently Lisa was the only one in the family who knew what he was up to. Since his initials are DOC, we can congratulate DOC DOC!
Grandson Thomas has spent Fall Semester at the Franciscan University campus in Gaming, Austria. Despite European health restrictions, he was able to travel with the other university students to Assisi and Rome, and then on his own to Gothenburg, Sweden. He and his friends spent a few weekends in Vienna. If it had not been for the pandemic, he might have been able to visit a few more places, but it was a great experience for him anyway, and we are all glad that he is safely home in Kentucky.
Lisa is in her second year teaching grades 4-6 at Chi Rho Classical Academy in Danville, a school she and a friend started last year. They had a very successful first year, and with the addition of pre-Kindergarten this year, enrollment is growing.
Michael is in his second year as a librarian at Mark Twain Middle School in Fairfax, VA. This past summer he and Ashley took their daughters on a grand hiking trip out West to national parks, mostly in Colorado and Utah. They bought a very nice trailer for the trip and were able to sell it when they returned. From their description of the trip and from the beautiful photos that they posted on Facebook, it was clear that everyone enjoyed the trip immensely.
Ashley moved to a different job within her business consulting firm (Booz-Allen) and continues her second occupation as a personal health coach.
Caroline (11) and Emily (9) are glad to be back in school in person. Both of them musical, artistic, athletic, and doing well academically.
Last Christmas Michael and Ashley gave me a year’s subscription to StoryWorth, a website that is designed to elicit stories from a parent or grandparent. The website has hundreds of questions from which the child or grandchild can choose, for example, “What was your mother or father like when you were a child?” or “What was your first job.” I have been receiving one question (chosen by Michael) per week and have written about 40 stories. I need to finish within the next few weeks. Then StoryWorth prints the stories and my accompanying photos in a book. I told Lisa and Michael that my only worry was that I was afraid my DeLorean would run out of gas before I got back to the present, and with the current price of gas . . .!
In June I was contacted by the archivist at Tenn. Tech U., looking for any documents from my 33 years as chairman of the Dept. of Foreign Languages. I had rescued thousands of documents when my successor cleaned house, and I spent most of the past five months sorting, culling, and cataloging the files. I delivered two banker’s boxes of files on Dec. 1, along with a 100,000+ word commentary. Oh, what fun it is to write in my one house without a sleigh! On that note, as always, I wish you health and happiness in 2022 and beyond.