As a parent of young children, I struggle to even think about this kind of tragedy.  The birth of my two children obliterated my tolerance for stories about children of any age being killed, abused or abandoned.  And so, this horrific killing deeply saddens my soul.

But America did not stop when the killer unleashed his sorrow.  There is no diminishing the loss of life, the sorrow, grief and emptiness that is so real and vivid.  For those directly affected by the tragedy the pain may diminish someday but it will never truly be gone.  Yet, America did not stop.  Life did not stop.  Everything else that happened that week took a back seat to those events, but things did happen.  The rest of the week happened.  Sad things happened.  Happy things happened.

For me, that very day will always be remembered for one of the most beautiful moments I have ever witnessed.  That evening, as my wife and I were preparing the kids for bed, smothering them with kisses and silently thanking God that they were safe and sound in our home, one of those moments you wait your whole life to experience happened.  Our son took his first steps.  Three quick, tiny little steps that covered no more than a foot of total distance, traveled with his arms flailing out for balance, his eyes opened wide in surprise and his mouth a giant grin of success.  Three steps and he fell into my arms for another round of kisses and congratulatory exclamations worthy of a Nobel prize.

Moments later, he did it again only this time he fell into my wife’s waiting arms instead of mine.  The day was thus sealed as one of the handful of “best days you can imagine” and I spent the rest of the week telling all of my friends and co-workers about my son’s triumph as if he had in fact done something unique and worthy of a Nobel prize.  Of course, your babies first steps are important and should be lauded as such even if your non-parent friends are annoyed or bored by the topic. 

I’m not sure if it is fair or right that a week filled with so much tragedy for others could be so joyous for myself.  But I do know that is the way life tends to be.  The world marches on, despite all of the terrible things we experience and do to each other on a day-to-day basis.  In the midst of unspeakable darkness for some, bright shining moments happen for others.

At the end of the very same week, my wife and I attended a wedding for one of her friends from law school.  It was a beautiful affair held in an impressive church.  I was touched by the music of the pipe organ, the bride and groom’s uncontained smiles and the charming sound of church bells sounding off as guests spilled out of the church and headed to the reception. 

The reception took place in a dining area 69 floors above the city of Dallas.  With the city lights shining at our feet we dined and enjoyed the happy moment with the wedding couple’s family and friends.  The bride was a site to see.  Beautiful and glowing with almost uncontainable joy and confidence she was a delight to watch as she made her way through the party, greeting guests and performing the traditional duties of first dances, toasts, cake cutting and assorted scheduled mini-events.

The bride, like myself, is a graduate of Texas A&M University.  I don’t know her nearly as well as my wife knows her, but most Aggies seem to think we are all bonded together in some way.  And so as I enjoyed the reception and watched the bride and groom experience one of the most beautiful and memorable days of their respective lives, I was reminded of the fact that the very same night was the annual Texas A&M tradition called Aggie Muster.  Once a year in College Station, Texas and in meeting halls and rooms all across the world, Aggies gather to remember Texas A&M students and former students who have died in the past year.

I haven’t attended Muster in a while but it remains to me as one of the two most significant traditions of Texas A&M.  I hold dear the memory of one particular Aggie Muster that I attended on campus when I was still a student.  A friend from my freshman year, Juan, had passed away the previous summer.  My connection to him had been distant and so I didn’t know any of his friends.  But he had been, for a short time, a good friend to me.  It was the type of friendship that is so common when you attend college at a large school.  You meet somebody due to happenstance and for a semester or two they are an important friend in your life.  And then schedules change, somebody moves to another dorm or off-campus, degrees are switched and you stop crossing paths.  Your core friendships survive those changes.  But a lot of friendships in college are built on happenstance.  Good people just come and go.  It is part of living on a campus with fifty thousand other students.

I attended Muster that year alone.  None of my current friends had known Juan and I didn’t know his other friends.  It was important to me to be there.  I’m not sure non-Aggies can understand the emotional power of Muster.  Candles are lit to remember those who have passed.  And then readers begin to call out the names of Aggies who have passed in the last year.  The names are read in order of class year, starting with the most recent, going back to graduating class after graduating class.  On campus, the class celebrating their 50th anniversary is honored and the surviving members are in attendance.  In my time at A&M, this meant classes from the early 40’s.  The World War II generation.  A hallowed group in America.  You feel the power in the room from beginning to end.

As each name is read, anyone in attendance who was a friend or family member calls out “Here!” in remembrance of their life and spirit.  I’m sure you can read more eloquent and precise descriptions of this tradition, its history and significance in other places.  But I can tell you that day I learned that until you’ve called “Here!” for a fellow Aggie, you’ve never fully experienced the power of Aggie Muster.

When Juan’s name was called, somehow I managed to not choke up.  I managed to call out “Here!” I’m not exactly sure how loud I said it.  Maybe I screamed it out.  It may have only been loud enough for the people sitting next to me to hear.  Former U.S. President George H. Bush was in attendance that day and I’d like to believe he could hear me all the way across the arena.

I’m always sad when I think of Juan.  He was brilliant and charming.  He was studying for an engineering degree.  He had graduated high school in just three years and seemed to be on his way for great things.  Women loved him, or at least they did based on the stories he told which was good enough for us to be jealous of him.  It just seemed so unfair that he never got the chance to finish his degree and make his mark on the world.

But as I called out “Here!” on his behalf, I knew that he had in fact made his mark on the world.  He had been a friend to me and I was still here to carry on and to keep a small bit of him with me always.  Yet, calling out on his behalf, I did not erase his family’s pain.  That is a personal burden that no human can remove from a parent and I pray that God has since given his family some peace.  Aggie Muster is a time of healing and remembrance.  A time for the body of Aggies as a whole to administer to itself.  It is a time of group healing and celebration of the individuals that empower the whole.

And so, all these years later, I find myself on the day of Aggie Muster at a wedding of another Aggie.  The party is picking up.  The happy couple has been united before God.  I’m tired and it is time for us to go home and check on our babies.  That same night, in those meeting halls all over the world, Aggies have gathered and called out “Here!” for those who have recently passed. 

This eventful week is over at last.  My son has learned to walk.  My daughter has learned to give the sweetest kisses on my forehead.

The week began.  The week ended.  Lives were forever changed.  But lives continue.  America continues.  The world continues.

And for those innocent souls that were taken from us we call out… Here!

In a week of tragedy life continues on.  My son takes his first steps, a good friend gets married and an Aggie tradition continues.

I’ve very excited about this move.  Obviously, there is a new look to HomeTexas.Org.  Hopefully, the new look is an improvement over the old site which just never looked quite right.  This new site is, not surprisingly, not really done yet.  But it was time to make the move.  You may see a few things slowly evolve on this site.  So, don’t be surprised if some urls change or UI elements move around.

You will find a complete archive of the old site still in place.  For example, the original blog is still available at http://www.hometexas.org/journal/

Please Enjoy.

HomeTexas.Org has a new home and a new web engine.  Look for more information and changes soon.

A Better Life

Not too long ago a good friend of mine, Scott, encountered a perfect example at Nissan of the type of thinking that destroys customer service.  He took his beloved Nissan 350Z to the dealership to get some work done and caught a ride on the “courtesy van” to work.

Sounds good right?  There was a day, not so long ago, where it was totally up to the customer to find a way home when they dropped their automobile off for maintenance.  Today, most dealerships provide some sort of limited drop-off service for their customers.

Scott’s ride to work starts off okay, until he notices that the driver is going way out of his way to drop off the first customer and passing the destinations of himself and other riders.  Low and behold, the first passenger dropped off is a Nissan employee at Nissan’s offices. The driver then returns to the normal delivery area and begins dropping off the other riders.

Scott, annoyed and curious, questions the driver about going so far out of the way to drop off that passenger before dropping off the other passengers in a more logical order.  The driver informs him that it is Nissan’s policy to take Nissan employees to work first since “they have to be there by 8 AM.”

I applaud Scott for not choking somebody then as he is finally dropped off at his office a good deal after 8 AM.

He had some good questions but he knew the driver was not the one to blame.  Why is it more important for a Nissan employee to get to the office by 8 AM than for a Nissan customer to get to work by 8 AM?  Wouldn’t it be the other way around?  Wouldn’t the corporation have more tolerance for employees being late if it was done to ensure that their customers got to work on-time and happy?

It is this kind of corporate thinking that plagues so many businesses today.  They were so close to getting it right, but couldn’t get past their own internal politics to put a winning customer service model in action.

I can totally see how they came to that policy.  I imagine one day a Nissan employee was late to work and his/her boss got upset.  The employee explained that he/she dropped their car off for service and the Nissan courtesy van was late getting to the office due to the distance from the dealership to the offices.

This causes a chain of complaints and memo’s that eventually end up on the desk of somebody who wants the complaining to stop and who has enough power to get something done about it.  Down comes the directive to the local dealership that Nissan employees are to dropped off first.  For that manager, the problem is solved and the complaints are done.

Of course, that person is too far removed from the dealership’s service department to see the effect it has on the company’s most valuable asset: their customers.

As a result of this policy an owner of Nissan’s flagship vehicle, the Nissan 350Z, concludes that he will never buy another Nissan again.  Of course, this wasn’t the only episode that lead Scott to that decision but it was one that clearly defined Nissan’s misplaced customer service model.  Even worse for Nissan, this is a customer who loves cars and loves to talk about cars.  So now, he has retold this story to numerous friends and coworkers and every time one of these “Nissan experience” stories comes up he concludes it by explaining how he will never by from Nissan again.

I’ll leave you with one final counter-point to chew on.  This kind of experience has convinced my friend that the only way to get good service on a car is to buy from a higher-end dealer.  There will be no more Nissan’s, Toyota’s or Honda’s and certainly no American car dealers for Scott.  He has concluded that he must move up to Infiniti, Acura and Lexus dealerships to get the type of customer service he deserves.  The catch is that these dealerships are all owned by the same major auto makers.  Infiniti is just another arm of Nissan, Acura of Honda etc.  Has Scott just fallen for a clever plan to drive him towards more expensive vehicles?  Is Nissan’s poor customer service just part of a master plan to drive customers on the economic borderline to a class of cars they would not normally purchase?

Is Nissan really that clever and cheap to purposefully make bad customer service decisions at one brand level to drive buyers to a higher level knowing that those that can not afford the next class of car will just put up with the less-than-stellar treatment?

I don’t think I’m ready to give them that much credit, although I don’t doubt that some car makers would make decisions like that if given the choice.  I suspect that the lower-end auto brands simply don’t feel the need to put extra effort into thinking about customer service that much.  They are all about volume of sales and keeping costs down.  Only the high-end dealerships have the financial incentives to put a little extra time into customer service.

Sometimes you just need a little cowbell in your day.