1944 to 2004 & the decade ahead Throughout my Dad's life, and especially near the end in August, 2004, he frequently told the story of his most richly textured permanent memory from youth: a month spent camping with buddies the summer after high school. The year was 1944, and I imagine that this life-defining month ended in late August that year, almost precisely 60 years before my Dad died.

That summer, many friends already had shipped out to the War, and that's where these friends were heading soon. I was amazed that my Dad remembered details such as who visited their campground for what kind of revelry, the girlfriends who came and made omelets for them over the campfire, and more. (Keith is the handsome lad in the middle of this photo.)

This story rattled me after Dad's death on August 29, 2004. Why was this simple event so pivotal to his life? In seeking the answer, I began to form the impetus for this new journal version of my first book and my quest to reconnect.

That I had to lost my treasured 77-year old father to an 18-month battle with lymphoma was wicked irony. Cancer had been virtually unknown in our family prior to my diagnosis. Now, my Dad's lymph system tumors had snuffed -- actually brutally squeezed -- the life out of such an amazing man a mere two years after surgery saved my life.

While I pursued the best of traditional medicine and alternatives you’ll read about later, my father’s condition really was never helped via traditional medicine, the only path he followed. His supposedly top notch doctors seemed to ignore the cause of his disease – an immune system deficiency – and instead simply blasted away at his symptoms with chemotherapy. This was a horrid and painful way to putz around with the inevitable.

With the loss of my Dad, the "cabbageness" began to melt away. I began to emerge from a narrow focus on only the vital people and activities in my life today to a reexamination of what about my past should be dusted off and made whole as a healing technique.

Following a celebration of my Dad's life in October, 2004 at the hand-hewn A-Frame cabin near Mt. Pleasant, Iowa that he and his lifelong friends built 40 years ago, one of my high school classmates came up to me quietly, gave me a hug and whispered in my ear: "You are just like him." With that simple gesture, I thought about my Dad's passion for being the fulcrum of connectedness with vital persons in his life: his blood relatives, his high school chums, Navy buddies, business colleagues, and even his kids' friends, old and new. He asked me frequently if I was still in touch with people he remembered fondly from my college days. And he fretted endlessly in recent years about how to preserve more than 3,000 emails from hundreds of folks.

When my classmate walked away, I stood there musing over this notion. Then I squinted my eyes in the fall sunshine and peered down the length of the luminous forest meadow surrounding the cabin. The setting was the near-sacred Garretson farm, which is Iowa's oldest farm continuously owned by the same family. I imagined this same spot 175 years ago, when old Quakers with names like Isaiah strode about. The calm jolt that emerged was this: I knew that my quest of recentering and reconnectedness was far more important than just to stave off rouge cancer cells.

In November, I trekked to my Dad's favorite place, which is now my place: his cabin at the Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri. It's too clichéd for me to write that I felt his presence there. What I did feel is that by retreating to this secluded (and empty) place during fall weekends while going to college nearby -- with a companion or two -- I certainly developed a centeredness coming out of college that I wouldn't have gotten from on-campus weekend revelries.

It was on this trip to Missouri that I was invited to the Missouri Journalism School's Walter Williams Society dinner. And this is when I first met the J-School dean, Dean Mills and his wife Sue, also from Mt. Pleasant, Iowa. I discovered that Dean's family farm is a mere seven miles from the Garretson homestead. At the same dinner, a reunion with classmates got me thinking about the book I'm now researching about my classmates of 30 years back and their views on the next 10 years for the media and related industries. Through a reconnectedness with classmates, I believe we collectively can add a fresh voice to the debate about the next decade.

I admit to some nervousness about this project. I don't want to touch any nerve endings arising from the decades of disconnectedness -- or from pain points in lives and careers. I'm trying to send the message that even if someone declines to participate, there is still benefit in merely learning about our collective and individual perspectives on what's ahead. And I'm not talking about just profiling success. I've spoken to a half dozen classmates so far, and received puzzling silence from others. I imagine there are any number of reasons for this. I just hope the silly reasons are sorted out from the good reasons.  ¶ 1:01 PM