First Born

Friends,

Today makes me think back. It is the birthday of Jason, my first born. Ashley came along six years later. 

My memory is pretty rusty these days but I think it was 1973. I had very recently been discharged honorably from the US Air Force and was resuming my graduate career at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Jason was born in a hospital not far away from Chapel Hill in Durham NC.

Phyllis and I rented a little house on a cul de sac a couple of miles from the University. We lived next door to an older couple -- Norman and Eileen Weatherly, who were very kind to us young folks. We lived there until we moved to Bloomington, IN and Indiana U. 

This might be too much information -- but we had been trying for a while to conceive and had almost given up hope. Jason was just a little stubborn but then finally decided to come together. And that was a about a half a century ago. 

I haven't been to Chapel Hill in a long time so I don't know what it is like now. But it was a nice easy place to live. It had a reputation back then of being the most beautiful place in in the world to live. I think it might have been a little exaggerated. People would swoon about Chapel Hill. Yes, it was a beautiful place. We were lucky to be there. 

One nice aspect of living there was college basketball. The place was legendary -- even back then. As a mediocre high school basketball player, I figured I had gone to heaven in Chapel Hill. We immediately bought season tickets and probably went to every home game played while we lived there. Dean Smith was the coach and was quite different from Bobby Knight at Indiana. But between those two coaches I saw a lot of great basketball. Smith was calm while Knight was easy to ignite but both had great teams. 

My last year of Air Force was celebrated by my tour in Vietnam. Not what I had hoped for but I came back alive.  No, I was not really in harms way. I worked in an office behind the lines and mostly ordered supplies for the guys who were doing the real fighting.  I even got an early-out to go back and finish my degree at UNC. 

It was lucky for me that Indiana needed a macroeconomist. I had not finished my dissertation but they took a risk on me and hired me ABD -- all but dissertation. My dissertation topic was an analysis of the Nixon Wage and Price Controls. I managed to finish it within a year and all was good. I spent my entire career at Indiana except for a one year leave at the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank. 

That's enough reminiscing for the day. I'll end by just saying how thankful I am. Thankful to have been allowed to live a full life and to have a wonderful family.