Setting The Record Straight

This city isn’t mine to use. It’s ours to protect.  Living in Galveston has taught me that stewardship isn’t a concept, it’s a daily responsibility. When you live on an island, you feel it more clearly. Infrastructure matters. Planning matters. Transparency matters. The decisions we make don’t disappear into the abstract; they show up in our streets, our neighborhoods, our businesses, and our quality of…

Some places live in you long before you ever realize it.  As a little boy growing up in Missouri, my summers were spent visiting my father in Texas. He lived in Houston then, and among many chapters of his life, as a nurse, a hairstylist, and so much more, he spoke of being a beach…

One thing I’ve learned about myself over the years is this: I’ve always been drawn to the places where the need is most visible. Not because it’s easy or comfortable, but because that’s where people matter most.  Volunteering has never been about checking a box for me. It’s been about paying attention. Looking around. Asking, “What’s missing here, and how can I help?”  When I lived in…

Being the oldest of seven comes with a unique kind of responsibility. It also comes with a vault full of stories I could use to lovingly embarrass my siblings, especially sister number one. Growing up with a big brother who worked in technology meant there was no such thing as total privacy. I helped my…

I’ve never claimed to be perfect. I’m not a saint, shocking, I know. I’ve made mistakes in my life, some small, some significant. I own them. And I believe that the measure of a person isn’t whether they’ve lived flawlessly, but whether they’ve learned, taken responsibility, and allowed those lessons to shape who they become….

Family changes everything. It changes how you see the world, how you carry responsibility, and how you understand your place in something bigger than yourself. There were no silver spoons in my childhood. I am the oldest of seven children, practically a community in itself. My mother’s mother also came from a home with seven…

In my family, hard work was never framed as something extra. It wasn’t a badge of honor or a special accomplishment. It was simply the expectation. You showed up. You did your best. You followed through. That standard was set early, reinforced often, and never negotiated. At fifteen years old, I requested special permission from…

Growing up, my father used to tell me a story about his own childhood. When he got in trouble, his father would give him a choice: a speech or a spanking. My father always chose the spanking. It was over in a few minutes. The speech, he said, could go on for hours. At the…

I feel incredibly fortunate to have been surrounded by truly remarkable adults at a very young and influential age. Long before I understood leadership, service, or responsibility, I was watching it lived out every day. A lot of people say their mother is a saint. I know mine is. I have never met a more…

It all started in Mexico, Missouri. It wasn’t a fairytale—but it is my story. My parents married young and had two children: my sister and me. Like many families, life didn’t unfold exactly as planned, and they eventually divorced. What followed wasn’t instability; it was evolution. My mother later remarried my stepfather, and together they…