Nostalgia!

I get a kick out of following the Minor League exploits of Freddie Freeman. I guess its because I was the corps officer at Santa Ana, California (now Tustin Ranch) for eight years, where all of his family, great grandparents, grandparents, parents, uncles, aunts and cousins were (are) soldiers of the corps. In fact, I dedicated, enrolled and commissioned many of them, lost count. They were all stalwarts of that great corps and exceptional soldiers (still are, his grandfather, the bandmaster and his uncle, until recently, the songster leader). Freddie was born a year after I farewelled, but through the years we have kept in close contact with the corps and the Freeman family. In fact, Freddie’s grandparents, Ed and Flo, took in our son, Rob, as part of their family when we left, so that he could stay and attend college there. And for that we will be eternally grateful.

It’s been 21 years since I left, my how time flies when you’re having fun. The years spent in that appointment were defining ones for me. They were the best of times and the worst of times, did somebody else say that? But I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything, as it prepared me better than any other of our appointments for what was yet to come. In fact, every leader would be better fitted were they to have one of these large corps experiences for an extended period of time; they test your mettle like nothing else, believe me. If you can do one of these, successfully, you can do anything.

Nostalgia is a curious thing; it seems to ripen with age. God has formed our memories in such a way as to forget the bad and remember the good. So I look back upon those days with great nostalgia and the older I get, the riper those memories become. I can’t take credit for influencing Freddie because he wasn’t even born then, but when I think of his dad, Fred, I have only good positive thoughts and memories (in his particular case there were no bad ones to forget), the quintessential dad and Christian role model. This brings me to a recent article written by a columnist in the Orange County Register about Freddie, with his dad also being interviewed: O.C.’s Freeman stays on pace for big things. Read this and you will get a glimpse of what I’ve been trying to say.

JN

Note: For those reading this on facebook, go to my website, www.joenoland.com and click on “Blog 1”for the O.C. Register link.