My Leading Stories

My first brush with what I would later call a “scary movie” happened when I was five. At that age,…

I have lived on this earth for over 31,000 days—eighty-five years of mornings, mistakes, prayers, and small victories. Lately, my…

I was born eleven months before the start of World War II, into a country already bracing for sacrifice. My…

I have three biological grandchildren and four “bonus” grandchildren through my wife, seven bright points of light in our lives.…

My father left this world in 1986, after thirteen long years of illness that slowly took his strength but never…

For most of my life, my favorite sport was football — specifically NFL football, the kind where enormous men in…

The night sky over Clell, Virginia, hung low with stars, a frosty bowl of light over the narrow valley. The…

Hank sat on the bank’s edge, fishing pole in one hand, a thick cigar in the other, and his middle…

By the time anyone heard Tom coming, it was already too late to pretend they weren’t home. The old truck…

As my eighty-fifth birthday approaches, I’ve taken on the challenge of telling my life’s story in just ten sentences, a…

As the years accumulate, so do the values that steer a life. Some prove noble, some less so, but all…

The old man stared at the tools hanging on the rough-planked wall of his workshop. The two-person crosscut saw and…