cc: file, Tony Hafen, Pauline Nelson via mail, Sara and Des Penny, Claude and Katherine Warner, Lloyd and Luana Warner, Diane Cluff, Maxine Shirts via mail.
"This week was dominated by Kate's graduation from BYU. I did spend the first two days of the week in Houston. Monday morning I worked at Chroma on the II&T Matagorda project from 9-11:45. Then I drove back to Shillington and picked up Dick Coons at 12:15 for a lunch with Bob Williams of Dover. It was a neat discussion, and I hope to see several opportunities come out of it. I dropped Dick off at his house at about 2:45. There were a couple of phone conversations with Swede Nelson, who is going to Florida to meet with potential investors the week of May 7th. Also Peter Duncan called and said a Texaco project he is going to have me work on, which will help work off the advances Chroma has paid us, will be ready to start next week. I was busy creating a master spread-sheet of projects until late Monday night. I had a brief panic attack Monday night, wondering if I'm doing the right things, and worrying about all of you, and how everything is going to work out. I ate some buttered saltines and it went away.
Tuesday morning the lunch with Prakla canceled. I ended up working at the house until 11:00. There was a good conversation with Ted Collins in Midland. He called to say he was coming to Houston on Thursday and Friday, and of course, I was going to be in Utah for Kate's graduation. Oh well! I got to Chroma at 11:30, and worked until 3:30, when I e-mailed the results to Les Denham at II&T. I drove to Hobby airport via the tollroad, and slept most of the way to Salt Lake via Albequerque. Paul was waiting for me in Salt Lake.
Wednesday morning Paul and I left at 6:30 for Cedar. We stopped just past Santaquin to take pictures of three elk next to the freeway. They were big beautiful animals. We got to Cedar about 10:00, and talked briefly to Audrey and Grandma Shirts. I took Mom and Paul to Hunan to eat Peiking Duck, which Mom called "Open-Eyed Duck" because she doesn't like the thought of eating "Peeking Duck." We visited Uncle Lloyd and Aunt Luana and stopped to see Katherine. We saw Emma. She looks good and said to say hi. Paul dropped me off at Ward and Fern Abbotts and went to play with Kate's little brother and sister. I showed Ward and Fern the photos I took, which are at www.walden3d.com/Abbott. I had misspelled Abbott as Abbot. Oh well! Fixed it. Both Ward and Fern were really excited about the pages, and see great potential for this project. I hope to get started on it in earnest this summer. It will become a very valuable asset for Dynamic. Ward has decided he wants to serve a mission at Temple Square. So they bought a townhome overlooking the conference center. After showing me the pictures, describing the amenities and particularly the view, I've decided Andrea and I are going to buy a commondimun there too, if we can ever get enough ahead financially to do so.
Paul picked me up and we got to Cedar just in time to pick up Grandma Shirts, Heather, and get Brian at 6:00. We went up Cedar Canyon and ate at Milts. I sure enjoy going there, although on top of Hunan at lunch, it was definitely too much food for a single day. Heather and I dropped off Grandma Shirts, and Paul and Bryan, who were going to make a video and ended up playing around, and we went to listen to Aunt Sara's concert. Even I could tell it was hard music to play. Very nice and thoroughly enjoyable. Afterwards we went to see Steve and Jill and their new daughter. My first, and probably only niece born after Andrea and I were married. Then Grandma Shirts dropped me off at Sara and Des' and we talked until Heather got back with the car. Audrey went to Lake Powell and, Audrey, I was very dissapointed there was not an opportunity to spend some time talking to you. Thanks for calling me, and I look forward to spending some time talking on the phone, when you have time.
I was at Sara and Des' at 5:00 AM to pick up Paul. We left by 5:30 and were across from Point of the Mountain, coming up the back way at 8:30. Paul slept all the way to Salt Lake. It was good to see Bob Ehrlich again. After about an hour of listening to Bob and I, Paul looked at us and said `Are you two brothers?' We went down and spent some time with Parker Gay. He showed us around his compound, and he has two, maybe 3 rental houses we could use as offices for Dynamic Resouces, Resource Technologies (Dick Coons, who wants to move to Salt Lake), Residuum Energy, Ed Gray, Riley Skeen, and me, when I'm in Salt Lake. Ed drove down from Woods Cross and Bob Ehrlich and Mike Dropkin joined Parker, Paul, and me for lunch at Trolly Square. We left as the conversation was getting on a roll to get back to Provo for Kate's graduation Commencement exercises. Paul tells me he drove too fast, and I was asleep, so I'm not responsible for his choices. Or am I?
I was very impressed with the BYU Commencement Exercises. I don't see, after a quick search, that I mentioned that we chose not to have cap and gown when we graduated from High School, that I missed my graduation from The University of Utah since Marti and I decided we would never have another chance to travel and went to Europe during graduation, and I was in Houston when I graduated from SMU, and did not want to drive back up for graduation ceremony. So Roice's graduation was my first commencement. I was impressed with the outdoor meeting, and all of the events. Then Andrea and I were able to go to Ben and Sarah's graduation, and it was really impressive to see all of the students in the large stadium. And frankly, I liked Kate's Commencement best of all three of these. It is probably because the messages echoed my concerns, and mostly because there was testimony shared, by member and non-member. There 9,000 graduates, 2,600 more than a similar sized class in 1991. Elder Merril J. Bateman of the Quorum of the 70, who is the President of BYU stressed:
He went on to say:
After conferring the degrees he had the students stand and applaud parents, family and friends for their support. Then the BYU Alumni President inducted the graduates into the 384,000 BYU Alumni and stressed how graduates could continue to communicate with BYU:
He stressed the word replenish, saying it is important to give back to BYU and to the Church. He was singing my song. As a member of the church we have down the multiply commandment, and seem to forget the replenish part of the same commandment.
Bonnie Marie Ashby, (I wonder if she is a descendent of Nathaniel Ashby, whom I referred to last week in 0117.html), a music graduate said:
Congressman Tom Lantos, who was given an honorary Ph.D. said:
Gohn Gallivan, retired Editor of the Salt Lake Tribune, was also given an honorary Ph.D. He said:
Joseph B. Worthlin, an Apostle, was given an honorary Ph.D. He said:
Thomas S. Monson, of the First Presidency was conducting and said:
We took digital pictures, and they will be put on the web sometime at: http://www.walden3d.com/photos/Family/03_PaulKate/Graduation_Kate. Randy and Kathryn Shirts took us out to dinner. It was a nice evening. It is funny to watch Paul and Erika, who are always going after each other. Kristen swears she is not going to college this fall. She has been accepted to BYU and UU, but not Stanford. Randy provided some additional background on why Lantos was given an honorary degree. His daughter is a member of the church. When his Grandson arrived at the Missionary Training Center, Lantos showed up to talk him out of going to Poland. He relented and said he would come to Poland in a year to pick him up. He did, and the Grandson would not come home.
Friday morning I worked on my paper for the OTC on Monday. Kate cooked German pancakes. Paul wrote out the recipe for me:
Val and Debbie Jones, and three of their kids arrived about 11:00 with a dozen containers of fresh strawberry jam as a present for Kate's graduation. We went over to the Convocation, where Kate walked for her diploma, about 12:30. One in 5 graduates from BYU are in Kate's college.
Matthew Grow, Valedictorian from History spoke:
Professor Kay Smith of Psychology said:
We partied most of the afternoon. Kate's younger sister Lori did not like having her picture taken, and we had fun with the digital camera. There was great bar-b-que steak and chicken, potato salad, chips, drinks, and chocolate moose. It was a nice evening, even if Kate and three of her girl friends got into a girl talk mode. I just tuned them off and went to sleep on the couch until someone knocked on the glass window from the hammock outside.
Somehow I didn't plan leaving for the airport right, and ended up driving too fast to make it there by 6:00 for a 6:30 flight. Oh well! Made it. It was a great visit. It would be nice for each of you need to send Kate congratulations, if you haven't already. The flight back was uneventful. I got to the house a half-hour before Matt's soccer game. He did good. They beat about 5 to 2. He enjoys that a lot. Andrea and I went to see a movie by the guy who made the movie about the missionaries in California at the Tinseltown Cinema where I used to go a lot. It was a good murder mystery. I'm not sure about the background messages, showing the sacrament, and other sacred things the way they do. The movie is called Brigham City, and I encourage each of you to see it and to consider the message.
Again, Kate, congratulations! It is a significant milestone, and I look forward to each of you reaching the milestone marked by Kate's graduation."