Ed Poth or as I once heard one of his disciples say, " ED POOOOOTTTTHHH" "ED POOOTTTTTTH" "EDDDDDDDD #$%@#$ PPPPPOOOOTTTTH". Ed is a guy I met after college, so in some ways he still seems like a new friend. Although we go back to the early 80s, so there is a lot of history there. It was not a problem to get Ed up for an early breakfast, as Ed is always up ready to work. He runs the Muni desk and is almost always the first to arrive every morning. I wish I could somehow learn to show my students that if working hard becomes a habit then it also becomes easier. Ed is a father who loves his kids and puts a lot of time and effort into giving them his idea of happiness, so they are all big Cardinal fans. Ed and I have spent many hours in front of computer screens and on the phone first trying to get good seats for ourselves at World Series games, but then Ed would keep expanding his entourage. I would ask him how many seats he needed and it started with 4, "Jan, myself, and I will take two of the kids." But then we got those tickets and it became, well I need more for all of the kids and then Schwendemann and Jan's Sister and the tickets we got just expanded. I was Ed's friend when I had a job, and I was Ed's friend when I did not have a job and in the latter case he just expanded his world to take care of me. I was the next World Series ticket to get. It was weird at the home opener this year, because Ed always bought the first round and the second round... he is one of the best that I have known in picking up a tab and making me feel like it was no big deal. When he first start succeeding at his job, I remember him picking up a softball tab when no one of the 12 people there knew he did it. I remember him making a special point of including me in a dinner with a bunch of people. Ed and I were at the David Freese game in our seats in the bleachers. I remember telling him, "Well, we are either going to lose or we are going to see the greatest game of our lives." That is how our friendship is it has been an amazing ride.
Steve Broun I have known since my SLUH days, he was a classmate of my brother's and I just tended to know a lot of people in my brother's class. I am now not sure what came first softball or MBA school. The softball team was kind of funny, because Steve thought he had assembled a group that did not know each other, but the first game (this being St. Louis) we all knew everybody on the team. Except maybe the guy who played right field and wore a bow tie. I am getting old and I don't know if he actually wore a bow tie playing right field, but I am going to say he did. Then it was off to MBA school, the first year Steve and Ed were in the other section, but the 2nd year we were together in almost all of our classes. We sat in the back row, in long 2 hour classes. and we sometimes amused ourselves in different, quite juvenile ways. Don't ask Steve about the Coke can. Steve was similar to Ed in that were both focused on where they were going through school, and I think that plan and that drive has made them both successful. I got to see the Broun family, a couple of years back, as I tutored his son right before high school. His son is bright and driven like Steve and probably would have done just fine without my help, but the good thing is later I can take credit for his success. Just like the time I bailed out Ed and Steve in the computer room, by helping them complete a difficult computer coding program.
I think I am a better teacher for my students, because I get to see great dads and how they love their kids. How they battle through the obstacles their kids fight and how they live and die with each test, boyfriend, girlfriend, or in Ed's case that missed jumper, It was a great start to the 50 breakfasts and there is such a shorthand to old friends that we can immediately come back to an old basketball game, where my team routinely beat Ed's or the pursuit of the beauty Catherine where Steve won the day and I was left riding a bike home.
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