Christmas 2009

Thank you for being interested enough to search for this Christmas letter and then to read it! Merry Christmas to you and yours from Vermillion, S.D.

As 2009 began, I was still living with daughter Heather and grandson Dylan here in Vermillion while she finished law school at the University of South Dakota. Her graduation in May was one of our family's two major events. We had a reception for Heather at our local church here and attended another one honoring her and three law school friends in Yankton later in the day. Heather spent June and July studying for the South Dakota Bar exam and began work in the office of a federal magistrate judge in Rapid City in August. Later that month she learned she had passed the bar exam and was officially an attorney! It had been quite a three years for her and an amazing achievement---not only completing her law degree but also raising the most wonderful little 5-year-old boy you can imagine. I spent August in Rapid City with Heather and Dylan until his daycare at the YMCA opened at the end of that month.

For some reason I decided to stay in Vermillion for at least another year, so here I am, five hours from Heather and Dylan in Rapid City as well as Jason and Allison and five hours from Holly, Nathan, Olivia and Audrey in Rochester and another hour from Ryan in St. Paul. I have a small one-bedroom apartment that is big enough for me. I keep busy enough covering high school sports for The Vermillion Plain Talk newspaper, playing piano for the opera class at the USD music department, and accompanying several USD vocal students at their lessons, rehearsals and recitals. I also play organ once monthly at a Lutheran church out in the country and sing the rest of the time with the adult choir at the Vermillion UCC church.

The other major event in the Knox family in 2009 was Jason's marriage to Allison Ronning, his girlfriend for some seven years or so. They scheduled their wedding first for Halloween, then decided he couldn't miss work that night, so rescheduled the event for the night before Halloween. The wedding party and almost all the guests came attired in costumes, so it was quite the unique wedding, held in a wedding chapel into which Allison's brother-in-law and his ranch crew had transformed his machine shop. Jason and Allison live in Rapid City, and he continues as manager at the Dublin Square sports bar and grill downtown across from the Radisson Hotel. If you're looking for somewhere to go on a night out in Rapid City, that's the place! Jason turned 36 earlier this month, a fact I can barely fathom.

Ryan is still in the Twin Cities, living in an apartment in St. Paul and continuing to do theater as much as he can across Minneapolis and St. Paul. Again this past summer he spent two weeks at the Paul Bunyan Playhouse in Bemidji, Minn., and he is already cast in roles in two shows up there in the summer of 2010. Ryan will be 34 next April. If these kids are becoming middle-aged, what does that say about me!

Jason and Ryan are the world's best and proudest uncles. (Ryan calls his job "uncling," and he and Jase are both excellent at it!) Besides Dylan, my other two grandchildren are the daughters of Holly and Nathan Perli in Rochester, Minn. Olivia is a second-grade student at a brand-new elementary school in northwest Rochester and will be 8 in April. Audrey will be 3 in January. Holly, who like Heather turned 30 last August, continues her work as a registered nurse in the transplant unit at Methodist Hospital/Mayo Clinic. The Perlis have a beautiful home on Rochester's north side, very convenient to U.S. 52, the main freeway to the Twin Cities and to I-90. Nathan, who worked hard all the while Holly was completing nursing school, finally got his chance and completed his graphic arts degree this past year. He also is a valued employee of a firm that installs cabinets in newly-constructed homes. His most important role is father to my two granddaughters, and nobody could that better than he does.

Personally speaking, one of 2009's highlights was singing the national anthem with a nine-voice men's group from our local church at the College World Series in Omaha. We went down there to audition in April, were selected, and then performed in front of 20,000-some baseball fans prior to the Texas-Southern Miss game on a Sunday night in June. Another highlight came in early October when I went to Minnesota to attend the Twins-Kansas City next-to-last game of the regular season at the Metrodome. The Twins had to win every game that week, and they did win that one we saw with Michael Cuddyer hitting a homer in the eighth for a 5-4 lead and Joe Nathan saving the game in the ninth. It was the first Twins game I had seen since 1994, so I got there just in time since they move to outdoor Target Field this coming April. Seeing a game there is one of my 2010 goals.

For Thanksgiving all of us except Ryan, who had to work, gathered at the new cottage in Blunt as guests of De Welch Knudson and her family. For Christmas we are headed to Rochester a few days early to "do Christmas" since Holly has to work Christmas Eve and Day at the hospital this year.

I continue to write a column every sixth week for my former employer, the Custer Chronicle. Also in 2009 the Capital Journal in Pierre, another former employer, asked me to begin writing a column there, so I send them one every two weeks. I continue to keep busy producing via e-mail The Midweek Update, a compilation of news, sports, gossip, etc., for present and former Pierre area residents, enabling them to keep track of each other. The last time I checked, the mailing list was up over 2,000.

I must admit that I am a Facebook addict as well and check it regularly throughout each day for new "status reports" and "posts" from hundreds of people. I can claim that I get a lot of news for The Midweek Update via Facebook, and that is true.

Oh yes, there are Oliver and Winnie, the dogs who were here in Vermillion with Heather, Dylan and me from May 2007 until last summer. I miss them, too. They are in Rapid City with Heather and Dylan, and they added a little kitten, Charlie, this fall. I'm pretty much committed to Vermillion until next summer, but then we'll see, but I hear Rapid City calling. By that time I will be 71 1/2 years old, so I'm game to move only one more time!

My only brother, John, and his wife Linda continue to live in Onida, our hometown, which has been their home all of their married life. They are both now retired, but they play golf regularly, and John this year assumed head coaching duties of the high school golf teams in Pierre. Their daughter, Jayne; her husband, Clark Kraemer, and their two children, Allyson and Justin, are in Rapid City, another good reason to move out there eventually.

Merry Christmas!