SHARKY

I remember being in 8th grade in Victor swimming on the Junior High Swim Team.  Our season had just ended and somehow the word got to me that Mr. Shields wanted to see me, and I think, Billy Glitch.  The Varsity Swim Team had two more meets that year and Mr. Shields wanted us to swim in them, even though we were not officially freshman, yet!  It was, probably, the most exciting thing that had happened to me in my 14 years of living at that point!!!  I remember the meets in the big pool up on the hill, and I remember I even beat some guys that were in High School!  In retrospect the most important part of that exciting event was meeting and getting to know Mr. Shields.  

I swam for him the next 4 years and we won a lot of meets and went pretty far in sectionals. I was co-captain of the High School Swim Team both my sophomore and Junior years.  Yes, we had before school practices. (6am) These were voluntary, but we always went because Coach Shields wanted us to!  After school were “dry land drills” for an hour, and then a good 3 hour practice in the pool.  Coach was there for all of it.  Every single school day, and of course, we had Saturday practices, too. We happily, eagerly, did all of this, because Mr. Shields was in his quiet, funny, and lead by example way, the most inspirational person I have ever known. 

Mr. Shields was, also, my water safety instructor. This allowed me to teach swimming to younger kids during the summer at Victor, and kept me employed as a lifeguard at the school and around town for years to come as I moved toward college.  You see, Keith Shields was everything aquatic at Victor Central.  Everyone knew him, everyone liked him, and quite simply we would have walked through fire if he had asked us to.  Thankfully, he just asked us to swim our butts off and beat most every team we swam against...

I’ve been gone from Victor for a long time.  I live in Los Angeles, now, and I rarely swim anymore.  I’m an actor in TV, Movies and Commercials.  It’s a hard profession.  It requires incredible dedication, self motivation, perseverance, and luck.  Coach Shields taught me all of these.  Coach Shields put me here, and the smile that I get when I think of my Victor days and all those countless hours in the old pool with Sharky looking out for us, keeps me here.

I think it is so darn awesome that Victor built a new aquatic center!  In these days of cuts for cuts sake, it’s a brilliant move that will put smiles on the faces of Victor youth for ages to come.  Thank you tax payers!!  But, “Taxpayer Aquatic Center,” just doesn’t have much of a ring to it.  I don’t know the Victor Board of Education.  I couldn’t tell you the name of anyone on it.  I’ll bet they are great people, and I really don’t think this is a case of doing the right, or the wrong thing.  If they don’t name the Center after Keith Shields I think they are simply missing an opportunity. An opportunity to forever tie the past, right through the present, and into the future. An opportunity to forever tie that beautiful new building to the man that was everything aquatic at Victor Central for so many, many years.  An opportunity to forever tie Victor to the name of the most inspirational person I have ever known.  

“Keith Shields Aquatic Center.”  Now, that has a ring to it...

What I did on my winter vacation...

Stephen Boyer is a 17 year old film maker who asked me to be in his movie "Opus".  He lost his lead actor just before the shoot to a family emergency, so he played the lead, Michael - as well as wrote, directed, edited and produced! I made him promise to attach me to every project of his for the next 50 years.  

I hope you enjoy Stephen Boyer's:    "OPUS"

"OPUS" Click here

My Aunt Mary

Nearly everyone I know has an Aunt Mary.  Mary seems to be a very popular name for Aunts.  But, no one I know, has an Aunt Mary like my Aunt Mary!  

My Aunt Mary lives in Ohio, which she always told me was round on the ends and hi in the middle.  She, also, told me that she’d been born Wright, but she hadn’t been Wright in a long time.  I didn’t get either joke till I was around 20 or so, so I’m glad she kept telling them.  Most of the jokes she told were short like that, except for the one about the snake that needed a pot to hiss in.  That one took my Aunt Mary a little longer to tell.  

There were other really cool things I learned about my Aunt Mary growing up.  She could burp and say bow wow, at the same time.  I’ll bet your Aunt Mary can’t do that! She also married a man name Pink.  How cool is that?  

My brother, Doug, and I loved going to visit the Kohrings. (Uncle Pinks last name) They lived on their own road.  Really, they lived on Kohring road!  No one else I have ever known has lived on their own road, but my Aunt Mary did.  Also, Calvin and LouAnn were the cousins closest in age to us, so we had great fun.  I remember once, Calvin couldn’t stop laughing for an entire day!  We just kept on making him laugh...  Steve was there, too, but he was older and stayed away from us. I think he thought the four of us were crazy.

In later years I went to Michigan State, and spent several Thanksgivings at my Aunt Mary’s. It was always a blast.  I remember laughter from the time I pulled up the driveway, until I had to get back for classes.  

In even later years, I went through my cancer experience, and wrote a play about it called With Flying Colors.  I had been asked to perform it in a banquet hall over looking the Silver Dome in Pontiac, MI.  At that time, I hadn’t done the play that much, so I was pretty nervous about the performance.  Well, the first time I looked up into the audience, there was my Aunt Mary sitting with a big smile on her face, right in the front row.  She had brought some of the gang up from Ohio to Michigan to see my show. 

She must have liked it, because she pulled the same stunt just two years ago when I got a chance to perform the show in La Peer, MI.  There she was, my Aunt Mary, 86 years old at the time, sitting right there in the front row, again, with that big ole grin on her face... 

Just a couple weeks back, I read on LouAnn’s Facebook page that my Aunt Mary was in the hospital and not feeling well. I got status reports over the next days from LouAnn, Mom, and Dad.  They weren’t good.  And when my Mom called me early last Saturday morning with the news, I knew there was a little less laughter in the world.  

My Aunt Mary is now in heaven, and I know if she has anything to say about it, she’s living on her own road up there, too.  When they have heavenly events, she’ll go, and sit in the front row, and she will laugh, and when the Angels are feeling down, she’ll do the bow wow thing and crack them all up!  

I know you belong to God, now, but in my heart you will always be, my Aunt Mary...

Do me a favor, (oh, kind blog reader) first chance you get, go catch up with your Aunt Mary, and give her a great big hug...