Mary Ford - A True First Citizen

My Karen's mother, Mary Ford, on the right, was nominated for our city paper's First Citizen Award. On the left is Fran Relzda, Mary's dear friend who nominated her for the award.

From the newspaper's website. The State Journal-Register's First Citizen Award is given annually in recognition of a person's contribution to the good of the Springfield area. The award brings public attention to those people whose deep sense of public pride compels them to give unselfishly of themselves to accomplish this.

Mary has given all her life to those in her life.

She's volunteered over 15,000 hours (way over that actually) over 20 years at one of our local hospitals. She's done most of that volunteering in the Escort department, cheerily taking patients from one part of the massive medical complex to where they needed to be. Along the way, she's given comfort to those of us in some of our most vulnerable moments - when ill.

She didn't let two knee replacements or a broken back keep her down for long when each of those, her own personal ailments, came along. She's bounced back each time to get back to her business of helping.

While Mary didn't receive the First Citizen Award, someone else who gives justly received it, she's certainly a First Citizen to me.

Thanks to Fran, Mary's good friend and fellow octogenarian, for the nomination.

Now, for the rest of the story.

This morning, I went to put my camera bag on and grab my camera (at the ready in my hand), and had a shock.

No camera.

Karen, my bride, had mistakenly picked it up to take to the First Citizen Award breakfast ceremony. She was going to take photos of Fran and Mary.

Our other camera is similarly shaped, but it was in a different location.

Karen says she was thinking "How nice of Matt to put the camera out for me!"

Karen says I left a very emotion-filled message at her work (2 minutes worth) of terse instructions on how to use the camera with a manual, fish-eye wide angle lens on it. Those instructions were midst my lament of not having my camera. =(

Karen didn't hear that until much later. She called me for instructions from the award breakfast.

My last words to her were "Lock the camera in the trunk of the car when your done!"

She thinks perhaps I was more concerned over the camera than I would be if she or Chris (our son) were missing!

Well, I now know that I do miss my camera when it's not in my hand, or near.

For the record, I miss my Karen Sue something fierce when she's gone somewhere for work. Those nights are long. I also miss our Chris coming in to say goodnight every night, no matter how late he was out. He did that until he left to get married (Well not while at college and away from home, you know what I mean). =)

That's the rest of this photographic tale.

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