What A Great Day!

For several months, our son Kevin and our daughter Cassie and George (a friend) have been working on putting together "It's a Wonderful Life"...Joe Coburn. A celebration. It was a golf outing that began with lunch, a demonstration by the world's foremost trick shot artist, Peter Longo (who donated his time to put on the show), 18 holes of golf and dinner. Everything went off as smoothly as could be imagined. Friday the 14th was predicted to be a lousy day but after much prayer, God came through with a cloudless, beautiful day.

We had about 64 golfers and an additional 75 people that came to the dinner. To say the least, I was overwhelmed by the response. We had people come from Milwaukee, St. Louis, Georgia, Florida, Kansas City, Indianapolis, Toronto, Canada, Phoenix, Arkansas and Ohio. People that I had worked with and had not seen in years, made such an effort to help celebrate that day. Of course, as Mary Anne says, "They would rather come to this than a funeral." Yea, me too! Cassie had little bells on each table with pictures of me at all different ages on little tags on the bells and additionally made an awesome video with lots of pictures of me with great, appropriate music. She is so talented. Each one of the children got up and spoke....just beautiful. Then Kevin invited others to come to the mic if they wished and many did. It was so affirming.

The fact is that I have had a wonderful life. I have been blessed with an awesome wife, four great children, eight grandchildren and the best of friends. I have been so blessed by God. He has allowed me to be here far longer than I thought I would be after the diagnosis in July of 06. He is either not done with me or He has more work for me to do.....maybe some of each.

Monday, the 17th we are flying to Paris for 9 days with dear friends the Carnevales who we have vacationed with many times. We return home on the 27th of Sept. We are home for three days and then fly to Bonaire on October 1st and will be there for a month.

If you are reading this blog, I have been blessed by you because you are a relative, a friend someone who is praying for me or at the least someone who cares and is interested.

You have all touched my heart so. Yesterday was one of the GREATEST days of my life. For all of you who shared in that day..........THANK YOU SO MUCH!

Love you,

Joe