08/30/2026
The night I was born, my dad dropped my older brother off with his 70 year old secretary on the way to the hospital. That sentence alone tells you how different life was in 1983. My parents had moved to Dallas from Alabama a few years earlier. They did not have grandparents nearby, lifelong friends down the street, or a big support system waiting for them. They were building a life and a community from scratch. So when my mom went into labor in the middle of the night, my dad called his secretary, dropped Holden off at her house, and headed to the hospital. Apparently, my mom was ready. My dad was still getting dressed. I have been disrupting schedules ever since. I was born on January 30th. Their wedding anniversary is January 31st, so they celebrated their 8th anniversary in the hospital with a newborn. Now they are celebrating 50 years of marriage and nearly 50 years in Dallas. Their friends back in Alabama still ask why they stayed in Texas. At this point, the answer is pretty simple. They came here without a community, built one, raised a family, and now all of us are Texans. Although my dad will probably always consider Alabama football a religious obligation. -