My Inheritance: A Love of Reading

As long as I can remember, I’ve loved reading. I pity the people who don’t. As spring comes around, I think once again of the ones who gave that to me, Mom and Dad. My father was a country boy whose highest academic achievement was passing the County 8th grade graduation test. He did that twice, once as a 7th grader. Despite going no further in school, he became one of the smartest and most knowledgeable men I knew. He always read the newspaper and watched the news on TV. He also loved novels, from Zane Grey to Erle Stanley Gardner to James Michener.

My mother, a girl from Chicago, went two grades further in school than my father, but didn’t graduate from high school. When they got married, they moved to Missouri to live on my grandparents' small farm. She didn’t read much, and it angered her that Dad spent so much time reading. One spring, she happened upon a humorous book based on the experiences of a newlywed trying to acclimate to life on a small chicken farm operated by her husband’s family. It struck a chord. Betty MacDonald’s “The Egg and I*” was the first book she ever completed, the first of many. My mother became, like my father, an avid reader.





Each spring, Mom celebrated her love of reading by re-reading “The Egg and I.” I hope that each of you find that kind of joy in reading.













(*Some of you, the older ones, may be familiar with two of the characters from MacDonald’s book: Ma and Pa Kettle.)