by Ken Ogorek ’87

My liberal arts education makes it very difficult to choose favorites—too much weighing the merits and downsides of many summer vacation memories. I know one I’m glad I took, though. 

The summer of my dad’s 65th year, he and I took a road trip to the Baseball Hall of Fame. We made  the nine-hour drive to Cooperstown and back alone, staying two nights at a bed-and-breakfast. The fact that my bride and I hadn’t visited a bed-and-breakfast since our honeymoon, yet I shared a room with an old Polish guy who was skeptical about the whole  inn thing anyway, didn’t go over too well on the  home front. However, my wife understood what a time such as this can mean to a father and son.

I’m not the world’s biggest fan of professional sports. Too much critical analysis of the underlying philosophical issues, I suppose. But professional  baseball was a lifelong hobby of Dad’s. I simply enjoyed watching him enjoy himself. No doubt he’d done the same for me countless times as I was growing up.

During the long car ride I had the chance to tell him what a great dad he’d been, and still was. I didn’t realize that within a few years he’d be dead from cancer. My summer trip with him to a place that once meant little to me is one I treasure today.