It is not often that we get to travel back in time, and rarer still that we get to move back in time to find ourselves face to face with the people - and the very forces - that helped mold us in our youth; and helped to define so much of what we've become. Aside from the glimpses that we're occasionally afforded by watching our own children grow and learn, fortunate is the man that can follow his own footprints back in time, and ultimately find grace, humility, and inspiration, on the same path where he'd once left nothing more than his adolescent dreams and boyish grin.

And in those moments, as we stand there awed by how far we've actually come, we begin to see things as they really were. We learn that the intentions of great men usually held great purpose, and that great purpose was rarely bestowed upon those who couldn't handle it. We learn that those who lifted us up in life, had usually been lifted up themselves at some point, and that they considered it an obligation to do the same for someone else one day.

And we finally learn that the Men who defined their own deeds, generally had more vision and character than those Men who simply allowed the deeds of others to define them.

And as we look back, subtleties such as honor, giving, sacrifice, and perseverance seem to pierce through those swirling clouds of memory, and speak to us now, in ways that we could never have imagined when we were young. Where once we scoffed at the notion of a tangible bond between all people, we now understand that there can be nothing more sacred, and that it is this very notion that explains, in fact, why it is that we are here.

But more than anything else, when looking back at where each of us came from, we finally come to understand what the shoemaker has known all along; that it is not the leather, nor the hammer, nor the nail that are of consequence - but rather - it is the sheer will of the cobbler, that we all must ultimately rely upon.

George B. Boedecker Jr.