On Second Thought

If you wondered how much love this newspaper has for this community, you don’t have to look any further than our founder and publisher, Dolores Hamilton.

For simplicity and honesty’s sake, I’ll just call her Mom.

This week already promised to be anything but dull.

It’s homecoming week, a big deal for our schools, businesses and community in general.

And, it is our newspaper’s 50th anniversary. Kevin will be talking about these things a lot this week in his column. I’ll be talking mostly about Mom.

We’ve been preparing for homecoming week since mid-summer, as this is not our first Whoop-T-Do, as they say. But it is still a lot of work putting it together the week of.

Last weekend, Mom travelled to Atlanta to her granddaughter’s wedding - quick shoutout to Allison and William Casey, newlyweds at large - and things didn’t quite go as planned for grandmother of the bride.

Friday night at the rehearsal dinner, a backyard deck did what backyard decks sometimes do to people who are carrying a plate of food - it invited her to lay down. And in the process it broke her upper femur.

She thought she just bruised it and waited until Saturday morning to go to the hospital for an X-Ray, and this is when super Dolores was born. Upon finding out she had fractured the largest bone in her body and that surgery would most certainly be required, she told the surgeon that she had a homecoming issue to put out next week, so he should probably just let her get on that plane and head home.

That is when he laughed.

Sunday morning, Dr. Ha Ha (a fabulous surgeon, by the way) put three necessary screws in her femur, and by the afternoon Mom was telling the doctor he would be discharging her Monday, because you know, homecoming in Iowa Park.

What followed was the most motivated physical therapy patient on the planet doing a week’s worth of therapy in 12 hours.

Monday morning, my sisters sent me a picture of my mother, who was meticulously dressed and ready to go home, waiting for the doctor. She was going to bust out, come hell or high water. And she did.

Miraculously, she flew home early Tuesday morning and as soon as she walked into her house with a walker she had not left with, she believed she needed to go to the office.

For the first time since Friday she did not win the argument. I spent Tuesday afternoon at her dining room table with her while we proofread copy for this week’s issue, laughed, and had some great conversations. At the same time, I became intensely aware of her strength, resilience, and motivation as she treated a broken femur like a hangnail.

I humbly offer that if it had been me with a recently screwed up thigh bone, I would have been enjoying all the amenities an orthopedic hospital had to offer for as long as they would keep me, and return from Atlanta in about a month, give or take. While Mom is more of a badger, I carry the DNA of a sloth and at times like this it really shows.

Also, Mom is managing her pain with extra strength Tylenol, and I would be screaming for all the Opioids, even though I am allergic.

Mom had her first surgery ever and will miss her first homecoming ever, all in the same week. Even she will admit she’s not quite ready to navigate Hawk Stadium this week, so she will be watching the Iowa Park Leader Facebook live, as well as listening to the game on Hawk Radio. I’ll be giving her some shout-outs during our Facebook live, so get ready.

The woman is tiny but fierce. Don’t mess with her or her newspaper deadline, or her love for all things Iowa Park. She was determined to not miss this homecoming and this huge anniversary she and my dad held the vision for, and she didn’t.

I know I’m not the only one who admires that, and I also know this community loves her back.

If you’re able to come home this weekend, enjoy the town. The paper is full of memories from past IPHS classes and well- wishes and sales from our advertisers.

We, as we’ve said before this month, are honored to have been Iowa Park’s voice for the past 50 years, and we look forward as a family to the next 50.

Happy Anniversary to the Iowa Park Leader and Happy Homecoming to each of you, and a special happy homecoming to our Leader and publisher.