Seasons of Change

All Rights Reserved © 2001 by Matthew Richard Morrill

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Contents

Part 1

C h a p t e r 1

The Final Frontier

C h a p t e r 2

Ready To Fly

C h a p t e r 3

The Struggle

C h a p t e r 4

A Morning Brings Pressure

C h a p t e r 5

Honesty

C h a p t e r 6

Early To Bed, Early To Rise

C h a p t e r 7

Nature In Its Barest Form

C h a p t e r 8

Transition

C h a p t e r 9

Sweet Dreams

C h a p t e r 1 0

Under The Spotlight

C h a p t e r 1 1

One Red Rose

C h a p t e r 1 2

Not Really A Lie

C h a p t e r 1 3

Turning Point

C h a p t e r 1 4

Crowd Scene

C h a p t e r 1 5

Refuge In Friends

C h a p t e r 1 6

The Peaceful Hour

C h a p t e r 1 7

A Change Of Seasons

C h a p t e r 1 8

A New Morning

Part 2

C h a p t e r 1 9

Refuge In Friends

C h a p t e r 2 0

Millennium Bug

C h a p t e r 2 1

Rebirth

C h a p t e r 2 2

Corporate America

C h a p t e r 2 3

False Alarm

C h a p t e r 2 4

Rejuvenation

C h a p t e r 2 5

Wine Country

C h a p t e r 2 6

Wrinkle

C h a p t e r 2 7

Backbone

C h a p t e r 2 8

Enlightenment

C h a p t e r 2 9

Dawn Of A New Day

C h a p t e r 3 0

Anticipation

C h a p t e r 3 1

Getting Burned By Bikinis

C h a p t e r 3 2

Caution To The Wind

C h a p t e r 3 3

Winter Wonderland

C h a p t e r 3 4

Prospecting

C h a p t e r 3 5

Opportunity Knocks

C h a p t e r 3 6

Rocky Mountain High

C h a p t e r 3 7

Living

About the Author

Dedication

By far, the only dedication I could give for my first book would be to my mother, Marcia Simpson Morrill—a lover and teacher of the written word.

Unfortunately for the world, she was taken from us far too early in her life, leaving a void not only for her family but also for the countless students who didn’t get the opportunity to learn from her.

As a dedicated teacher in English and literature at Southwestern Junior/Senior High School in Hanover, Indiana, she always went way beyond the call of duty on a daily basis. Being a teacher to her was a 24/7 job, twelve months a year—a calling. Not only did she strive to prepare students for college, but more so, was driven to help those not as educationally blessed from birth-those not targeted for college-to prepare for life.

Mom, you were the best teacher I ever knew, not to mention the best mom. I was always extremely proud that you were a teacher for everyone, as well as a teacher for Dad, Allen, Steve and me.

From that fact, I learned more from you than I will ever learn from anyone else about life and dealing with people.

Beyond your teaching of others, you were my mentor in writing and my guide in life in providing guidance-based on values-to others and in trying to make good changes in life and our surroundings.

I strive daily to try to meet those expectations.

Part 1

Prologue

Growing up in the 1960’s and 70’s, then maturing to adulthood and entering the workforce in the 80’s has created almost a schizophrenic identity with a multitude of conflicts between family, career, love interests, friends and life goals.

My childhood was filled with visions of the Leave It To Beaver, The Partridge Family and The Brady Bunch worlds. The teenage years held visions of the unrealistic good guy impression of one Richie Cunningham, from the Happy Days clan. Clean-cut Richie was always scoring with the most beautiful, hot chicks in town—just because he was athletic, smart and, most of all, a good guy.

Yea right!

Today, that would elicit the response …good one!

In the infancy of my generation, with the world on the brink of evolving from good (hard working and value laden) to worse (efficient, profit minded and technological), everyone said Hi as you walked safely down the street. Everyone waved as they drove by in a car. All men held doors open for women; there were no exceptions. Everyone said Thank You and there was goodness to the world.

Political correctness meant selecting the appropriate political candidate.

Nothing was convenient by today’s standards and people were forced to communicate with each other face-to-face and be patient with the slowness of the times.

While a harder life, it certainly was a more rewarding life.

No remote controls.

Streets were clean.

Yards were manicured.

MTV hadn’t been invented yet. More so, cable TV didn’t even exist.

A neighborhood meant a family-like community.

Kids were safe playing outside without supervision.

Kids played with toy guns, not real ones.

Pro athletes weren’t criminals making millions of dollars.

People cooked their own meals.

TV was closer to reality. Or at least it was closer to the reality that everyone strived to achieve.

Everything was slower and personal successes harder to accomplish, yet the effort meant much more and made values all the more important.

Success was truly success. It’s prerequisite was strongly held values and hard work, not a proclivity for BSing and cutting corners.

Today, however, is consumed with electronic gadgets and with speed. Face-to-face interaction, and a neighbor mentality, is a long ago novelty. Personal today is an e-mail only addressed to you, without a huge copy list. A neighborhood is a community web site of people with like interests. Speed drives everything, resulting in a lack of patience and greatly enlarged stress levels in the population.

Today’s world doesn’t respect quality or values; instead, speed-to-market and efficiencies in workflows are the corporate ideals.

In my heart, I know that the deep-rooted good values from yesteryear are hidden within most people. People are afraid today to show them.

At least I have to believe in my heart that people are just afraid to show their values. Surely, people aren’t as bad as their daily actions in life.

People ignore their values out of a sense of outdatedness, or because of concern from misguided corporate views that value values negatively against bottom-lines. From the 2001 perspective, values demonstrate weakness in the marketplace. Values make the worker a liability and less important to a corporation then the dollar in the coffer at the end of the day.

The dollar is number one!

People are number two. Values are bad business.

The most curious aspect of life today is what happens when values meet the technologically cold world of the 21st century. Can the true person survive?

C h a p t e r 1

The Final Frontier

Technological

1.   Pertaining to or involving industrial advancement.

2.   Advancements to improve efficiencies and profits.

3.   Affected by or resulting from science, engineering, or industrial progress.

4.   George Orwell’s 1984.

Summer of1969, 1:00 a.m.

It was no boy’s land for a 5-year old.

My family was vacationally stationed in a KOA Camping Park outside Orlando, Florida, within a few miles of a kid’s ultimate destination—Disney

World. We were only a 2-minute walk to the beach and the ocean, but it felt like an hour trek to a sleepy 5-year old.

I was awakened by my mother in the wee hours of the morning, and forced to prepare for a walk to the beach.

Groggily and sleeplessly, I staggered to the beach with my mother, father, my two-year old brother, and my scientifically, well-informed older brother of nine years. I really had no clue I was about to watch history, even if my older brother kept highlighting the fact.

Man, this is gonna be so cool. Ya may neva getuchance to see histary madeagin. Bryce, kamon and hurry up or we’re gonna misit.

Honestly, that was the longest and most life-confirming walk of my life.

Even though we were on the East Coast, the sky resembled those of Colorado and Wyoming. It was a big, clear sky requiring little need for flashlights. The stars dotted the heavenly canvas, as if a roadmap to the skies.

It took about 20 years to realize the significance of what I had seen in those early morning hours of the late summer months of the conclusion of the love generation.

Left foot.

Then right.

Kamon Bryce. Hurry up, blurted my brother.

Left foot, then right.

…staggering on the left foot, then the right.

…hands clasping the safety and security of Mom’s.

Staggering along a car path headed toward the beach, it seemed like an inconvenienced disruption of sleep to me, but in reality was a path to the vision of the future.

The path included two rows of pure, fine, powder-like white sand that was worn by tires and human feet-on the outside edges, with less than healthy-looking grass guiding the direction straight down the middle.

I slept-walked through the whole event.

Ironically, this was foreshadowing to a typical trait of my life. Although physically awake, I slept through the obvious event of the time and was clueless to the opportunistic future it brought; I’ve always seen the good in people and assumed their intentions were good.

On this night Mickey was on my mind, not John Glenn.

Apollo was the news of the time, but half-awake didn’t mean squat to a 5-year old.

To a pre-school aged male, Apollo was fantasy, like Superman or Spiderman. Sure, I had heard all about the predicted landing on the moon in the future, but that was all far-out fantasy at that point. Prior to puberty, a boy’s life only really revolves around cowboys, cops and robberies, sports fantasies, Sci-fi and if the boy is from Indiana, the major fantasy is that of being named Indiana’s Mr. Basketball one day.

Nothing that seems real really is real.

This night just seemed like an extension to my TV world—the only world to a 60’s generation kid with a two-parent working family.

TV was real.

It was melodramatic.

This was a TV show.

The evening was very quiet…yet alive. People were energetic.

The Florida air was hot, sticky, and wet.

Misquotes were hovering and attacking with a vengeance.

But no one but me seemed to care.

With the energy of the all the people on the two-pass trail with a seam of worn grass in the middle, a hot, sticky and wet feeling propelled everyone into an anxious and hurried dash toward the beach for the brief glimpse of man defying nature.

Within a quarter hour of being awakened for the walk to the beach, a fireball catapulted from the ground to the heavens. While this only lasted minutes to our view, it has lasted for all seasons in history. It immediately was an upside-down candlestick skyrocketing toward the heavens—an adventure that has lasted years in the so-called advancement of man.

Immediately, it was bright, fiery and fast darting through the sky. It lit up the sky. Just as quickly, it became a distant after thought as to why I had been awakened in the wee hours of the morning. At the time, it was fireworks to me…quick flash, and what’s next?

Looking back years later, it’s so amazing that I had no clue as to the relevance of the moment, and was only concerned with getting back to the camper to sleep and rest up for the brand new Witch Mountain ride the following morning.

Little did I know that at that moment, the world was about to change drastically from idealistic to materialistic; it would take years before I understood the difference between the two.

And the bane of my existence since has been in conflict between the two; I was raised on the midwestern small town family values of the 60’s but have to live in the me-first generation of the 21st century and beyond.

Ch a p t e r 2

Re ady To Fly

Summer of1987.

Bryce F. Derneher is a 1987 graduate of Polis College in Indianapolis, Indiana. He grew up in the small southern Indiana town of Hanover. Even though in Indiana, it’s part of the famed tobacco road.

Tobacco is gold. Tobacco is the only business. Tobacco is life.

Bryce had a good childhood. Being the middle son in a middle class family of three boys and undivorced parents, he often found himself caught in the middle and in trouble, but these experiences taught him a lot about life and in dealing with adversity and to always having hope.

His family had a deep history embedded in it of being education oriented. Not exactly a history of high society, but one of always striving to get there. Of being there without flaunting it.

Bryce was set apart from his peers early in life. He was looked upon as an outcast in his small country town; he wasn’t homegrown. Country folk

hold strong ties to the land and a family’s heritage must go back about three generations before considered a native. Although Bryce enjoyed his life there very much, he always felt like the outsider.

It was the education difference that set him apart the most. Bryce and his brothers were conceived with college in mind, each one exactly four years apart in age so college bills could be paid more easily when the time came. In many of his friend’s families, it was considered an accomplishment if they graduated from high school; it was always expected to graduate from college in Bryce’s family. There was never any debate on this subject; it was always known and assumed. Bryce’s hometown friends-many of them-looked on this idea of going to college as his thinking he was better than they and as him saying their life wasn’t good enough for him.

But Bryce never felt that way and tried hard not to give that impression to his friends, even though his parents taught him he could never reach his full potential without a college degree.

Bryce was always caught between his friends and his family. His parents despised sports and idolization of athletes, yet this was a critical element of establishing friends and a critical element of Bryce’s life. He was gifted in the world of athletics and had a love of sports from the get go.

Bryce learned to speak and act as two different people. On a dime, he could switch his accent and grammatical tendencies. If with friends, a strong twang came out of his mouth, slurring words together in true southern Indiana form. If with his parents, a precise enunciation emanated from his mouth, precisely hitting all the grammatical rules properly.

This trait of quick adaptation would serve him well in later life. Not that he fakes, but he developed the trait of being able to speak to people in their language. While he isn’t an overly verbal person, this trait of his always enabled him to fit in quickly and get people to drop their guard and trust him quickly.

After this early life education, he chose Polis College for three reasons; it was small, it had a computer/architectural design major and to become a nationally rated runner.

More so, he had been all everything at his high school—from sports let- terman to student body President. He was tired of the attention. Bryce wanted a school that was big enough to get lost, but still small enough to not get overwhelmed.

College was, overall, very easy for Bryce. His problems were never too great. He got by without truly giving 100%; he thought real life would be the same.

However, after four years, he felt he missed the whole experience.