In very late December of 2019, I choose to have very major heart surgery. I was told at my age of almost 77, I had a thirty percent chance of not making it through surgery to remove calcium from surrounding my heart. I didn’t like the alternative and choose to have the surgery. A little over two months later, I was released to come home from UT Hospital with home care nurses coming in about every day for three more months. Angie had to take over and run a company she knew the fly fishing part of very well, but with no experience running the business end of it including updating our Perfect Fly, Smoky Mountains National Park and Yellowstone National Park websites.
I woke up one morning in April, 2020, noticing the nurses coming to see me at home were wearing face mask, thanks to a new problem facing everyone in the entire world. I don’t have to write anymore about that because that is a subject of a problem we are all sick of hearing about. At the end of my first year of making it through surgery at the time I was back up to 175 pounds from 126 pounds after surgery, able to live an almost normal life, our website host Yahoo, informed me that as of March, 2021, they would no longer update my existing websites, which for the most part were updated on a daily basis. I had a three months notice that I had to have three major website completely redone on a different format. That was yet another major setback that not only cost up several thousand dollars for new website work but additional mega work on our part to get the business back up to full stream. In addition to the cost of the new sites, we had to burden a major loss of business for approximately six months. By June of this year, we were back up to full stream in all respects. That is where the title, “It has been a rough year and a half” came from. Hopefully, you can also understand why we fell about a year and a half behind putting out our normally quarterly issued “Perfect Fly Fly Fishing Journal”.
I hope you don’t think I am asking for any sympathy. To the contrary, I am just explaining why we had the delay in putting out the Journal. Also, please understand I am a very, very thankful person. Thankful for my great UT doctors, many friends, my wonderful wife and family, and to God for allowing me to be able to sit here at 77 years old typing this article feeling happy and for the most part, healthy. I have a lot to be thankful for. My two daughters who fished with me in their early years still enjoy fishing and fish together often. Two of my three grandchildren have fished me me several times and in fact have pictures from ages of about 5 years old and up on our websites. About a year ago, my granddaughter Jana Ingram, graduated from the University of Alabama. Yesterday, my grandson James Deupree, graduated from Auburn University. My other grandchild, Bella, is a extremely talented ballet dancer that will soon finish high school and head to college. Our Perfect Fly business is running full stream with more customers and stronger sales than ever. What more could anyone ask for?
I hope everyone enjoys this issue of the Journal.