Dougie!

My brother Doug


Everyone has someone who seems like they have always been there. I guess for me, outside of my parents, the only other person who has always just been there would be my brother, Doug. Doug was born on the true Columbus Day, 42 years ago today. According to my parents, since I do not remember, I did not especially welcome him into our home. But for their sakes, I tolerated him.

Doug was always 100% boy. Maybe it was more like 120%! He was always getting into something, and he was always getting taken to our local emergency room. I don't know how my parents survived raising the boy! Besides having to have stitches on numerous occasions, he also climbed up and jumped off the house in his Batman cape as a frantic neighbor called my mother and reported the event live on the phone, locked himself in the clothes dryer, and sniffed gasoline from the lawn tractor until the "flowers were singing and dancing." He drank a whole bottle of Benedryl to impress our mother with his medicine-taking skills, and of course that landed him an all-expense paid trip to the E.R. while our Dad was away on a National Guard weekend. It supposedly took the entire staff of the E.R., the doctor, and my mother to hold him down so they could pump his stomach. Another time, he jumped off a neighbor's shed and landed on their grill, cutting himself down his thigh and narrowly missing important parts of his body! And all of this he managed to do before the age of 12!

While Doug managed to settle down some in his teen years, he did not get any nicer (he thought the same thing about me,) and our sibling rivalry only escalated. I think we actually inspired one another to reach higher and further to simply outdo the other! We competed for the best report card, the most accolades, the most trophies, etc. We were both "over-achievers" by nature anyway, so competition came naturally.

Doug had an impressive list of credentials coming out of high school. He had been Captain of the football team, President of his senior class, and Youth Governor of the state of Tennessee. Were it not for some nasty teachers at the private school we attended, I think he could have achieved even more. He would have loved to play college football, but his evil coach had set him up purposely to be injured, and that injury ended not only his senior year's playing, but all future football chances.

Doug did not let these setbacks get him down. He went to Vanderbilt for a year, and then decided that Engineering was not his strong suit. At that point, he was offered a once-in-a-lifetime chance to go up and work on Reagan's re-election campaign and be a driver for the man who would go on to become our ambassador to France. Reagan was re-elected, and Doug got an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point.

Doug finished his four years there which were nothing short of rugged and brutal from a physical and mental standpoint. He went on to take up his commission as an Army officer, and he served for several years until a medical retirement was necessary. He left the army with mixed feelings at the rank of Captain. He liked what he did, but it was always hard, and he was stationed at some pretty rough places. Down in the swamps of Louisiana is probably where he contracted some foul thing in his lungs which diminished his breathing capacity and caused him to have to retire early.


O.K., so Doug would not be caught dead in a Navy hat, and he was really, really sleepy when I swooped down and made this picture of him, but is that not what big sisters are for?

During this time, he met and married a girl from Kentucky. Though they were married for eleven years, she only lived with him for around 7 of those years, and not full-time at that. Having not entered into marriage until her early 30's, it seems she had spent too much time with her parents and could not break free of them. She began to return home and stay longer and longer each time until she just left Doug entirely. Doug and I both learned the heartache of divorce---a shared experience that we would have never wished on one another.


Doug with more hair than he has now....

A funny thing happened to Doug and me as we got older. We began liking one another! We still had our moments from year to year. He had a hard time when I divorced my first husband. His possessiveness of his sister kicked in, and he wanted to kick ex-husband's behind. I felt a similar emotion when his wife began her antics and had to exercise extreme restraint not to hurt her as well. Doug and I both have those Irish tempers, and you don't want to push too many buttons with either of us. I think we also share an extreme sense of justice---always wanting truth to prevail and the good guy to win. But we have also shared times when the good guy didn't win, and we have held each other up when we could.


How Doug desecrated my baby picture on my 40th birthday with black crepe paper (the pudgy little baby to my right is Doug as a baby!)



How I desecrate Dougie's picture

In our adult lives, we have shared some happy times and some sad ones. We got to share one of the funnier ones the other day when we celebrated Doug's birthday a little early on Sunday. We had the bakery make us up a cake that looked like grass and dirt in the icing, and on that, we placed a bunch of little green army men, jeeps, and helicopters in a battle scene. My Daniel decorated it while the women got lunch together, and he took the candles and made a "4" and a "2" instead of trying to count out 42 candles. Still, when we lit the thing on fire, it was like a towering inferno. I ran and practically threw the cake in Doug's lap and told him to blow the candles out quick before the house went up in flames. Some of the little green guys on the cake were casualties of the intense heat. I nearly laughed myself to death, and Doug suggested we light the candles again so that I could complete the job! That's my brother!



O.K. I know this is a really hideous picture, but the kids were taking it with the camera phone which was not set to the right picture size, and I had forgotten my digital camera, so this is the only picture which recorded the near-fatal birthday cake!

So, today, I wish my brother a happy, happy birthday and great things in the coming year! By now, he has probably picked up his personalized singing birthday card and is plotting how to get back at me next August.

I love my brothers, all four of them, very, very much. Doug and I have probably been through the most together, which gives us a special bond. Though we still have our rivalries, like who can send the most annoying greeting card for birthdays each year, we stick up for each other, too. Woe be to the person who tries to injure my brother. Happy Birthday, "Little" Brother!


Doug at a recent family reunion with our cousins, wondering why he is the only kid who did not get red hair!