Missing My Father

It was 4 years today that my father lost his brave fight with pancreatic cancer. It was weird how recently Patrick Swayze passed away from the same type of cancer at the same age as my father was when he too passed (they were both 57). I miss my father terribly and every day something reminds me of him. Usually it is a song on the radio that brings a smile to my face. You see growing up, my mother was an amazing piano player, my father was a great guitarist and I have always wanted to be a singer. We had jam sessions (all of us playing instruments until the wee hours of the morning) but we also loved seeing live musicians play, so we went to a lot of concerts. We saw the Rolling Stones, Fleetwood Mac, Tom Petty, Dixie Chicks, Celine Dion, Shania Twain, Reba McEntire, to name a few of the big stadium tours we saw. So, every time the Stones are on the radio and I hear 'You can't always get what you want' I smile up at my father. These are some of my favorite photos from his last year.

In 2004, I was living in NYC doing the internship at Annie Leibovitz's studio and I flew home for Easter. I wanted to take portraits of my whole family, so we all went down to a beautiful park near our home in downtown Huntsville, Alabama. I took a lot of photos of my family and pets, but this one I set everybody in place and I set my camera on a timer and I ran and got in the photo before the 15 seconds was up. This was our last family portrait and it was taken before we knew my father had cancer. It includes my mom and dad, my sister (Chrisie), my two pets who lived with my family in Alabama (Chopper the Shih tzu and Samson the Great Pyrenees), along with my dog who lived with me in NYC (Oliver the pug).

There is a gorgeous spring and lake at the park. Here is my

father with my 8-month old dog, Oliver, sitting by the water.

My dad with Samson - his 'man dog' that was 4 years old.

My father came to visit me in NYC shortly after he found

out he had cancer. It was a special trip and it was my birthday.

Here we are at our front row seats to a NY Mets game.

I remember my father with such fondness. He always said,

"Boys would come and go but I will always be the one constant

man in your life." Though he's not here, he still is with me.

Love you dad, Your baby girl

Global Refuge International Benefit Concert

I went to Arlington, Virginia to a benefit concert event for the amazing charity, Global Refuge International. My great college friend and sorority sister from The University of Alabama, Betsy Cantrell, helped to organize the event. The cause is near and dear to her heart since she traveled with the organization twice to Uganda and Thailand. The event was to raise money for work in Haiti and Africa and included two musical acts that Betsy knew of personally. Then the 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit the poor nation of Haiti the week of the concert and we knew it was more important than ever to raise money for GRI to send relief. I drove the 2.5 hours to visit with Betsy for the weekend and to do what I could for the cause, take photographs. Here are some of my favorites from the event. Please log onto GRI's website and help if you can. It is for a great cause!

Here is my friend, Betsy, introducing the first act, Scattered Leaves.

Daniel Palmer, lead vocals, piano, and guitar

Dana Robinson singing vocals

The whole group

Bass guitarist, Jeremy Robinson

Daniel changing it up and playing piano

Then Shaunessy McNeely of GRI from their Florida
office, introduced the second act, Stephanie Cuomo.

Stephanie did an amazing job. Check out her

powerful new CD, Hope Is On The Way.

I just loved the look of her high heels, her set list and guitar pedal.

The whole group.

Allida Born on cello

Stephanie's husband, Dan Cuomo, on drums

Here is a group of new friends (and old friends) from the event.