Nothing of this magnitude gets accomplished without a great deal of help and support. We couldn't possibly acknowledge everyone who has contributed to this project (well, we could, but the list is so long most of you would stop reading it)--but we would like to give special thanks to the following people:
We owe the most to Katelinn and Camden Shaw. You each chose to follow your passion, and those choices involved a huge amount of work and sacrifice. But most of all, they required courage. How fortunate we are to have been inspired by our children to take our own leaps of courage!
Nancie thanks her parents, Nancie and Lou Linn. Many of my favorite childhood memories are of camping and hanging out around water; I know my love of living outdoors came from you! (And thanks to my siblings, Cheryl & Les & Mary, for tolerating my weirdness...no, wait, they're just as weird as I am...)
Art thanks his dad, Clarence Shaw, for teaching him the value of tenacity. Things always break, yet with imagination and perseverance, things can always be fixed. (Patience helps, and plenty of tools, but it's the refusal to give up that ultimately does the trick!)
Plenty of thanks are in order to the Newport High School orchestra students. Without you guys being as wonderful as you are, I would never have been ready to move on to the next adventure. The deep satisfaction I felt at making so much amazing music with you gave me a sense of fulfilling one great purpose--so I could now begin to fulfill a different purpose. Toward the end of the classic movie Casablanca, Rick's parting words to Elsa are "We'll always have Paris" (a beautiful shared memory). Well, we will always have Shostakovich, and Schubert, and Beethoven, and Mahler, and Barber, and Phantom, and Jupiter...
Thanks to fellow voyagers David Ingalls & Jan Lippen-Holtz, Lanham & Melinda Deal, Andy Schwenk and Arthur Howard. The stories, insights and advice are invaluable!
We managed to get rid of most of our accumulated Stuff, but thanks to all of you storing what we kept: Bill & Marilee Grimm, Larry & Corinne Stubson, Jim & Carol Van der Veen, Chase & Christi Chang.
If you're still reading this: thank you, too! Our many friends and relatives have made a positive impact on our plans and our choices. We are grateful to you all!
