Naming Conventions

So, going into this whole thing, you all know by now that Ang and I didn't know what gender Steve was going to be. The way it worked was that I had a name picked out for a boy (which we'll get to in a bit) and, therefore, Angie got her choice on the name for a girl - we made sure we had names picked out for both.

If it were to be a girl, she would have been Evan Lucille Kennedy. Angie's mom's maiden name is Arlene Evans... minus the s = "Evan." Yeah, it could be a boy's name, but names are going both ways these days anyway, so who cares. I love it - its not a super-hip and popular name like Madison and it actually means something. The "Lucille" comes from a number of women on Angie's side of the family. It's her mom's middle name, as well as the first names of both of her grandmothers. Kinda runs in the family. Again, I dig it, so I'm not going to argue.

Grandma Jean & Papa Donnie - you can't take this the wrong way. Both of you mean more than the world to me. You'll get your post. This one is about my son, Stephen's name though, and is therefore about the two most influential men in my life.

*****

My dad, Maurice, is largely the reason I'm here today. When I protested my middle-school science teacher's explanation of physics, who backed me up? When my baseball coach asked me to switch from a life of pitching and third base to playing first, who said "why not?" I ended up all-county and all-conference at first and 6th on the Cedarburg High School all-time batting average list - not an awful result. When I decided to change my college education 180 degrees from computer science to mechanical engineering, who said "why not?" My senior year, I designed and built a race car. When I asked if a Master's degree was worth it, he said, "have my words stopped you in the past?" In every case, Dad taught me the fundamentals and let me expand on them to my leisure. Dad, you taught me how to say "why?" and how to figure out the real answer behind all the bullshit - a talent for which I am eternally grateful.

*****

If you don't know all of my high-school friends well, you don't know the story of Stephen W Castner. Feel free to Google it or search the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel website. What you'll find there is the story of a man who put his belief in America before anything else. A man who, with his Army unit, was woefully undertrained while preparing to go to war in Iraq. A man who just because that's who he was, volunteered to ride shotgun on the first mission on the first day of his deployment in-country and was killed by an IED in the process. But that doesn't tell the whole story.

It doesn't tell the story of the boy I met in Cub Scouts when we were in elementary school. It doesn't tell the story of a friend who talked me into joining the high school swim team because I didn't have anything better to do. It doesn't tell you the story of a guy who enlisted in the Air Force after high school and drove the 10 hours from Cheyenne, WY to Ames, IA a couple of times every school year just to hang out, wax college-philosophical and drink a few... ok, well waaaaay more than a few... beers.

For the full story, you'll have to come down to my house and share a drink or two.

Steve didn't just mean a lot to me, though. In his many trips to Ames, he was one of the lucky guys to meet Angie in our early dating days. Just like Ang takes care of me, she took care of Steve when he needed it, earning her the "mom away from mom" moniker. I'm 100% sure Angie isn't the only "mom" Steve had strategically placed around the country.

What it comes down to is that there's not a person in the world who can replace Steve. Admittedly risking a lot, I didn't ask Steve's parents if it was ok that we passed on the namesake - I just hoped they understood the gravity our friendship and the esteem in which I held Steve. It takes a much bigger man to volunteer for military service than I am capable. I only hope that our Steve will be the kind of friend to just one other person that Kay-&-Big-Steve's-Steve was to Angie and me.




All in all, I am honored to have a son named Stephen Maurice.












If you haven't figured it out yet, I'm much more expressive in the written word than I am vocally.