We did it! Getting the first issue published was truly a labor of love. What most people would not have known is that most of the paper was put together while on a Spring Break Road trip vacation. In a way, it made the experience of putting together my first issue even that more memorable. I will always remember waking up early one morning in a hotel near the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, in a small town called Williams, Arizona located on Historic Route 66 to work on the layout and looking out the window to see snow! Or going to a coffee shop
on another early morning before the kids woke up in Hacienda Heights, California to conduct a phone interview with the view of the San Gabriel Mountains as a backdrop. I was a ball of nerves before I hit "submit" on sending the file to the printer. There were so many questions in my head. Did I get all the punctuation right? Were all the color profiles correct? Did I catch all of the typos? In the end, there were some errors but I was proud of how it turned out. I'll get better with each issue. In keeping with the nostalgia theme, I will never forget receiving the call from the printer to let me know that the paper was done, and I could come to pick them up. It was literally "hot off the press." In fact, some of the pages were still wet when I browsed through the first copy. And since I promised that I would be honest with you, a small tear did roll down my face when I saw the finished product (or maybe it was the dampness from the paper) LOL! Thank you to everyone who called, texted, or messaged me. Your encouragement and support means more to me than you will ever know. This issue has a bit of a Father's Day theme to it, so I hope you enjoy it. I wanted to highlight some of the incredible fathers I know on the cover. I hope you take a moment to reflect on the fathers in your lives - past or present. I honor and dedicate this issue to my father, my first hero, Eldon J. Providence.