It’s kind of amusing to me that this column is called the “Starting Line.” It’s true that in this magazine, this is the first piece of content that introduces you to what’s contained in these pages, but if you want to get philosophical about it, the work started well before I even began to put words to this document.
I recently heard a leader share an ancient piece of wisdom that I keep coming back to: We all drink from wells we did not dig, and sit under the shade of trees we did not plant. That’s certainly the case of this column that I inherited from Yale Youngblood, this magazine’s inaugural editor and the man at the helm for 111 issues of Arlington Today. I’m grateful for him and the care and commitment he demonstrated for our readers all these years, and I wish him the best in his retirement.
That bit of wisdom is also true of the stories shared by women in our Women in Business section. These high-achieving women share about the people in their lives who served as a source of inspiration and who drove them to succeed. They also provide words of wisdom to aspiring women–and men–who are just beginning to write the early chapters of their own careers.
In our Sports column, John Rhadigan introduces us to the Texas Rangers’ new (albeit formerly retired) manager Bruce Bochy, who was hired by Rangers’ new GM Chris Young, who himself inherited the team when he replaced longtime GM Jon Daniels.
In his Finish Line column, Mayor Richard Greene pays homage to Jill Hill, who’s retiring as executive director of River Legacy Foundation. We’ll literally be sitting under the shade of trees Hill planted for years to come.
As for who I am? A son of Arlington through and through. Graduated from James Bowie High School, worked my first job at Six Flags Over Texas, sun scorched my skin as a lifeguard supervisor at Hurricane Harbor while working my way through college; headed up The Shorthorn student newspaper as editor in chief at University of Texas at Arlington, and even wrote a couple of pieces for this magazine in its early days. Back then, though, I didn’t know what I didn’t know and had to bop around a little bit from DC to Los Angeles to learn a thing or two before Arlington Today’s publisher Judy Rupay called me back home.
There’s a lot of goings on in Arlington. And while it might sometimes feel like we’re just getting started, we’re participating in a long lineage of people who came before us and left their mark on our city. I look forward to continuing to tell those stories.
