March Memories

I will never forget the way my father, Patrick, celebrated St. Patrick's Day (March 1st to March 31st). His happiest days included the entire month of March when he owned Mulligan's in Arizona. He made sure that the beer was green and even offered green bagels. The piano man entertained packed crowds and a Dixieland band played on the weekends.

All three of my sisters were born during the month of March. When my wife was pregnant with our daughter, I prayed for her to be born on St. Patrick's Day. Her doctor told us to forget about it, we could expect our new baby around the end of the month. At 8:00 pm on March 16th, my wife told me something was happening. I immediately told her it was too early and we still had four hours to go (not the best thing to say to a pregnant person). Our daughter arrived in the morning and I thanked God for answering my prayer.

When it was time to launch Zoom, we set March 17th as our target date. We needed to invent software and find customers in order for that to happen. We also needed to set up our distribution department in a very short period of time. We allowed one extra week in our time-line to test our software but the process was slow and we ended up with no safety net.

On the final night of typing ads, our computer screens kept going blank. It turned out that the final software code was still being invented as we typed ads on our deadline. In order for us to meet the printer deadline and have a magazine on St. Patrick's Day, the software had to work perfectly. When we pushed the "send button", the software worked and Zoom was born on March 17th, 2005.

Our first-born son carries the middle name, Patrick, and our youngest son looks more like my dad every day. As we get ready to celebrate all the March birthdays, I will raise a green beer to Heaven and give a special toast to my father. If he had been around a little bit longer on this planet, I am sure he would have discovered blog writing. One of his biggest passions in life was writing and I am glad I inherited that gift from him. Right now, I am visualizing my dad passing out green beer and green bagels to all the angels and saints and he is inspiring me to keep writing about what a great place Heaven is. It is a good thing the angels enjoy the green beer and bagels and my dad's jokes. I wouldn't want the bouncer, St. Michael, to have to cast them out. In Heaven and on earth, everyone is at least a little bit Irish during the month of March. May your March be filled with happiness as you welcome the season of Spring.