Part 1 of Turning Grief into Gratitude: Tom Van Ness on Loss, Community, and Healing

In this heartfelt and deeply moving episode of Morton Muse & News, we sit down with Tom Van Ness as he shares his incredible journey of resilience, healing, and finding purpose after the devastating loss of his wife.

Tom’s story isn’t just one of grief; it’s about how the support of a small-town community can become a lifeline during life’s darkest moments. From the meals delivered by neighbors to the overwhelming kindness of strangers, Tom reveals how Morton’s tight-knit fabric lifted his family in their time of need.

We’ll also explore the transformative power of turning pain into purpose. Tom reflects on the steps he’s taken to support his sons, rediscover joy, and build a meaningful new chapter—sharing laughter, running milestones, and even connecting with music through his beloved Dave Matthews Band.

This episode celebrates the heart of Morton, the strength of community, and Tom’s inspiring progress as he transforms his grief into gratitude. It’s a story that will remind you of the beauty of small-town connections and the strength that comes from leaning on each other.

Tune in to be inspired, to reflect, and to discover why Morton truly is a place where neighbors become family.

Transcript

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   To Morton Musin News where we bring you events, highlight the voices, and celebrate the unique charm of our community. From local happenings and business spotlights to heartfelt interviews with people who make Morton special, this is your go to source for staying connected with all things Morton. 

Tune in and let's discover what makes our town truly remarkable, one story at a time. 

All right, here we go. It is 2025. This is my first podcast of this year. I've kind of put the 2024 catalog and I'm starting what I'm calling season two of Morton Muse and News podcast. So lovely Yeah looking to try and Put some spotlights on people in morton and whether or not that's businesses or individuals with unique stories And today i'm excited to invite my guest tom van ness  

Hello.

Yeah. We're here at at our muse gallery off of Queenwood and Morton and I sit next to Tom sometimes some 

place, by the way,  I've been trying to 

get you here for a while now. I know Ed has too. Yes. 

Yeah. 

So yeah, glad to invite you and get to know a little bit more about you. I sit next to you during rotary sometimes and, and the energy that I get from you when I sit next to you, I feel like we have.

Maybe it's our generational thing, you know, like we're pretty close in age. So that's something that is kind of unique in Rotary, right? And so with that, I feel like we've got some things in common. We can sit down, we can talk about music. I know you're a big fan of Dave Matthews Band. I've got a Dave Matthews Band story that I can share with you later.

I'm sure you have. Some Dave Matthews stories too. A 

couple in the back pocket. 

Yeah. But I'm glad to have you here and to get to know you a little bit better. I wanted to start with like the background stuff though, and that's how I start almost every one of these podcasts is, you know, you're a, you're a Morton Knight now, but you didn't grow up in Morton.

Did you? 

Correct. I did not. I was a West central Illinois kid. 

West central. Where's that? Quincy. Quincy. Okay. Let's start from the beginning. Okay. Yeah. 

It was a land of forgot Tonya. They call it, they called West central Illinois forgot Tonia. Cause everyone forgets about it. Oh, so no, but 

Forgot Tonya that has kind of like a comic book sound to it.

Like Metropa, what is it? Where's Metropolis? Is that where Superman's from?  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. I think that's 

something like that. Okay. Uh 

huh. So tell me about Quincy small town, right? 

Yeah, it's, it was like the largest city in a hundred mile radius. Okay. You know, so it was a lot of places. It was where the farmers came into town.

It was. a central place for higher education, for medical, for business. Our family had  lived there and raised families and generations there. I was the sixth generation of our family. All out 

of Quincy. 

All out of Quincy. Yeah. Yeah. And We owned and operated a media company out of Quincy. 

Okay. 

That's where our headquarters was.

It was Quincy Media QMI, Quincy Media Incorporated. We were two newspapers, a handful of magazines, a digital ad agency, and  18 television stations around the country and a couple of radio stations. 

Okay. And you said we, we ran it like your family. 

Yeah, we were owners and operators. Okay. There was a, it was essentially two families that were involved from way back in the late 18 hundreds and leading up till 2021 when we sold.

Okay. Tell me about childhood, like running around on bicycles. Yeah, it was street lights going, gotta go home when street lights come on kind of thing. 

It, I don't know if we came home when the lights came on, that was always my curfew. Like, Hey, 

when the street lights come on, you gotta come home. Like, okay.

I remember that old starting to like the 10 o'clock news or the nine o'clock. It's nine o'clock. Do you know where your children are? 

Yeah. Yeah. Well 10 o'clock MASH came on. 

Yeah. So 

that was time for bed. Yeah. . Yeah,  . 

But no, that's where I love Morton and Quincy are very similar. Okay. Are the neighborhoods, the camaraderie between the neighborhoods.

The cool thing about Quincy is you knew everyone up and down your block. You played in the back alleys. You. Knew all the kids, you know, within, you know, a few blocks of you, 

right.  So all the way up to high school there, right? 

Yeah. 

Yeah. All right. Tell me a buddy's name that you hung that you hung 

with. Uh, probably one of my best friends with Johnny Ritter, Johnny 

Ritter, Johnny Ritter.

That sounds like a comic book name right there. Or an actor name. Yeah. That's a fake name. I don't think Johnny Ritter is real. I think that's a like a spy cover up. His nickname 

was Disco Johnny. 

Disco Johnny. Yeah. Is there a story behind Disco Johnny? Not that we 

probably want to talk on this one.  

All right, cool.

So you're running with Disco Johnny through the streets of Quincy sports in high school? 

Yeah, I was a football player. Um, I was a competitive swimmer but mainly when I got into high school, I was a football player, got recruited in college to play football. With a few concussions, which I know people listening are now giggling.

It probably explains a lot. Uh, is like, Oh, that's why Tom is a little, yeah. No, I never actually got to play football in college. What was your position? I was an offensive lineman, defensive lineman and long snapper all in high school. And then I was being converted to a fullback and 

you're a smaller framed guy.

Now, are you bigger than 

I was? I graduated high school at six foot two 60. 

That's pretty big. Yeah. For high school, senior. Yeah. 

I'm now at like two hundred and six three. 

Okay.  But now you, now you run, I don't want to snap forward too far, but you just, I think it was a couple of rotaries ago. You're putting some money in the happy bucks and you were saying something about how you ran, I don't know, 35 miles this week or something.

Yeah. We'll, we'll start when we get into the grief part or that, that part of the story, I started. A physical fitness journey just before Thanksgiving. And I think now I'm almost at 130 miles since November 26. 

Dang. Yeah. All right. Okay. So let's, let's jump back to graduating high school. You said you got recruited for college.

Where'd you go? 

Yeah. I went to Westminster college in Fulton, Missouri. Okay. Got a Choir scholarship. I was a choir boy. Loved music. Yeah. So that's something people may not realize is I love to sing. I love music. I was a music minor and they gave me money every semester to sing. 

And you were like, I'll take it 

for sure.

For sure.  Wow. 

Yeah, 

that's great. 

Yeah. 

So I love that. I was a business communications major. I did go to school for four years, took a year off. Lived in Colorado full time worked on a dude ranch. Just west of winter park, but I did that for every winter break. And 

what brought you to apply for a position working at a dude ranch?

My sister worked there. Oh, 

okay. 

Yeah. She worked there for one summer. I went out and, and saw it and it was a 12, 000 acre ranch. Oh boy. You lived on the ranch. Oh man. Got to use all of the facilities. It was five star, four diamond, like.  Cindy Crawford was a guest there. George Brett Hall of Fame, baseball player.

I one time met a major composer for Disney who was a guest out there. And I ended up, started as a dishwasher and ended up as the bar and beverage service manager. 

Did you do that for a while then? 

I did. It was a total of like six summers, three or four winters. And that's where it's a long time. Yeah.

It was every summer, whenever I wasn't in college, I was out there and that's where I met the owner of the Denver post. Who then offered me a job once I graduated college. And then 

you went and worked at the Denver Post for how long? 

About two years. 

So in that job, are you, are you a reporter? 

No, I was in sales.

Always, you know, the one that would chum up next to you shoulder to shoulder. But I loved, I loved working with businesses and finding out what They loved about their business and what made their business tick and what story that allowed us to share with the public and maybe help them fall in love with them the way I did.

Okay. And then give them a spot somewhere in the newspaper, right? Okay.  So you did that for two years. You said 

did that for two years. And then the family more or less called and asked if I'd be interested in coming back and starting to work for the family. 

okay. Was that kind of always the plan  I would imagine?

I mean, with roots, like six generations or did you say six generations of family working in  And out of Quincy, they wanted you back. 

I was the first in six generations to work in media, but not for the family. 

Okay. 

I just wanted to go get experience from someone else and I wanted to be able to find it my own.

Yeah. 

I do it my own way. 

Yeah, sure. That was really cool to be able to do that and then go back and. Take what I learned from, at that time was the largest penetrating newspaper in the country, to our little paper in Quincy, Illinois. 

So, I love this, I love this small town feel. Morton Musin News, Quincy, Illinois.

You come from six generations of people like reporting small town news.  What, what can you share, what can you say about, like, about that perspective of like the small town and the storytelling that that might give us a little bit of a glimpse into like thoughts and opinions about Morton small town, combining the news element, like, give me your thoughts on that.

Yeah, I,  you know, my,  the thing I struggled with a lot the last few years before a company sold. And. It is to say one of the TV stations we own and operated was W. E. K. Okay. You know and so,  after we moved here in 2017 and I started on the TV side of our business,  is when a lot of the conversation, And the more national level of fake news, 



Started to come up and that was really frustrating because at a local level, I don't believe that to be any farther from the truth.

It's not fake. These are,  these are journalists that are going out and talking with people and meeting with people and taking phone calls on stories. And, you know, they're it.  They're doing a job of what community they live in and they're sharing great stories and the sports casters and the weather, you know, the meteorologist, they are all do great jobs.

I right now I love Brian Walters. You got to eat segment that he does on WEK. He's going around to all of these little restaurants and eating the food and talking about the atmosphere and how good the food is. Let's go hang out with Brian. Yeah. So, I mean, anything from, you know, Something fun about a place.

You can go to eat to what's going on in city hall. Yeah, and what changes are coming to city politics or to schools or Whatever it may be. 

It's the serious and the silly and all the things in between It's a 

local local fabric and that's the bummer about newspapers kind of fading away Is they were not only news sources.

They were kind of protectors of history  They are 

kind of recorders of history, aren't they? 

Yeah. So it's really now up to kind of these TV stations to podcasters, you know, to. 

It's getting granular now. 

Yeah. Yeah. It'll be interesting to see the evolution of what technology is doing to our local news and to the people trying to talk about it.

I can imagine that you mentioned something about the.  The narrative around fake news, that's got to be a real sore subject for you. Right? I mean, it's it's I feel like pervasive now, especially with all the politics, you know, getting into accusing sources of being fake news. And and I think some of it is justifiable because there's just so much news.

There's no way that it could all be  Accurate. It's all real news, but whether or not it's accurate, I think is so much 

more places to get your information and perceptions, reality. And if,  you know, if you would ask our parents or if grandparents or great grandparents were still around, they would never in their life, consider a social media.

Platform as a new source, 

but 

in today's age, I would  say half of Americans consider some social media platform. 

Oh, I would, I would dare to say more. 

Oh yeah. I mean, if 

you include 18 and up, yeah. 

Yeah. So, I mean, it's, it's just a change in it and it's not frustrating and I'm, it's,  I got frustrated to people that called  broadcasters at our level and publishers at our level, you know, part of the mega machine, you know, and that's 

like, it's A, a team effort.

Yeah. To try and do people. Yeah, sure. So, 

but yeah, that, that would be, that would be interesting to see how it evolves forward. 

So you went back to Quincy, right. And you worked there for how long?  

2009 to 2017. Okay. On the newspaper or on the print side of our business. On the digital side of our business.

And it was  there, I met my wife and. Had our two children and honestly thought we were never going to be leaving Quincy again 

for, yeah, for sure. 

Yeah. You know, we had everything about the picket fence and the dog, but we were well on our way. 

Okay. 

And that's when we got asked if we would want to relocate over here to the Peoria region to start, you know, getting the broadcast side of the, the company experience.

Yeah. Yeah. Who did the asking who asked you to relocate? 

It was, I.  My uncle. Okay. Yeah, but it was still in the 

family business. Yeah, very 

much. Yeah, there was  five family members that still worked in the business leading up to the sale, including my wife. 

Wow. 

She was an evening news anchor. Wow. For 13 years.

She was the when we met, she was the evening anchor. Of the five and 10 o'clock news. She was then just quickly, not too long after we met, became the evening anchor of the six  and it was after our second child, she left the evening anchoring business and became the recruiter for our company and we started visiting schools like ISU, uh, but also.

Walter Cronkite School of Journalism Columbia College, University of Missouri, the top journalism schools in the country, and start recruiting these amazing college grads and college students to be interns and help develop a paid internship program for our company. And later when we were purchased by Gray she helped design the paid internship program for Gray.

And now there's over 118 television stations across the country. That 

are operate off of that kind of framework off the model 

of what Leslie brought in once, once they purchased us. So but yeah, that's in Quincy, that's where we started our family moved here in 2017. Uh, Leslie was recruiting. I was on the TV sales side and,  you know, just enjoying this region, loving Morton.

We were, we picked Morton cause it was the closest to the TV station. Yeah. But after everything that's happened, it was just, you know, The perfect  place. 

Yeah. So your kids then start going to school in Morton. Yeah. 

We moved here when they were three and one. So they were, it was just 

entry point. 

Yeah.

Daycare is actually our grandmas were our nannies. So we first experienced daycare here in Morton even. 

Okay. All right.  I know that when I was texting with you probably about last week, you were talking about your podcast that you want to get launched in 2025. I've. Can you go ahead and shed some light on that?

Cause that probably can comes close to this part in the timeline, right? Yeah. 

2017. The podcast idea was more in the last year and a half. Okay. You know, it was the podcast I am hoping to get launched here in the next couple of months was when I wanted to start last year, I've gone back to the drawing board on it a few times.

It's called a guide through grief. 

Yeah. 

It's it's  going to start out as three seasons. The first two seasons are. A look at my grief journey one at more of an internal look and season two, more of an external look at grief meaning the internal of how do we process our, our religion, our thoughts, the loneliness, you know, all of those, 

the messy, 

yeah, the, the messy innards of, of grief season two is more of an outward look or, you know, how do you handle parenting? 

Managing your household, you know, your job, um, 

relationships with friends and family and yeah, 

yeah. All those types of things. And those seasons are going to have different co hosts with me, kind of helping guide the conversation of what my grief journey was. 

Friends or professionals or both or? 

Um, they are friends.

They are professionals in their own right. They are so. Right. But, but I 

meant professionals like inside of like the council, grief. Well, no, and 

the reason, the reason why is when I went through my trauma, there was not.  I should say everything felt very clinical. That was accessible. 

Yeah. We were talking about that at, at Rotary just on Thursday.

Yeah. It's, it's very, and it was helpful, but I really wanted like average Joe's, you know, average people to come in. Like, what's your story. I wanted to feel like there was no perfect roadmap to getting through it. Cause there, there isn't. So season three and however many seasons after are going to be me interviewing people and their grief journey, right?

And it'll be a library of stories where people  can come and hear stories of grief on different topics where they can consume at their pace for the stories they want that will help them develop their grief journey. Their plan to guide themselves through their own grief to make them understand that there is no right or wrong way to do it.

The  Two rules we came up with in our household after we experienced what we did you and your boys. Yeah Yeah, my boys and I um, it was we're not gonna hurt ourselves and we're not gonna hurt other people Simple 

and if 

we could follow those two rules 

Mm hmm 

I felt like we could get through it. Okay. 

Yeah.

Like you can hurt. Yeah. Just don't hurt yourself and don't hurt other people. Oh man. I like that. I feel like you've got I mean the energy is palpable and, and your inspiration to do this podcast about something that's very difficult for people to navigate through for many. Um,  But I know that there are probably some listeners who don't know your root behind your grief, and I'm not really sure how to exactly venture into this because it's such a hurtful place.

But whatever you're comfortable sharing, let's 

talk. Yeah. Let's talk about that. So the trauma which, you know, Morton and the whole area has been like just amazing the way people have showed up,  uh, April, 2023, it was spring break. We headed down to Florida where I have grown up going for Easter breaks and spring breaks.

My wife and I went there for our honeymoon. Um, it was a condo that was in my grandma and grandpa's, you know family when they purchased, my grandpa had passed away 11 months and three weeks prior to this point. And so this was kind of our first trip going down there without seeing them. Okay.

And, um, two days into spring break.  Uh, we're on a fishing trip, get home, go to bed as he wakes me up at night  and needs to go to the emergency room. Doesn't feel well and very unlike her. Um, they treat her with dehydration, send us home  a day later. Uh, almost 20, 24 hours later, she is in toxic shock.  And her body's about to crash as we're driving back to the hospital,  not knowing what is on the horizon. 

Um,  still in Florida, not at home yet. Still in Florida. And  it was two o'clock in the morning,  

the day after Easter,  um,  had a conversation with the doctors that she wasn't going to make it.  And it was just going to be a matter of time. 

And it was about six hours later.  And we,  it was about a seven day, six day battle, where,  

um,  we did everything we could. It was a blessing that both grandmas were down there with us. Uh, so Leslie's mom was down there. My mom was down there.  My mom was able to take care of the boys so we could kind of shelter them from what was happening in the immediacy of the situation before 

you got some things figured out, some answers.

Um,  my youngest sibling,  uh, and my other brother worked aggressively to get Leslie's dad down there and S and Leslie's other closest family got down there. So when we were in the fight of our lives, For her, the people that loved her most got down there and got moments to be with her.  But ultimately, um,  it was time for her to go home.

Okay. And, um,  the day we were supposed to fly home from Florida was the day she passed away.  Um, I spent an extra day down there just trying to figure out how to get her home and go through all of that. Yeah. And, um,  And the next morning  got home, got back to Morton and that's when I told the boys  about what happened. 

That had to have been so 

And they knew mom was in the hospital. Um, they knew she was going to be in the hospital for a little bit because she was sick. 

But like you said, you were intentionally sheltering.  The severity of the situation. Cause 

we just didn't know what it was. Cause you didn't know. Cause you're 

like, you don't want to get them all worked up over something that might just be, I don't know, a bug or something.

And,  

and so we just moved into a new house here in Morton. We had rented for a year. We lived in another place on East Tyler street  for three years or so. And then we just moved over in the Thorn Ridge subdivision, had gutted a house. Hadn't even lived in the house finished for a year.  But we had like three families we were really tight with that we knew prior and known in the short time there  when this was going down, I, I texted them  

the families.

Yeah. And I was like, the boys are coming home.  Here's what's happened or happening. 

Right. 

And we had to develop a plan of how we could try to  keep them safe  from  hearing something before I got back.  To tell them what happened because it was already starting to circulate. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so  That just built such an incredible bond or the start of just realizing the, 

with those families.

And yeah, like when I grew up with in 

Quincy with the close neighborhood and  of your family that you have and like your front porch lifestyle, 

pulling out the garbage cans together and catching up about the week. 

Yeah. Yeah. That's what inherently started building out of this. And I think that's, that runs rampant through Morton.

Yeah. I think there is a. There is a,  a protection, um, a, a fierce protection. This community has for its own, 

um, Kind of reminds me of a, of a fandom, like a team. Yeah. Yeah. There's, you know, like when people are just super fanatical about, no, not to say fanatical, but the word fan, you know, fanatical about like just super passionate about their team.

Yeah. People in Morton are just like, this is my team. 

Yeah. And they,  they just want to protect that, that community.  Protect this community and the woven nature. And that was just the start of where I started to see that. But the trauma was, uh, Leslie passing away and in a handful of days due to strep a 

pneumonia. 

Wow. 

Hmm. 

That had to have been so hard. I can't even.  

It's, um,  

Every single time I go to try and form a response  Something else kind of like wedges itself into my mind and like no that this is That must have been so hard to talk to the boys That must have been so hard to see the family rallying and it must have been so hard to have this Faith and confidence in the medical system and to be disappointed That must have been so hard to do this in a place that wasn't at home and oh man tom.

I'm, sorry it was 

um  

I thought it was 

It's really,  you don't know until you  unfortunately have to be there in that scenario  to sit there and watch  helplessly as someone's  slides away.  And you just don't think that gets any harder until you have to go talk to your kids. And there were.  

Cries and screams.  And I just, there's so much as it burned into your memory on that, on that day.

Oh, 

scarred. 

Um, but to your point, like that's, I think the part of grief that is, needs to be talked about because we want to think of something to say, or we want to think about what we're feeling  and we allow anything  to get in its way.  So we don't have to 

avoidance. 

Yeah. 

Yeah. It's like a traffic jam of emotions.

Yeah. And instead of letting one car pass, one emotion go, he just kind of shut down the road. 

Yeah. Or to that point we start hitchhiking and grab the first ride we can out of there. 

Yeah. Wherever it's going. You don't even, and I did the same, 

but we talked a little bit like I'm a big Dave Matthews fan fan  in my life growing up was like the guy who went to one, maybe two shows a summer until we started having kids. 

And then, um, about a month and a half before Leslie passed away,  there was a weekend trip we had been trying to do for years, out to the Gorge Amphitheater in Washington, where Dave Matthews band played every Labor Day.  And she had no desire to ever go, but she had booked and planned a trip with one of our best friends and myself to go. 

Because she knew that it was your band to 

cancel the last couple of years because of her job and getting in the way of me being able to go. 

So that one finally actually took place. And it finally actually 

took place and it got closer and closer to that trip and friend and I decided to still do it because it was Leslie's stream.

And it was a bucket list trip for me. And  that started the first of like 16 shows in a year and a half. That's a lot. Yeah. And it was something that was very wonderful  because  I got to go to a place where no one knew me. 

Mm hmm. 

And as time evolved, I got to smile,  sing,  dance  without the guilt and the shame.

Of the 

attention you're talking about people not knowing you there, 

like, how can he be so happy right now? Like, it's not that I'm so happy right now. 

I'm trying. 

Yeah. I'm just trying to get through the damn day. 

Yeah. 

Um,  so,  but also all of those concerts became ways for me to, you know focus on other things other than my, my feelings and my distractions and my grief.

You know, I focused on the boys focused on managing our house. 

You 

know, the, the small, like that, not the small things, those important things in the very basic things for me, like make sure I went to my therapy and showed up to my job. But then after that it was 

like, 

that's 

pouring into your kids. 

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.  

Double checking, triple checking.  Lots of talking at home still.  

Yeah. I mean, the 

talking to the boys through it  

last week, I think it was or Sunday, uh, it was Sunday night and my oldest came walking out of the room after about 20 minutes after getting them down and was just came out crying.

I said, mom, you know, you meet them on the stairs, you hug, you hold, you know, it's,  I got, uh,  A dozen stories from being in five guys to being in the aisle at Walmart's where one of the boys or myself 

where it just happens, just happens and hijacks you a bit and who cares about 

what someone 

else thinks. Oh, you mean being in a public place like that?

Yeah. 

We just hugged. I would get down on my knees. I would hug the boys. There are times where we just say a prayer. It didn't matter. Like, okay. It was our, the saying of the three of us was there's no stronger three than we,  and that was just, you know, they talk about triangle, a triangle is one of the strongest structures.

Yeah. And you think of a tripod being three legs and that's just, that's what the boys and I started to do in those moments was just support and lean on each other. And we got through it and we're continued to get through it. And there's. No finish line to grief because it will come up whenever it wants.

Um,  

 There is no end finish line to that, right? That's something you got to carry with you.  Um, well, I mean, I got a lump in my throat. 

Yeah. Well, let's, um, let's bring it back to Morton. Let's bring it back to Morton. And, you know, so that day I was telling the boys  after a couple hours of  just yuck,  I texted those families  and a couple others in the neighborhood.

I said, Hey, can you guys, and the kids come up, like, we just need to play 

Yeah. 

And.  Um,  I remember opening up the garage door  and like myself, the boys, grandparents, my brother,  um, come walking out  and  

all these families at the same time are walking up the driveway  and like all of the kids go running for each other  and like meet in the middle 

and just hug  and like cry. 

And, and all the parents just stop  and, um,  and the kids get it,  kids just get it. And  why do you think that is?  What do you mean 

the kids get it? 

Kids just get the sense of like friendship and love and community. And they spend their days together at school. They spend their afternoons and weekends together in the neighborhoods. 

They just 

adulting makes it complicated. 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We over as adults, we overanalyze. We worry about what other people think all of all of that. Yeah. It 

reminds me of the term like paralysis by analysis, like constantly just like ruminating and cycling and echoing thoughts just over and over until you're not doing anything, but kids don't really. 

We shouldn't generalize, but kids, I think it's easier.  

And so, but that's, you know, where it just started to happen. Um,  over the next week for several days, I was planning the funeral and doing the obituary. And  I think it was about the second day being home. I got connected with Scott at the Morton community foundation. 

And and I know he was a guest a couple of weeks ago on the show.  I,  I didn't want to finish the obituary  Without a purpose  of memorials.  

So you got something wrapped up with Scott real quick, 

very quick. We got two endowments started. One  was the a scholarship endowment. She was the first of her family to go to college and graduate from college.

And it was at ISU.  And so we have a scholarship fund with Scott and then we did the another one that focuses around sports and education. And when we moved here to Morton, we didn't have any family.  It was the sports programs and the schools that got not only our kids integrated into the community. 

So.  It got us integrated as well. 

So another endowment then going into the school district? 

Yeah, that helps. Well, not just the school, it helps with any programs focused around sports. Oh, in the Morton community. Yeah, and it, and it can be it can be anywhere. Our focus is to help the Morton School District first, but Quincy also plays a role in that.

And those are kind of the two communities we want to try to be able to help in and focus in. Leslie was involved at ISU, but she also was very involved with so many journalism schools around the country and the endowments were a testament to that because  I have to check with Scott, but I, I think between the two, the two endowments are almost at a hundred thousand dollars  and 

that's got to feel good.

That's got to feel pretty amazing. 

Yeah. Yeah. It's Through 

somebody's lasting memory,  there's still a, a, a, a gratitude, a, a sense of,  um, steering and helping somebody else along their journey. 

Yeah. And we, we have our, I guess I call it fun with it, the boys and I, every.  A they bring home on their report card we put into like a fund that we make a donation into.

Yeah. Into hers. Oh, I love it when they, they're goalies at soccer, so when they hold shutouts, we make a donation like a $20 donation towards shutouts. So cool. So just little fun things like that. Yeah. And it gives 'em little things to fire for and, and go for. And so that's, that's just what we do. And that was the part That's awesome.

Part of that. But it was  a neighbor across the street who I've met like twice at this point. Yeah. Brought over, started bringing over food and then told me not to worry about mowing the yard that he had hired a company to come by and mow my yard every week until I was ready to start mowing 

again.

Wow. 

And, and never asked for a penny  of that. A friend that we knew in the soccer program collaborated a meal train that went from like April to like June or July, I think July 4th weekend, you know, for three or four days a week. I got to learn how to cook and be a chef. So I love cooking. That's part of my therapy.

Okay. 

I was the the cook and the chef in our household. So I still love to cook and need to do that. But having a meal train. From people we didn't even know right the notes and the cards that came with these meals and you're looking at the card 

And you're like, I don't think I know this person. How do they know me?

You're trying to put it together 

fast food drop offs or Jimmy John's or long gone dola like and I mean a couple of them were and they were great and they were fine, but like I  You're getting 

to the point where like, 

this was effort, the realization that 

they're spending time in their kitchen and they're making their runs to Aldi and they're picking up their stuff and they're preparing this all in a meditation of this is going to go to Tom and his boys. 

And there was groups. I mean, all those were home cooked meals because there was another group that was putting together gift certificates  and like we've got hundreds of dollars of gift certificates to restaurants. Right. Like, so when I was just to make it easier, make it a little bit easier. And, um, um,  cards. 

And the notes from people, I just had no idea, you know, and they were even signed a, a Morton family member, a Morton neighbor, you know, not even a name. Yeah. Yeah. And that's just,  

because it's not important that it's their 

name. It's yeah. It's just the effort that they took that made such an impact. And it's not that,  um,  I love Quincy  and I love that area.

Yeah.  And that's where all of our family is. All of my family, a lot of Leslie's family,  but  man,  I, it's hard to think a community can show up bigger than what I got here. I mean, like it felt four or five times the size of, of what Morton is and it was. I, Ooh, I like that. It felt bigger. Yeah. And every, everyone that's listening to this, whether you, you made a prayer for us, you brought a meal to us.

Whether you just showed up to hang out, whether you waved at us, like I just want everyone to know it. It was felt,  it was a source of energy. It was love that like, just came right into all of us at, at our house, and we're so appreciative.  Of what this community was able to do and show up for us and help get us through 

Get us through. Yeah. Yeah get us along. Yeah. Yeah