A Thanksgiving Story

We are having a White Thanksgiving.

(Note: Unfortunately a rough draft of this post was sent out via email. Changes have been made on this post.)

Every year on the day before Thanksgiving I am transported back to 1980. I was a sophomore student athletic trainer living in Hillcrest dormitory with the University of Iowa football team.

As one of only three people to stay in the dorm that weekend, I was woefully lonely.

I come from a big family, and while we were never emotionally or intimately close to each. There was often a gathering of up to twenty-five people for dinner back in Medway, Massachusetts. Back then, I never grasped how distant we were to each other—strangers born into the same family.

Fifteen hundred miles from home, I romanticized about what I was missing out on—picturing a Frank Capra scene that never really existed.

My dorm room was plain, simple, and rather empty. Team captains Jay Hilgenberg, who ended up as the long-time center for Chicago Bears, and Matt Petrazelka, a …