JohnCr8on’s Snapshots

Rio de Janeiro 2008

John and Joni Creighton were married on August 19, 1989 in St. John’s Catholic Church in rural Rawlins County.  In twenty years of marriage, they have lived in Boston, Massachusetts; Falls Church, Virginia; Bethesda and Rockville, Maryland, and Boulder, Colorado.  They have called Longmont, Colorado home since 2001.  Both John (1983) and Joni (1986) are graduates of Atwood High School.

John is the son of Robert and Barbara (Wilson) Creighton.  He was born in Atwood on October 11, 1964.  He followed the family tradition (fifth generation) attending the University of Kansas where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa with degrees in economics and business administration in 1987.  He received a Masters in Public Policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government in 1990.

John worked on Governor Mike Hayden’s campaign staff in 1986 and 1990.  For the past 20 years, John has worked as a public leadership consultant with a focus on public opinion research.  He worked for The Harwood Institute for Public Innovations from 1991-1999.  John founded his own consulting firm in 1999.  Most recently, John agreed to write for the community section of the online edition of a major national newspaper.

John is active in Longmont, too.  He was elected to the St. Vrain Valley School District board of education in 2007, the same year he succeeded his father as president of the High Plains Bank Holding Company.

Joni is the daughter of John and Betty (Rooney) Mickey.  She was born in Atwood on May 20, 1968.  She was a member of the Atwood High School state cross country championship team in 1986.

Joni attended Kansas State University and graduated with a bachelor of science in nursing from the University of Maryland in 1994.  She worked in the emergency room of Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, as a floor nurse at Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring, Maryland and as a research nurse in Boulder, Colorado.

John and Joni have three children, Emma Cloe born on May 26, 1997; Joseph Paul born on August 7, 1999; and Ada Grace born on December 18, 2001.  All three children were born in Boulder, Colorado.  Emma, Joe and Ada Grace hold the distinction of having two grandparents serve as Mayor of Atwood – Bob Creighton, 1983-1991 and Betty Mickey, 1999-present (Betty is the first woman and longest serving Mayor in Atwood history).  The children enjoy visiting Atwood where they take swimming lessons most summers.

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Submitting to The Rawlins County History Book

I am currently working with community organizations in Detroit and Battle Creek, Michigan.  I’ve spent quite a bit of time in Michigan in my career.  But, this is the first time in about 10 years.

In the late 1990s, I spent a good deal of time in Flint.  It is a place where I learned that, sometimes, it is very hard to find common ground with other people.  But, it’s worth the effort.

Flint is a city that has faced more than its share of hardships.  Once a place to which people would flock from across the country, even world, in hopes of working for General Motors, it is now a city commonly disparaged.

Over recent years, the city has had to grabble with high rates of unemployment, crime and severe racial tensions.

I had the opportunity to work with a group of non-profit executives who were meeting on a monthly basis to figure out ways to collaborate.  The effort was going nowhere fast.

Everyone in the group had preconceived views of one another.  People “knew” each other’s “real” motives.

Indeed, the non-profit community in Flint had a long history of turf wars driven in part by the racial tensions that plagued the whole community.  Many of the executives at the table made little effort to work together.  Their behavior was so passive-aggressive it was embarrassing.

After several months of no progress, those of us trying to husband collaboration were on the verge of calling off the effort.  More than once I sat in my hotel room at night and wondered why in the hell I was in Flint rather than at home with my family.

As a last ditch effort, we decided to change the agenda for our December meeting.  We told the group there would be no business oriented conversations.  Instead, we would have a potluck.

The non-profit executives were told to bring a favorite dish and be prepared to answer one question:  Why do you live in Flint?  That’s the one thing they all had in common.

People were skeptical of the idea at first.  So, to get buy in, we promised people we’d stick to a schedule:  Each person would have 10 minutes to talk about why they lived in Flint.

The first person spoke for 15 minutes.  The second person brought pictures of her childhood home in Flint.  She spoke for 20 minutes about her 50 years in the community.  The third person, an amateur ventriloquist, brought his dummy to help tell his story.  Forty minutes later it was clear that not everyone would have a chance to tell a story on this night.  But no one cared.

The group was having genuine fun together.  A woman in the group asked the others if they wanted to continue the potluck at her home.  Everyone agreed.  That night in my hotel room I was glad to be in Flint.  It was my best night there.

Day two of the potluck was just as powerful as the first.  The group laughed together and there was a tear shed on more than one occasion.  I can’t even tell you how long we met.

Trust formed over those two nights.  The group was able to look beyond professional turf and the color of one another’s skin to focus on a common love.  The non-profit executives were no longer executives.  On those nights they were just folks who called Flint home.

Flint still faces more than its share of challenges.  The executives who took part in this initiative still get tired and discouraged.  But now they have someone to turn to that they didn’t have before.  Many of the executives continue to meet for breakfast on a semi-regular basis to offer each other encouragement, swap ideas and occasionally do work together.

As for me, this experience taught me the value of taking the time to do the hard work to find common ground.  And, sometimes all that takes is a little food and a few good stories.

Perhaps, not such hard work after all.

I’m not a good driver.  For years, I pretended to be a good driver who had a lot of bad luck.  Over time, that story didn’t hold up.

The tone was set on my sixteenth birthday.  I drove Matt Cunningham and Tim Yount to Pooch’s Pizza in Herndon to celebrate (we were crazy).  On the way home, I slammed on the brakes for no apparent reason.  Matt flew from the back to the front seat.  His head cracked the rearview mirror.

Dad's Car

I wrecked both my parents’ cars on consecutive Saturday nights.  The first time really wasn’t my fault – really.  Dean Carlson and I were cruising in Colby when the car was rear ended.  Dean had to do several months of physical therapy to deal with the whiplash.

The second Saturday I had more explaining to do.  I was giving Brad Leitner a ride home from a wedding dance.

Mom's Car

  I started backing out before he closed the door.  The door didn’t like that too much.

I even had “bad luck” from the passenger side.  Riding around with Denise McMillan one night I shifted her truck from drive to reverse.  We were already moving.  The transmission didn’t like that too much.  I think that was expensive.

It may seem strange with all that bad luck I had two driver jobs.  I drove a wheat truck for Bill Lewis one summer.  It worked out well.  I never rolled a truck – though I had it up on two wheels a couple of times.  And, I quickly learned you need to dump your load slowly.  It took Tracy Buford and me at least 20 minutes to scoop out the back of the truck once so I could put the hoist back down.

I drove Mike Hayden during the ’86 Campaign for governor.  I mostly did okay.  There was no body damage on any of the vehicles we used.  I did back over a telephone box with a mobile home in Mark Frame’s front yard while touring southwest Kansas.  And, there was the time I knocked over several cones along a construction site.  But, only once the whole summer did Mike say, “I think I’ll drive.”

My dad helped me buy a Dodge Daytona my sophomore year of college.  That was good news for Scott Focke.  I quit asking to borrow his Charger.  I had a lot of trouble with Scott’s car.  I was used to driving a stick shift.  Scott’s car had no clutch but a really big brake pedal.  My left foot hit that more than once.  Apparently, you push down on a clutch a lot harder than on a brake.  My passengers were luckiest if their seatbelts were fastened.

The Daytona got its share of scrapes – but mostly on the undercarriage, so it didn’t really show.  I was driving a gal home from a date one night near Glenn Frame’s apartment.  It was a winding road.  I thought I’d show her what the Daytona could do.  We went right over the curbs.  Twice.  The new CV joint set me back a bit.  And, I didn’t have a second date.

I was only embarrassed once.  I called a tow truck to help me out one day because I’d stalled on my way to Clinton Lake near Lawrence.  I’d over heated or something.  The tow truck driver put a little gas in the tank and said, “That should help.”

I was beginning to think it was more than bad luck when Joni and I moved to Washington, DC.  We were taking Tim Fitzgibbon, a grad school friend, home.  We were driving south toward Lafayette Square.  That’s the big park right across the street from the White House.  It was dark.  I didn’t realize my speed.  I didn’t realize the park was so close.  We went right over the sidewalk and on to the grass.

I did a quick u-turn, squeezed between a utility box and pole and was right back on the street. No harm. No foul.  Tim turned to me a little ashen and said, “That’s some of the best and worst driving I’ve ever seen.”

I finally gave in and admitted I was a bad driver when Emma was one year old.  Joni and I took Emma to Ireland.  We rented a car and drove all over the country.  Many of the roads were barely two lanes wide with thick hedges lining both sides.  I drove.  Joni and Emma rode in back.

One afternoon, Emma’s bottle fell off the front seat and onto the floor.  I tried to grab it.  I sat back up and saw a bus coming straight toward us.  The hedge seemed like our best option.

Joni and Emma stayed at a bed and breakfast while I traveled with a tow truck to get a new car.  The rental agent asked me what happened.  “Apparently, I’m not a very good driver,” I said.

“I’ve never heard that one before,” she replied and then dutifully noted my comment in her notes.

The first time my Honda civic was nearly totaled was good luck – for me.  A woman hit me at 10 miles an hour in a parking lot. She hit the car just right to wrinkle every quarter panel. Got to take out several years of door dings.

The second time I totaled my Honda civic was just dumb. I was driving when I shouldn’t have – late after being up many hours. I fell asleep and ran a red light.  I injured a woman.  Fortunately, she recovered.  But it was wrong and unnecessary.

In the interest of time, I’ll spare the story of my most recent trip into the ditch.  Let me just say a few words.  East bound. Ice. Guard rail. Median. Guard rail. West bound. Really lucky. New truck.

It’s worked out for the best, really.  Joni gets motion sickness very easily.  She does best in a car best when she drives.  She does.  And, I get more time to read when we travel.  Everyone’s happy. 

Perhaps especially our insurance company.

“I’m trilingual,” declared a speaker at a conference I attended recently. “I speak English, Spanish and Agriculture.”

Most of the people in the audience were from the suburbs of metropolitan areas – Denver, Salt Lake City and Phoenix.  The speaker grew up in southeast Colorado.

She went on to explain what it means to speak “Agriculture.” “I can put my foot on the back of a pickup and have a 30 minute conversation without saying a word.”

I don’t think people in the audience got the joke.  They sat in silence.  The speaker tried once more. “Well, maybe an occasional, ‘Yep.’”  Still nothing.  Just blank stares.  The speaker went on with her talk.

My sister-in-law Christie was at a conference several years ago.  Participants were asked to name their cultural heritage.  Most people said Irish, Czech, or Mexican-American.  Christie’s answer was good.  She replied, “I’m rural American.”

Culture is defined as the behaviors and beliefs of a particular group of people.  Since leaving Atwood, Joni and I have lived in small and large cities, the inner suburbs, and exurbs.  I have noticed distinct differences between the behaviors and beliefs of rural Americans compared to their urban counterparts.

Some of these differences show up in our language.

A co-worker in Bethesda, Maryland approached me in the office one day.  “I like your outfit,” he said.

“Yeah,” I replied, searching for words.  “Where I come from, guys don’t say that to each other.”

Our language differences can cause confusion.

During our freshman year at KU, Scott Focke asked a gal from Chicago to go to dinner.  She readily agreed.  He went to her house at noon the next day.  When she answered the door she greeted him with, “What the hell are you doing here.”

Confused, Scott explained, “You said you’d go to dinner with me.”

“Yeah,” she replied, “tonight.”

In graduate school, I used language as a quick filter to identify people who I could relate to.  People who drank “pop” were probably cool.  People who drank “soda” were potentially east coast snobs.  Pittsburg people were cool.  People from St. Louis, a little iffy.

It wasn’t a perfect system.  One of my best friends from college and one of my best friends from graduate school were from St. Louis.  To my dismay, my own children say, “Soda.” We all fail as parents in many small ways.

I have noticed a few other distinct differences between rural and urban America.

In rural America, participation is an expectation – in part, because it’s a practical necessity.  There is not social pressure to volunteer in the larger communities where we’ve lived.  There’s more people in cities to get things done so more people can sit on the sidelines.

I was waffling on whether to go out for football my freshman year – I only weighed 100 pounds.  I saw Coach Briggs in the summer and he said, “We really need you.”  He wasn’t interested in my talent.  He knew there was little of that to be had.  He needed bodies so the varsity could practice.

There will be a Longmont football team, a school musical and plenty of school clubs whether my kids choose to participate or not.

Schools do not play a central role in community life in cities.  When Joni and I lived in the DC area, before we had kids, we knew absolutely nothing about the schools.  I’m on the school board in Longmont and, still, schools do not play the same role in our lives as they did in Atwood.

We have not been to a single high school football or basketball game this year.  Our kids are involved in many activities of their own – some school related, many not.  It’s much harder in large cities to rally community support for schools because many people are completely detached from this institution.

Social networks are fragmented in large towns.  We have our neighborhood friends, school friends, community friends and church friends.  There is some overlap among these groups but far less than you might imagine.  This leads me to the biggest difference I’ve noticed between rural and urban America.

Urban Americans can live their lives in anonymity if they choose.  Rural Americans don’t have that choice.  Living one’s life in public, every day, every hour, has to impact our behavior.  I know it did mine.

Small town people plan their trip to the grocery based on how much time they have to talk.  If it’s a busy day, they avoid going to the store or risk being stuck in a long conversation.  Urban people go to the store when it’s convenient.  The odds of seeing someone you know are low.

I must confess that when my mom sent me to the post office to collect the mail in Atwood, I would change course if I saw certain cars parked in front.  In Longmont, that never crosses my mind.

Small town people are more guarded with information than people I know in cities.  In a small town, you know you’re not necessarily sharing information in confidence.  You reveal yourself to one person and there’s a chance you’re revealing yourself to the whole town.  In cities, you don’t run the same level risk.

Small town people also learn to ask fewer questions.  Don’t pry unless someone volunteers information.  The same coworker who admired my “outfit” would often stand in my office door and ask, “So, how are you?”  My standard reply was, “Hey, man. Don’t crowd me.”

Giving people space can create its own tension.  I remember a scene in The Meadow – a book that better captures small town life than any I’ve ever read – a rancher refused to tell his neighbors about his problems.  He was deeply offended when no one offered to help.

I have learned that you can understand people much better if you understand their culture.  I moved to the east coast thinking that city folks were rude.  I learned that in the east coast culture people stay up too late.  The Tonight Show does not begin until 11 p.m.  Monday Night Football does not end until well after midnight.  Easterners aren’t rude.  They’re just tired.

Similarly, when I’ve tried to help people understand me, I tell them of the impact of rural culture on my life.  For instance, I don’t consider it an option to participate in the community.  It’s just something you do.  And, work hours are not a time to chat.  Well, really, there’s never a good time to “chat.”

I speak Agriculture, too.  Yep!

I look at the picture on the card and I can’t help but feel joyful. A proud mom and dad, an enthusiastic brother and sister and a new baby all looking at the camera beaming with smiles (except for the baby of course). There is no one I know who deserves such happiness more than Debbie.

It’s a bittersweet feeling, looking at this loving family. It’s not a family I ever thought I’d know.

Debbie and Joni were co-workers at Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Springs, Maryland. They clicked right away. Paul, Debbie’s husband, and I hit it off, too. We became good friends. We liked to hang out together as our work schedules would allow. Mostly at their two bedroom house and our one bedroom apartment. We would just sit around and talk

We missed them when we left Maryland for Colorado.

We were excited to visit Maryland just a few months after their son Ben was born. I had a business trip and Joni joined me. It was great to be reunited. I can still remember sitting on Paul’s and Debbie’s couch, rocking Ben, while counting his eleven toes (that’s not a typo). I teased Paul and Debbie. “The kids are going to love this at school,” I said. “Six toes on one foot… now, that’s cool.” That was nearly 13 years ago.

But school playmates is not what fate had in store for Ben. It turned out that Paul’s and Debbie’s DNA did not mix well. A genetic fluke limited Ben’s time. He was just a brief visitor to our world.

Paul and Debbie told us the tragic news casually over dinner when Ben was about 18 months old. They were both pillars. I could not believe how they were able to muster so much calm (on the outside at least) to talk about Ben’s condition. We were grateful to be by their side along with a handful of others when they laid Ben to rest a few months later.

Ben’s picture stands in my office to this day. He sits next to photos of my Mom and Dad and our three kids. He reminds me of how precious life is. He reminds me not to take for granted the time I have with my own children. I try to listen to Ben as best as I can. I am proud to have known him.

I am proud of Paul and Debbie, too. They handled the cruelties of parenthood with as much grace as I think is possible. Unfortunately, their marriage could not survive. They both wanted to be parents again but could not bear the risk of having children together. The odds, though small, were that the same ailment could inflict any child they had together. So, they parted ways.

Paul and Debbie both have new families, now. There are four children between them. We keep in touch mostly through holiday cards, occasional emails and hopeful promises to visit sometime soon.

From the pictures and letters we receive, it is clear that Paul and Debbie are both happy. They are in love filled homes. We are happy for them because they are two people with much love to give.

I am sad that Paul and Debbie could not be a family together. But, I find them both inspiring. While I am certain there remains profound sadness deep within their hearts, they did not let the cruel twists of fate consume them. They picked themselves up. They dusted themselves off. They are both accomplished professionals, loving spouses and devoted parents. Role models for all of us with families and careers.

As I look up now at Ben’s picture, I like to think that the smiling faces I found in today’s mail are his legacy. Ben was part of a family that could not be. And, yet, in his short time on earth he and his parents inspired others, including Joni and me.

Ben, Paul and Debbie are just ordinary folks who are also a testament to the fragility and tenacity that lies within us all. I look at Ben’s picture, I think of Paul and Debbie, and I realize it is possible to navigate through the most difficult times life has to offer and find happiness, again.

I will be forever grateful for the lessons they taught me about love.

I can’t wait to give my kids a hug tonight.