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

It’s a bummer when a kids’ movie is not really for kids.  It’s even more of a bummer when the marketing department dresses it up as if it is.  Children who should not see the movie come in droves.  Adults who would adore the movie stay home.

The new Disney-Pixar movie UP is a movie badly misrepresented by corporate marketing teams.  The posters and floor displays promote “See it in 3D.”  The trailers feature the talking dog and a loveable, laughable boy.  The outtakes are all comedic.  The highlighted critic quotes promote the film as “Hilarious.”

The advertising for UP is a gross misrepresentation of what the movie really is.  It’s not a movie for kids at all.  My kids were disappointed, sad and scared.  They never want to see it again.

I found it to be one of the most compelling dramas I’ve seen in years.  I would gladly watch it again.

UP deftly weaves together themes that many, if not most of us confront, at one time or another in our lives – unrealized dreams, bitterness, loneliness on the one hand; love, companionship and achievement on the other.

The movie’s hero turned villain helps us understand the poison of bitterness.  In not so subtle ways, UP shows how we can destroy ourselves if we spend our lives revenging insults and injustices.  Knowing what we have accomplished is far more important than what others think of what we’ve done.

In just a few minutes time with little dialogue, the movie celebrates the essence of a lifelong love affair between two ordinary people.  Carl and Ellie are two of the most real characters I’ve witnessed on the big screen.

I don’t know if the movie’s writer, Bob Peterson, is married.  He sure gets what it’s like to be part of long and happy marriage.  Carl and Ellie say the things that a happily married couple says to one another – in just a few words, the nod of head, squeeze of a hand, a small deed.  All the things we do every day to say, “I love you.”  Carl feels the loneliness that only a lifetime of love can bring on.  He’s given permission to move on by a spouse who wants his happiness to continue.  Every couple whose been part of a long, happy marriage will recognize these scenes.

UP puts into perspective our big dreams.  They are wonderful.  They should be celebrated and pursued.  But it’s the little things we do every day that add up to greatest adventures of all.  As the little boy Russell explains, “It’s the boring stuff,” like counting cars while eating ice cream, that we remember most.

It makes no difference if we’re a child or a grown up, being with someone we love every day is a greater adventure than traveling to the most exotic destinations in the world.  It’s a good perspective for every adult who’s pondering what they’ve done – what they are doing – with their life.  Most of us have done much more than we might think.

UP captures all of this in a compelling story with just the right amount of comedic relief – and a few tears.

I recommend the movie whole-heartedly to all my friends and none of their kids.

I’m sorry that the Disney-Pixar marketing department got the movie so wrong – I wonder if the marketing team even saw the film.  As a result of their work, too many children will be unnecessarily disappointed or stay up worried that they might have nightmares.  And, too many adults will miss out on one of the best dramas of the year – of any year.

It could have been a classic.

We stood on the boardwalk in Atlantic City looking out over the Atlantic Ocean.  There was a faint hint of light on the horizon – a sign of the coming sunrise.  It was a new and bewildering sight for two kids from the Great Plains.

It was not quite six in the morning.  We were very tired.  It had been a long night.

There was no good reason for us to be in Atlantic City.  We were on our way to Boston.  Atlantic City was hundreds of miles out of our way.  But, there we stood. 

Twenty four hours earlier we were in Louisville, Kentucky.  We had spent the night with Phil Priebe – our close friend, my roommate at KU and now our brother-in-law.

We were on our first road trip as a married couple.  We were moving all of our worldly possessions to Boston – a mattress and box springs, table and chairs, a television, kitchen supplies and a few boxes of clothes, towels and sheets .  I had one year of grad school to finish.  Joni would find a job.

We had no car so we rented the smallest truck available at the Colby, Kansas U-Haul.  Our belongings did not begin to fill the truck.  They would more than fill the three to four hundred square foot apartment we rented on Beacon Hill.

On the advice of an older friend, we decided to live in the city.  We just couldn’t afford much space.  Our basement apartment was so small it was not possible to open the stove and the refrigerator at the same time.  The bugs we discovered at night were as big as the mice.

We left Louisville early in the morning and made good time.  We stopped Hagerstown, Maryland for a late lunch.  We sat in a booth at Wendy’s and studied the Atlas.  The wheels in our minds began to turn.

Should we turn north and take the shortest path possible to Boston?  Or, should we see the sights along the East Coast?  We had three days before we had to return the truck.  But, we didn’t want to pay to stay in a hotel.

The answer was clear.  Drive all night and sleep in the truck if we got tired.  Those kinds of answers make sense when you’re 21 and 24.  And thus began our Clark Griswold vacation.

We turned south at Hagerstown and headed for Washington, DC.  We didn’t count on rush hour traffic.  Little did we know that we’d wrestle with this traffic every day just a year later when we moved to Virginia and then Maryland.

The traffic was so thick we didn’t make it to the city until well after dark.  We were having trouble reading the map.  We drove through Georgetown which we didn’t realize at the time.  A few turns later, we were driving along the Mall taking in the Lincoln and Washington monuments, the Capital in the distance.  It was inspiring.  We’d never seen the monuments lit up at night.

I’m not sure how but a moment later we were sitting in front of the White House – you could still drive by in those days.  We had no idea where to park the truck.  So we didn’t.  We just slowed down and Joni took a picture of the White House through the passenger side window.

Next “stop,” Baltimore.  It was getting late.  Again, we didn’t park.  We drove down to the Harbor, back to the Interstate and on to the next city.

In Philadelphia, we never found Independence Hall.  In New York, we drove through Times Square and then down to Battery Park.  We pulled over on a side street into what we thought was a parking spot.  We climbed on top of the U-Haul to get a better view of the Statue of Liberty.  We didn’t want to leave the truck.

Then, someone yelled at us.  I have no idea what they said.  But, we got back in the truck as fast as we could and tried to escape the city.

We visited Atlantic City between our drive-bys in Philadelphia and New York.  We drove through New Jersey in the middle of the night.  It was pouring rain.  Joni could not stay awake.  I pulled the U-Haul under an overpass and parked, waiting for the rain to let up.  A New Jersey trooper stopped to check on us.  He told us it was not safe to park there.  We went on.

We arrived in Atlantic City at five a.m. – just as the casinos were shutting down.  They wouldn’t re-open for another hour or two.  So, we headed for the boardwalk.  We had finally found a place to park the truck.  There were only a few people out – clearly at the end of a night that involved alcohol.

Joni and I were mesmerized by the waves.  They rolled toward shore in a perfect rhythm like a metronome.  One after another.  The same height.  Uniform distance.  It was hypnotic.

We stood there for fifteen or twenty minutes studying the waves.  After careful consideration and drawing on our collective knowledge of oceans that we’d learned on the prairie, we agreed, “Cool wave machine!”

We headed back to the U-Haul to complete our trip to Boston.

For those who might be wondering… Yes, we really thought a machine was making the waves.

I had one thing I cared about when we planned our wedding.  I wanted our dance to be open to the public – meaning anyone was welcome to attend.  I was glad when Joni readily agreed.

The open wedding dance is one of the icons that best symbolize what it means to live in a town like Atwood.

I was reminded of my fondness for wedding dances when I received a phone call and an email from Jack Henningsen.  He told me the story of meeting his wife, Marilyn, at a Harvest Festival at St. John’s Catholic Church.  (Jack contacted me after reading this blog.  One of the unexpected pleasures of writing “snapshots” is that I’ve connected with people who I don’t know well and/or seldom see.)

Though not a wedding dance, Jack’s story reminded of Joni’s and my wedding at St. John’s and our dance at the Columbian Hall in town.

I don’t like to dance.  I don’t now and I didn’t then.  That’s not why the wedding dance was important to me.  In fact, I seldom danced at the many wedding parties I attended.  Lisa Collins (now Moos) did try to teach me the two-step.  I mostly learned to bounce or perhaps I was skipping, heaven forbid.  I stepped on her toes as I often as I touched the floor.  Still, I did enjoy an occasional Cotton Eyed Joe.

When attending wedding dances, I spent most of my time in the parking lot.  There were more than a few in which I never entered the hall.  The parking lot was the best place to catch up with friends, trade gossip, speculate about romance (speculation being the operative word) and, of course, mix a drink or two.

The open wedding dance is symbolic of a marriage being a community event rather than a private affair.  Marriages, in many ways, belong to the community – in a small town at least.  In places like Atwood, everyone impacts your life.  Some more directly and forcefully than others, but everyone plays a part. 

The role people have in shaping their neighbors’ lives gives them a rightful claim to the wedding celebration.  The open wedding dance is a time for everyone to share in the joyous step being taken by the wedding couple.  The community helped to prepare them for this day.  Thus, the community should be welcome at the celebration.

At 24 years old, I was not so philosophical.  My thought at that time was simply, “Closed dances aren’t cool.”  I knew how we used to ridicule people who had a closed dance.  I did not want people saying those things about Joni and me.  Besides, who was I to deny people a chance to party?

The open dance also solved a practical dilemma.  There were not enough seats in St. John’s to accommodate all of Joni’s relatives – I had no idea that our nuptials would connect me to half the county.  It was uncomfortable crossing them off the ceremony guest list.  Opening our reception and dance allowed us to include more people.

My favorite moment of this wonderful day occurred between the reception and dance.  Joni and I sat on metal folding chairs in the Columbian Hall, taking a moment to catch our breath.  I can still see the smile on Joni’s face and feel the one on my own.  Joni’s family – who catered the entire event, my first real exposure to the do-it-yourself Mickey Clan – scurried about cleaning up the remnants of the reception.  There have been few times in my life that I’ve felt so at peace.

As Joni’s and my years together accumulate, the meaning of our dance has grown in my mind.  We meet couples in the various places we’ve lived – Boston, Maryland and Colorado – and trade wedding stories.  Our friends tell tales of private affairs for an exclusive set of friends – certainly wonderful events in lives. 

But, their stories make me appreciate that our celebration was open to all who cared to attend.

That’s what it really means to be part of a small town.  On the most special and personal of days, everyone is welcome at your “table.”  Your family, your dearest friends, your kindly neighbors as well as your rivals, the annoying people who gossip too much and the folks you simply can’t stand – everyone is there.  I wouldn’t want it any other way.

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What’s your favorite wedding dance story?