There isn't a whole lot I can write at the moment, but I wanted to share this video. This was a tribute WVU made for George. He was not just the heart and soul of WVU, he was the heart and soul for so many people. He was the reason we tried so hard to live. I still can't believe he's gone.

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I'm that mom who lets her son get bumps and bruises, because she know it's all part of learning.

I'm that mom who sometimes lets her son stay in PJs all day.

I'm that mom who sometimes lets herself stay in PJs all day.

I'm that mom who beats herself up every time things don't go perfectly.

I'm that mom who makes great chocolate chip cookies... that happen to come from the freezer section.

I'm that mom who celebrates her child's milestones like he won a Nobel Prize.

I'm that mom who makes mistakes... every... single... day.

I'm that mom who sometimes lets her son stay up late, just so he'll sleep in the next morning.

I'm that mom who dreads walking into preschool and hearing her son got into trouble.

I'm that mom who talks in funny voices and character acts through my child's every imaginary storyline.

I'm that mom who fibs to her son about fighting an alien spacecraft to hide the real reason it took so long to get to grandma's house was because she wanted to take 10 minutes to herself.

I'm that mom who checks her email WAY too often.

I'm that mom who puts her needs last far too often.

I'm that mom who works late into the night because she shirked off work to go to the playground.

I'm that mom who lets the laundry and dishes pile up so she can play on the Playstation with her son.

I'm that mom who cannot do crafts.

I'm that mom who drops her son off at school in sweatpants and shows back up in five-inch heels.

I'm that mom who can't wait for bedtime because she wants to read the next chapter of Narnia.

I'm that mom who watches Phineas and Ferb even when her son isn't here.

I'm that mom who taught her son to make coffee because she has no energy in the morning.

I'm that mom who never feels like she's good enough.

I'm that mom who tries not to sweat the small stuff.

I'm that mom who encourages her son's every crazy desire because she never wants him to feel unsupported.

I'm that mom who is okay with the fact her first name was replaced by "Speedy's mom."

I'm that mom who hopes her son embraces what makes him different, but fears he will be bullied because of it.

I'm that mom who lets her son watch TV or play video games just so she can get work done.

I'm that mom who builds forts in the living room.

I'm that mom who prays over her son after he's fallen asleep.

I'm that mom who hopes her son never grows up, so she don't have to either.

I'm that mom who sometimes falls asleep while reading the bedtime story.

I'm that mom who learns more from her son than she's ever taught him.

I'm that mom who realizes she do not know it all.

I'm that mom who let's her son eat way too much McDonalds.

I'm that mom who encourages other moms when she see them having a bad day in public.

I'm that mom who hopes no one sees her when her son acts up in public.

I'm that mom who sometimes expects too much from her son.

I'm that mom who lets her son have car snacks.

I'm that mom who encourages independence, even though it kills her inside.

I'm that mom who lets her son mess up.

I'm that mom who counts to three.

I'm that mom who treats her furry baby like a child too.

I'm that mom who will always have my son's back.

I'm that mom who asks her child's teacher about her son often, because she realizes kids don't tell the whole story. 

I'm that mom who loves noise so much she bought her toddler a drum set.

I'm that mom who leaves evidence of fairies, Santa, the Easter Bunny and long lost pets just to keep her son's imagination alive.

I'm that mom who let's her son believe we have a famous "Uncle Johnny" who visits through the big screen.

I'm that mom who never thought she'd ever have kids.

I'm that mom who never wants to dress like a mom.

I'm that mom who lies about her age.

I'm that mom who is a terrible housekeeper.

I'm that mom who lets her son get dirty.

I'm that mom who is never in pictures because she's always taking them.

I'm that mom who hopes no one ever asks her son about a brother or sister, because she's thinking of stopping at one.

I'm that mom who works from home and spends way too much time on the computer.

I'm that mom who is always on a diet. 

I'm that mom who never asks for help.

I'm that mom who never has enough time in the day.

I'm that mom who is looking forward to her son going to school, so she can get more work done at home.

I'm that mom who fears spending money on herself because she's afraid they family will need that money for something more important later.

I'm that mom who steals food from her son's snack cabinet.

I'm that mom who can turn a piece of chocolate into a life altering experience.

I'm that mom who makes funny designs out of food.

I'm that mom who researches fun things to do with her son.

I'm that mom who knows others are judging her for her parental decisions.

I'm that mom who uses "magic bandaids" to wipe away tears.

I'm that mom who hopes her son never realizes she's making it all up as she goes along.

I'm that mom who just wants to make her son and husband proud of her.


HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY TO ALL THE MOMS OUT THERE WHO HAVE WALKED AROUND WITH THEIR HEARTS OUTSIDE THEIR BODIES SINCE THE DAY THEIR FIRST CHILD WAS BORN!!

Dinner and drinks. This is one of the first things that comes to the minds of those in George Esper's, very wide, inner circle. It was an invitation you never passed up. "Dinner and drinks" meant more than a free meal, it meant an evening filled with stories, laughs, and more lessons learned than you thought possible in one night... sometimes more lessons than you thought possible in one lifetime.

George's "dinner and drinks" invitations were like a golden ticket. For many students, this offer was a rare opportunity to network with one of George's many famous friends. But for those of us gathered Saturday night for "dinner and drinks" in George's honor, we remember these invitations as treasured opportunities to learn more about the man who never spoke about himself.

"Okay, okay Peter, we know your interview with Osama bin Laden was amazing, but I want to ask you about George," Paul Sunyak remembered saying while recalling a dinner we shared with George, a group of students, and one of George's best friends Peter Arnett.

You see, George never spoke about himself. In fact, he rarely let others even talk about him. George was someone who made a special skill of deflection attention away from himself.

It was through these "dinner and drinks" evenings you learned who George Esper truly was. His friends told the best stories, which is why we often pressed them with questions. Paul was the best at this. He was never afraid to block out the spotlight from the night's featured guest in the hopes of learning one more thing about George.

But you learned the most by just watching George be George.

Last night was a night George would have loved. We told stories over sushi and wine, smiling and laughing while we remembered our dear friend. It was a "dinner and drinks" invitation in true George Esper style. It was the type of celebration we all hoped we could have had with George just one last time.

When I got back into town this afternoon, I started looking through some boxes (actually searching for the title to a car we're about to sell) and came across a box I had long forgotten about. Inside was a file I kept while traveling with George through Vietnam in 2005.

Nestled between copies of our personal documents, travel papers, and itineraries was the first draft of a story he wrote about returning to Vietnam. I remember George coming to my hotel room to use my laptop to file the story.

I sat back on the bed and watched him punch out this story at the desk across the room. I pretended to study for the statistics final I was scheduled to take upon returning home, but was really watching in awe at his signature hunt-and-peck typing style. I listened closely as he spoke to himself while piecing the story together. It was a rare opportunity to witness the story-writing process of an amazing journalistic hero.

I remember George turning to me after about a half hour and saying "I'm so sorry, you should be studying and here I am bothering you."

I laughed and said, "George, this is statistics... I could read this for the next two years and still have no clue what it says."

It became an ongoing joke of ours: "At least this isn't statistics."

I couldn't help but break into tears while reading the draft of this story. I remember George asking me to run down to the first floor business center of the hotel to print it out. When I came back to the room, he asked me to read over it. Of course, I already had on the way back up the stairs. I was too embarrassed to tell him though, so I read it again.

When I "finished," he laughed and said, "Now you see why I'm so nice to my editors. They make me look good."

* * * * * * 

15

A correspondent revisits the fall of Saigon

By George Esper
Published: Saturday, April 30, 2005

HO CHI MINH CITY — For old times' sake, I knocked on the door of the third floor apartment where I had lived 30 years ago. Liu Ba Tho warmly greeted me and my friends and invited us in. Tho, now 67, and a retired engineer, served us cake and bottled water. In my mind, I recalled the room in which I had slept, and how my two children, then five and three, had ducked under the bed during the fighting.

My apartment in the Eden Building in Ho Chi Minh City's Central Square had fallen into terrible disrepair. The old, shaky elevator was sealed off.

I remembered when, during the war days, if we had a big story, we would excitedly run up the four flights of steps to The Associated Press office to file.

I had chosen the apartment because it was right under my office. I rarely had a peaceful night's sleep - what with artillery, bombs and rockets exploding, jolting me out of bed and up to the office to check out each of the sounds of war.

I was in the AP bureau that fateful day 30 years ago: April 30, 1975, a historic day that forever changed my life and propelled me far beyond where I had intended to go. After the last Americans had been evacuated by helicopter from the U.S. Embassy, a rear guard of 11 Marines scrambled aboard a helicopter in a blaze of tear gas and smoke grenades to keep back a stampede of panicky South Vietnamese trying to escape their Northern foes.

It wasn't long before a Vietnamese translator alerted me to the inevitable national radio broadcast.

"BULLETIN," I wrote. "Surrender." And then: "SAIGON (AP) - President Duong Van 'Big' Minh of South Vietnam announced Wednesday an unconditional surrender to the forces of North Vietnam."

Dispirited South Vietnamese troops marched from their outposts on the outskirts of Saigon to stack their weapons. It was from the AP bureau that I ran down the four flights of stairs to the Central Square to get reactions from them. There I ran into a police colonel. His eyes were crazed; his arms gesticulated wildly.

"Fini! Fini!" he yelled. As he fingered his holstered pistol, I feared he might shoot me because of the anger among the South Vietnamese who felt the Americans had abandoned them.

Instead, he turned and saluted a war memorial statue of South Vietnamese Marines, pulled the pistol from his holster and fired into his head. Soon after, North Vietnamese troops who took over the city destroyed the war memorial with sledgehammers as hundreds of people watched. The day was supposed to end a painful and divisive American era of involvement in Vietnam.

The incoming teletype in the AP bureau clicked off an urgent message from Wes Gallagher, then the president of the wire service, advising that a final helicopter might be returning.

"Any of you want to leave if it works out?" he asked of me and my colleagues.

"Thanks for your offer," I messaged back. "We want to stay, but have some nervous Vietnamese want to get out, please. FYI, the U.S. Embassy promised me they would take care of them, but in the chaos they were unable to get into the embassy to board helicopters."

Hundreds of South Vietnamese stampeded the embassy and tried to scale its 14-foot, or 4.2 meter, wall to reach evacuation helicopters. U.S. marines and civilians beat them back with their boots and rifle butts.

The war ended for me as I came encountered two of the nameless, faceless Communist soldiers I had written about for 10 years without ever seeing them, except in death or as prisoners of war. Two North Vietnamese soldiers walked into the AP office, showing us photos of their loved ones and telling us how much they missed them and wanted to get home.

I was reunited with one of those soldiers, Tran Viet Ca, who came by the Continental Hotel to see me. He told me he had been in the jungles for seven years. The photo he had shown me when he was 25 was of his girlfriend. Today, at age 55, he is retired from the army and is now a farmer.

"Both the Vietnamese and the U.S., most of the people, did not want war, only their governments," he said.