Relay For Life a life-affirming event

Over the weekend the Chelsea Standard had the privilege of reporting on the Relay For Life at the Chelsea Community Fairgrounds.
The Relay is the biggest annual fund-raiser for the American Cancer Society, and the local event generated more than $55,000 in pledges.
It’s a 24-hour event that takes place in thousands of communities nationwide, but its focus is local.
Local team members, local companies and organizations, local volunteers; all raising money or donating goods and services to help track down a killer.
Participants walk for several reasons: sometimes it’s in memory of a loved one whom cancer has claimed; many times it is for someone who has stared death in the face and conquered it.
Most poignant are those who walk even while the disease continues to ravage their bodies.
Witnessing their courage and dedication is what makes it such an honor and privilege to be involved.
I, too, have walked in a Relay. At the time I was editor of the Albion newspaper, and I simply wanted to show support for a young reporter who recently had lost his mother to cancer.
We had signed up several co-workers but when the event arrived, only one of them showed up.
I stayed with Tom virtually the entire 24 hours, awestruck by his focus and determination.
The toughest part of the Relay comes in the middle of the night, when participation and motivation is, understandably, sparse.
You have a lot of time for introspection at 3 a.m. Why are these people out here, missing a night of sleep or a favorite TV show or ball game? Why are they putting themselves though such fatigue and soreness?
If the American Cancer Society just wants to raise money, why don’t we just write them a check and go home?
Well, the answer dawned on me, literally at about dawn.
This is not about money. It’s about sacrificing a few hours of comfort to commemorate the ultimate sacrifice made by cancer victims and their families.
Cancer has a vicious tendency to run in families, and I consider myself extremely lucky that my family has been pretty much untouched by it.
My closest association with cancer was through my father-in-law, Hager Large.
Not long after the Relay that I walked in Albion, doctors discovered something in him that had gone undetected for many years.
The surgery to remove half his tongue and lower jaw went about as well as one could expect, but a blockage in his carotid artery also had gone unnoticed — until a clot broke loose and caused a major stroke in the recovery room.
The most cruel thing was that it did not kill him outright.
This generous, jovial and gentle man spent every day of the final five years of his life in agony I’d rather not try to comprehend.
If it was just a matter of writing a check, I’d gladly turn over half my salary.
But the memory of Hager Large, Carol Kochinski and the millions of other cancer victims and survivors is worth a lot more than that.

Trip to ancestral home brings back memories I never had

My wife and I went out of town this weekend on our annual pilgrimage to Frankenmuth.
For the unfamiliar, Frankenmuth is a little town located roughly between Flint and Saginaw that is most famous for two things: chicken dinners and Christmas decorations.

Those are two of my favorite topics, but we go for a much more personal reason.

If my paternal great-grandfather had not been a stereotypical stubborn, hard-headed German, in all likelihood I'd probably be running one of the breweries there.

But no. Great-granddad was the brewmaster and a business partner at the Frankenmuth Brewery, one of several that came and went in that town over the years.

For those who know Frankenmuth, it was the brewery on the south side of the Cass River, since torn down and replaced with River Platz, a faux reproduction of an Alpine village and filled with overpriced trinkets for unsuspecting tourists.

At any rate, after Prohibition was repealed and the brewery was again able to openly produce its liquid gold, some sort of disagreement arose between Braumeister Freundl and his partners.
Seems ol' great-granddad didn't like the bean counters telling him how to make beer, and he told them to take a flying leap -in probably more than one language.

A German not wanting to be told how to do something. Go figure.

So he packed up the family and moved to Jackson, where he hooked up with another brewery.
And that explains why I had a fairly normal, middle-class upbringing in Jackson, rather than being a beer baron in Frankenmuth.

There are a few other juicy details mixed in there; something about the Purple Gang out of Detroit wanting to get their hands on the Frankenmuth brewery - or else; but those stories are quickly being lost to the mists of time.

Frank Freundl died in the mid-1940s; his son (my grandfather), Frank Freundl Jr., died in the early '80s; and the health - and memory - of my father, Frank Freundl III, is beginning to slip away.

Therefore, my wife and I go to Frankenmuth every year to pay tribute to what might have been.

It also explains one of my father's favorite sayings:

"You can always tell a German, but you can't tell him much."

Edward Freundl
The Chelsea Standard

Where do I begin?

The boss wanted us to start a blog for the newspaper’s Web page, and I do what I’m told (most of the time).

Apparently “The boss,” AKA Editor Terry Jacoby, is unaware of my personal feelings toward this whole “blog” thing.

I have confronted the obvious: that I’m definitely an “old-school” kind of journalist.

At the risk of sounding like a cranky old grouch, I am not as enamored of current technology as many (OK, most) of my colleagues.

The only laptop I use is the one on which I tend to spill my lunch when I’m sitting at my desk.

I still prefer to use a pen and notepad as my primary tools. At least they still work when the power goes out, like it did here twice just last week.

And until my wife gave me one for Christmas, I previously regarded cell phones as symbols of obnoxious self-importance at best; and at worst, a deadly dangerous distraction to motorists.

But these technological gadgets can be wonderful, if used with proper respect.

The Internet is a godsend to those in my profession, however; it makes researching a story and checking facts almost effortless. The downside is all the garbage you have to sift through when you type something in to Google or Yahoo.

Which brings us back to the blog.

When they first started appearing on the Web, I couldn’t think of anything more representative of our increasingly self-centered and self-absorbed culture.

Electronic versions of “Dear Diary: Today I watched my cat throw up” or some such nonsense hold absolutely no interest for me.

It’s not that I don’t care about someone else’s thoughts and opinions, but the concept of personal restraint seems to be eroding before our very eyes.

And the advent of MySpace and YouTube video carry this to a ridiculous extreme, with the added treat of watching someone’s inanity instead of simply reading it.

With that, I thank you for stopping by and letting me blow off some steam. See you next week, if the boss lets me.

-- Edward Freundl