WHY I LOVE TEXAS

There are so many articles out there on Texans that make me want to cringe, that it's really great to read stories about the type of Texans I'm so fond of..These are my kinda Texans.

"Kristin Pass, an 18-year-old senior with Down syndrome, became Aledo High School's homecoming queen to a joyous standing ovation and the flutter of a thousand tissues on a remarkable night for an amazing young woman.

Her grandfather, Dr. David Campbell of Corsicana, escorted her onto the field and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek as Kristin joined eight other young women in the Homemaking Court to await the results of the vote, cast by the 360-plus members of Aledo High's senior class.

Then came the announcement, and pandemonium.

"Oh my gosh! I was sitting in the student section and everyone stood up crying and cheering for Kristin," said long-time friend and fellow senior Meaghan Geary, 17, who first met Kristin in the third grade. "It was great."

Caroline Pass stood at the edge of the football field, taking pictures of her daughter and friends' daughters in the court, when the stadium erupted.

"It's just something you can't even imagine," she said. "And afterward. everyone was just running down to her, congratulating her. And the other girls in the court, they're all just beautiful girls, inside and out."

"Kristin has a lot of friends- she likes everyone. It doesn't matter if your tall or short, pretty, not pretty, smart, not smart- she likes everybody. She has great friends. And Aledo is a great community.

Clay Glimmer, who works the stadium press box, said he was thrilled. "This has been such a special time, a special week for Kristin," he said. "And I was really taken by the maturity and the love shown by her friends, her peers, her classmates.

Kristin pronounced the evening "exciting" and "awesome."

She was so thrilled, her mother said, that she took her crown to bed with her.

Kristin and her family, including sister Kendall, now a freshman, moved to Aledo when Kristin was in the third grade.

She was embraced by the people in the town through good times and bad, including the death of her dad, J.T., two years ago.

and this article was in the DAM News this morning.

Town Rallied To Help Young Athlete in His Time of Need.

In January, when he was diagnosed with testicular cancer one day and underwent surgery the next, Wesley Hilly called it " a pretty big shock." When the cancer came back in June, the shock had spread with it. "Pretty much everything I was hoping for, " Wesley said, "was shot."

All that he'd hoped for his senior season of football in ABernathy, a West Texas Town of about 3,000 just north of Lubbock.

Wesley grew up big and smart. Big enough at 6-2, 190 pounds to play offensive tackle and defensive end for the Class A Antelopes; smart enough to start a few games as a sophomore.

But his prospects seemed remote and secondary with the news that came in June.

He would need nine weeks of chemotherapy. One week on, two weeks off. On weeks he received treatment, he was so sick he couldn't eat. On off weeks, he stuff himself to keep up his weight for football.

Still, he missed all of August and September.

Not that classmates and friends forgot. They left voice mails and sent text messages. They brought meals. Friends raised $5,000 at a car-wash. A small group of 9-year-0ld girls kicked in $300 from a lemonade stand. One group hawked yellow wristbands bearing Wesley's name. Another sold black ones imprinted with his No. 63.

On Wesley's birthday in August, when he was still too ill from the drugs to celebrate, a cheerleader took a video camera around town and recorded it's best wishes.

When football seemed so far away, Wesley's coach, Tony Truelove, brought his jersey to the hospital to give him something to focus on.

When the chemo made his hair fall out, teammates and coaches shaved their heads.

"It's all those little things in life," Lynthat said, explaining what it all meant, "that you don't learn are major until a time like this.

Finally, on Oct. 6, Wesley returned to practice Four days later, against Littlefield, he played the first game of his senior season.

Weakened by his ordeal, he was supposed to go in for a few plays on defense. But a starter got hurt, and Wesley played more than expected. But life doesn't always play like a fairy tale, as Wesley knows. In his first game back, Abernathy lost 36-35, on a last minute two-point conversion.

"Losing like that really hurts," Truelove said. "And then after the game you see Wesley's ol' bald head over there, and suddenly you have a greater appreciation for things.

"This transcends football."

Stories like this one generally do. Harper Lee, a small-town girl herself, once famously wrote, "Neighbors bring food with death and flowers with sickness and little things in between."

In Abernathy, they brought hope to Wesley Hill. There was nothing small about it.

ksherrington/DAM News.

Yup...I heart Texas.