Our Hokie

Our oldest son John Bailey Needham graduated from Virginia Tech this year, and as most readers already know, he was a four-year member of the VT marching band, The Marching Virginians. He was also in the VT Pep Band so he got to play for both the men’s and women’s basketball teams, and even got to travel with the women’s team as they marched through the NCAA tournament, to the final four. He played for the crowd at games at VT, and in Seattle for the Elite Eight, and then traveled to Houston for the Final Four, where VT lost in their final Four game.

While watching some VT football games this year, we saw the commercial below, and wouldn’t you know? The commercial featured the marching band playing, AND included a brief clip of the marching band, featuring our son on trumpet. You can see that at the 25-second mark in the video below.

So I’m preserving this video in hopes that it will always be available and maybe, in the future, our son’s cousins, aunts and uncles, friends, maybe even his own kids, will be able to see it too.

Sunsets

Sunsets. We get some nice ones here in Southwest Florida.

Yesterday Carolyn and Cody and I went out into the Gulf of Mexico for a first-ever sunset cruise on Rambler II. Carolyn and I tried to do the same thing Saturday but the conditions in the Gulf were not conducive to a comfortable sunset cruise.

The conditions in the Gulf on Monday were much better. We dropped an anchor in shallow water, knowing that the tide was coming while we were on the beach. We had some cocktails and waited for sunset.

We took Mabel The Rescue too, who has proven to be a first rate Boat Dog and adequate crew member.

So, here is what we experienced yesterday evening.

John P. Needham

November 21, 2023

Naples, FL

Graduation #2

Carolyn and I are now the parents of two college graduates. Last Thursday Cody Ambrose Needham graduated from The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, NY with a Bachelor's degree in Business Administration and an Associates degree in Culinary Arts.

Cody showed an interest in cooking long before he started planning for college, when he was very young. He always said that he wanted to go to “cooking school” rather than college. When he got serious about college, we told him to find a school with a bachelors program, and we’d agree. He came up with CIA and we were on board.

CIA has a program called Journey for Juniors, for high-schools students to get a feel for what life would be on campus, and I took Cody up for that between his junior and senior years of HS. That sealed the deal. Cody never even looked at another college.

So after three years as full-time student, one semester spent in an award-winning kitchen at The Herbfarm Restaurant in Woodinville WA, and one semester spent in Barcelona studying the cuisine of the Mediterranean, Cody now joins his brother John Bailey as a degreed professional.

Cody will be returning to Naples, FL where he will join the team of Chef Todd Johnson later this month at Nosh at Naples Bay.

We can't wait for Cody to join us back in Naples.

John P. Needham

August 7, 2023, 630AM

Naples, FL

Graduation #1

Yesterday John Bailey Needham graduated with his classmates from the Virginia Tech College of Natural Resources and the Environment with a degree in meteorology.

Today he graduated from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

It probably goes without saying that we are all profoundly proud of this young man.

He accomplished so much:

• Four years in The Marching Virginians.

• Four years in Pep Band which included a 2023 trip to the NCAA Final Four with the VT Women's team this year.

• He started as a major in computer modeling and data analytics (CMDA) but early on developed an affinity for, a love of, meteorology; he asked us for permission to change his major, which we cheerfully gave. (VT has the top meteorology program in the U.S. according to US News.)

He is still searching for a job but we are confident that he will land something interesting soon. The field really is wide open and he's a talented and motivated young man.

We could not be happier for Bailey and we look forward to seeing what he achieves in coming years, and decades.

There are banners hanging around the VT campus that read “This Is Home.” I think, for John Bailey, Virginia Tech and Blacksburg will always hold a special place in his heart. He is now a Virginia Tech alumni. But he will always be a Hokie.

John P. Needham

May 12, 2023

Blacksburg, VA

Rambler II

When I was growing up in Chicago, my ol' man had a gorgeous 28 foot Pearson sloop in Lake Michigan. It was named Rambler. The name came from the Loyola Academy High School Ramblers, where one of my brothers played football and ran track, and where me and another brother ran cross country and track.

He had that boat for only a few years. I loved sailing it, learning about sailing, learning nautical terms, learning nautical knots, things like that.

When we moved to Naples, FL Carolyn and I thought about getting a boat. I even casually shopped online for local sailboats. Found a few. But I knew that getting a sail boat probably wasn't the best idea. Taking a sailboat even on just a day sail is a large undertaking. Especially here in Naples, with bridges, shallow water, and crazy winds.

Besides, “sailing” isn't really what Carolyn and I like to do on boats. Our preferences lean more towards driving to beaches, sandbars and local waterfront restaurants. None of those would be options in a typical sailboat.

So, we joined Freedom Boat Club instead. That gave us a chance to use power boats: center consoles, bowriders, deck boats, and pontoons.

We became moderately competent novice boaters. We did the things we enjoyed. I took the Coast Guard Safe Boating class up in Fort Meyers, and Carolyn is going to do the same thing.

But Freedom Boat Club was also a little limiting. We had to have the boats back to the dock before sunset, so sunset cruises were out of the question. And in high season here in SW Florida, it was very difficult to get a boat on weekends.

So after a year of boating at Freedom Boat Club, Carolyn and I took the plunge and got a boat of our own.

We christened her Rambler II.

John P. Needham

February 28, 2023

Bayshore Drive

Naples, FL

Christmas 2022

On this ultra-lazy Monday after Christmas, after a family visit with the Matriarch of the Hardy Clan, after a weekend of cooking with family, hanging with extended family, boating with the Minkers and the Dwyers, little enough was accomplished.

It was glorious.

John P. Needham

December 26, 2022

Naples, FL

Naples Botanical Garden Holiday Lights

We went next door to the Naples Botanical Garden Holiday Lights show last night. It is a pretty spectacular show and we are really happy that the botanical garden is right next to our house, across the street.

This has become an annual tradition here in Naples, FL.

John P. Needham

December 23, 2022

Naples, FL

Barcelona in Video Form

Thanks to Amazon Photos. Pretty cool.

https://www.amazon.com/photos/shared/OCaRcCa4TG2r90h2HLsJww.tkgSMbtXPKPsRXUnKd4QsV

Barcelona 2022

Cody Needham has been studying The Cuisine of the Mediterranean this semester, so Carolyn and I decided to make a trip to visit him. Neither of us had been to Barcelona, and with Cody there, it seemed like a good time to go.

We flew from Miami on October 20th, arriving in Barcelona on the 21st, and returned on October 28th.

It was a fabulous trip. Barcelona is truly a magical city. The Catalan people are wonderful. We had no idea what we were doing when we booked out hotel, except that it was, according to Google Maps, it was walking distance from Cody's residence.

But it was also in a terrific neighborhood. It had a rooftop bar when the a view of the Mediterranean. It was walking distance from one tourist-y site after another. The Museu Picasso. The Museu de la Xocolata, where the museum tickets are small bars of chocolate. The Museum of of Contemporary Art. Palau Guëll. We also saw La Sagrada Familia, the Basilica of the Sacred Family. We visited Park Guëll.

The food was great. The Iberico ham was the best ham I've ever had. We had cocktails and dinner at Paradiso, which Bloomberg News called “the best bar in the world” and was a short walk from our hotel. We had our 25th anniversary dinner at El Nacional and followed that up the next night with dinner at Michelin starred Restaurant Xavier Pellicer, at Cody's strong recommendation.

I posted tons of pictures over on the IG but here are some new ones and some repeats.

John P. Needham

November 3, 2022

Naples, FL

Klein Oak Mariachi Band (a repost)

I am re-sharing this YouTube video of John Bailey from five years ago for no reason except that I was reminded of it this morning. (Someone commented on the video, but I removed the comment.) Our son John and his friends formed the first ever mariachi band in their high-school’s history, with no sponsorship or, really, and administrative help at all from the school.

Then the entered the school’s local mariachi band competition and qualified for the Texas State UIL Mariachi Festival in UT-Rio Grande Valley in Edinburgh, TX. They were the first mariachi ensemble to qualify for that state festival in the history of the Klein Independent School District.

This video is, I think, from their very first ever live performance, in the Klein Oak High School auditorium.

John P. Needham

October 15, 2022

Naples, FL

Hurricane Ian

On September 28th, hurricane Ian blew through the southwest Florida coast in the Gulf of Mexico.

Ian followed the path of a devastating storm in 2004, hurricane Charlie. There were two big differences between Ian and Charlie:

• Charlie came past Naples heading north and made landfall around Punta Gorda, and the storm last around five hours; in contrast, Ian passed Naples and also made landfall around Punta Gorda, but it lasted for roughly 12 hours. Ian was offshore of Naples from low tide all the way through high tide, which dramatically increased the size of the storm surge.

• Ian also was a monster-sized storm: the entire wind field from Charlie would have fit into just the eye of hurricane Ian. When I woke up on Wednesday morning, the eye of Ian was just off the coast of Naples, but the wind field extended all the way from Key West to Sarasota.

We lost power at 10:15AM Wednesday and it did not come back until overnight on Friday. Of course, all the cell towers in SWFL also were blown down so we had extremely limited cellular service too. We still don't have good drinking water a week later.

Below are some images I took during and after the storm. Just posting them for posterity's sake.

John P. Needham

October 4th, 2022

5:25PM

Naples, FL

Barcelona Bound

This young man is off on a wonderful adventure. He will spend the next three months in and around Barcelona, studying the cuisine of the Mediterranean in his concentration semester with the Culinary Institute of America.

Boating, September 2, 2022

Boat day. We spent the day on the Keywaydin Island sandbar with Cody and his girlfriend Sophi who is visiting from upstate NY. We anchored around noon, low tide was at 12:39, and when the tide turned tons of dolphins came out and started feeding at the sandbar. We saw more than a dozen of them. It was very, very cool. Mabel was nonplussed by these swimming dogs with fins.

#BoatLife

#BoatDog

#MabelTheRescue

Boating, August 28, 2022

We had a 21-foot bowrider today, with a 150HP engine, called Hysteria.

We picked it up at Freedom Boat Club (Brookside), stayed on the inside south of Naples Bay, anchored at the sandbar at Keywaydin Island, and coaxed Mabel into the water a few times. Then she peed on the backseat on the way back. 🤷

Dinner at The Bevy

Carolyn and I had dinner at The Bevy in downtown Naples last night, with nephew Joey Howard and his girlfriend Olivia, who were in town on vacation, staying with Olivia's parents who have a home near us here in East Naples.

It was a really nice dinner and a wonderful catch-up with Joey. He is a fine young man with a great job in San Diego.

Two+ years since my last post?

This is me, hoping to do better than that going forward.

Cody is visiting us in Naples, FL before he heads to Spain next month for a semester in Barcelona.

John Bailey visited earlier this summer but is back in Blacksburg for his senior year at Virginia Tech.

And Mabel is still with us.

More to come, now that I think I can do this via my mobile phone

Father's Day 2020

On Father’s Day I usually re-post my post from nine years ago, but I saw this on Facebook via my brother Tom Needham so I figured I’d share this instead. I’ll let him tell this story.

"They Patrol Outfield" - this was in one of the Chicago newspapers during the summer of 1956. My Dad is on the right. He was a rookie Chicago police officer and the Department had a baseball team that he played on. They played two games that summer against a U.S. Navy team (one at Wrigley and the other at Comiskey) and one of the Navy pitchers was Johnny Podres. He was the star of the World Series the year before, in 1955, when the Brooklyn Dodgers won their only championship. Then he had to go into the service for a year, that's how it was back then. I don't know if Dad was able to get a hit off Podres, this old newspaper clip didn't have a box score and of course Dad didn't talk much about it.

John P. Needham

Father’s Day, June 21st, 2020

Spring, TX

Memorial Day 2020

Taps, performed as a Memorial Day remembrance by two local young men, former members of the Klein Oak HS band. One is Luke Tebo from the Texas A&M Corps of Cadets, the other is John Bailey Needham from VA Tech's Spirit of Tech Marching Virginians.

John P. Needham

Spring, TX

May 25, 2020 730PM

18

This young man turned 18 today and me and his mom and his brother could not be more proud of him.

Happy 18th Birthday Cody Ambrose Needham. May all your dreams come true.

John P. Needham

May 1, 2020

Spring, TX

Merry Christmas from Klein Oak HS Wind Ensemble!

Every year in December, the Klein Oak HS music department plays a holiday tour of local elementary schools. Yesterday the KOHS Wind Ensemble dressed up in Christmas clothes (or in some cases, pajamas) and played at several local schools and the school district head office. Since Cody is plays percussion in Wind Ensemble, here are some pictures of him. (Photo credits to Priscilla Shontz at Scatterlight Photography.)

You’ll see Cody playing slap-sticks during Sleigh Bells in a couple of the images above. Since it isn’t really Christmas without Sleigh Bells, here is a video of that song, from another school. For this performance, Cody hid in the audience and when the time came to play, he stood up and cracked the sticks together. You can see the band director, Mr. Clearwater, turn and look around and bust out laughing, as do the school children. Later in the song, after Cody had returned to his station in the band, Mr. Clearwater again told him to go out into the audience and play his parts. The kids all loved it. It was a nice wrap-up for this Christmas concert.