Alex Karras was a former NFL football player who played with the Detroit Lions from 1958 to 1970. He was inducted as a member of the College Football Hall of Fame, and was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame as part of the Class of 2020. He also had careers as a Professional Wrestler, a Sportscaster, and after sports, he became an actor, having been featured in the movies Blazing Saddles, and Victor/Victoria, and also various television sitcoms, before landing the co-lead with his real life wife, Susan Clark and child actor Emmanuel Lewis in the ABC sitcom , Webster.

One of the roles Karras also played was as a soldier in the very popular comedy-drama M*A*S*H*, where he played a very grateful corporal named Lyle Wesson. In that role he tried to do as much as he could do for Captain Hawkeye Pierce as repayment for saving his life on the operating table. One scene showed Hawkeye, Trapper, and Corporal Wesson entering a fully crowded mess tent where Karras’s character went over to a group of enlisted men were chowing down, and asked if they were finished After hearing them say, “No,” he, standing tall in his enormous stature said, “You know, my mother always said to leave the table a little bit hungry…” His size and the way he said those words, motivated, probably by fear, the enlisted men to get up and discard the rest of their food before walking out of the tent, opening up seating availability for the three of them.

I am sure the words of Wesson’s mother could be interpreted many different ways, but I, as I often do with many quotes, and music lyrics, took it to possibly mean something that I could apply to me and my life. I found that the words might mean, that when you are doing something you’ve enjoyed doing, and have done it for a long time, and are nearing a time where you can retire, or leave it behind, that maybe you should ponder moving on from it while you still enjoy doing it. After thirty-one years in a classroom following two years of substitute teaching to get my foot in the door, and numerous summers of tutoring, or running a tutoring jobsite in the Chautauqua County Summer Employment Program, I decided to retire from full-time teaching, and turn back to substituting which I did for eighteen plus years (which I have just recently retired from that), giving me time to concentrate on writing, and still do some coaching (which I did two stints of that, and umpiring, which I did for many years before leaving that), and for the first three years of retirement, to be able to follow the Medaille College Baseball Team which saw Jon as part of the team.

When I officially decided to leave teaching, subbing, coaching and Jon’s graduation from College and College Baseball, I left those things while still enjoying them. I did the same with my volunteering at the Robert H. Jackson Center. I left still enjoying what I was doing, and I still had a little bit of a fire and hunger burning for what I was doing. I had accomplished what I had hoped to, and I wanted to leave with good feelings and memories, and not because it was over and I was leaving because I didn’t like it anymore. I always felt as I walked out the doors of my activities, I’d want to kiss the ground because I was given those activities and opportunities with hopes they would turn out to be, and they were so satisfying and rewarding. I didn’t want to leave celebrating my walking away because they were finally over. I still hunger for those activities, and have even thought about going back to coach, but I’ve been away from home too much in our marriage. Sally, after being both parents for a long time, and holding down the fort, has waited for us to be able to make more visits to Tennessee and Virginia, (and Cleveland too), and have more time lately to attend/visit some concerts, special events and special places, and cross off some bucket list items together. We’ve since taken a cruise, visited Key West, became Parrotheads, celebrated our grandchildren’s birthdays and their activities in person more often, and just spent more time together. That we have done and we hope it continues.

Some may say I was a quitter for leaving things I enjoyed doing, but, on the contrary, I have always felt I was leaving the table still feeling a little bit hungry, because those activities were so enjoyable, and I never wanted to lose that feeling for them. I love/loved teaching, all the special learning projects with which I’ve been involved. I still follow Education closely and emotionally. I still get angry seeing what teachers are facing today in their jobs. I love/loved coaching baseball on all levels from youth leagues through high school. I love/loved coaching Modified and High School Girls’ Softball and have many great memories of time spent doing that. I love/loved coaching Modified Football for over a decade for the JPS. I love/loved officiating baseball and have so many great memories that have turned into great stories from that experience. (I will admit that one part of the reason I left umpiring, and it was just part of the reason, was that parents started recording close plays from games and posting them on social media and coming up with a lot of trash talking about the officials calling the games.)

I love/loved all my volunteering at Church, at the RHJ Center, running the Baseball Showcase for many years, doing the Catholic School Fundraisers at Holy Family School, and at Frewsburg Central, JPS, and Falconer Central Schools, and I miss doing that a lot. I still run the Browns Backers of Jamestown, NY which I love doing. I haven’t quit that yet, because I’m waiting until I can stand up and shout in the middle of Waddington’s Tavern, “This is it! It’s finally our Next Year!” (It might be a while for that.)

All of that fed my desire to do what I did and motivated me to put in the time and effort to make them happen as successfully, and as best I could. Missing them is my way of realizing how special they were to me, allowing me to cherish those opportunities given me in my life, and the ability to do them, and letting me walk away from them a little early, still healthy enough to enjoy the “what’s next.” I’m grateful I was lucky to have had all those opportunities and the chances to walk away from them when I did, and keep the hunger for them, making me appreciate just how special they are/were to me. Sadly, I’ve seen many people, family and special friends included, wait to retire, some who needed to for insurance reasons, some for other personal reasons, and when they could retire, seeing their retirement end up being a very short one. So, if you do have the opportunity to leave a little early, it’s worked very well for some people, me included.

I think the writers of M*A*S*H* helped me believe that the Mess Hall Scene of the episode titled, “Springtime,” went far beyond an overcrowded Chow Hall, that doubled as Father Mulchahy’s chapel, found on a script page of a sitcom drama set in Wartime Korea. It’s helped me realize, appreciate, and look at things in a little different perspective. Maybe it could do the same for all of us.