Happy Birthday to Elyse Gerstenecker! Elyse shares my love of road trips (though she is way more hard core) and cheesy roadside architecture. But she doesn’t drink coffee. Bummer.
And a special happy birthday to my mom, Linda O’Shea! My mom takes the credit for me finding historic preservation, which is credit I’ll give to her. She instilled my adoration of historic buildings, abandoned houses, and appreciating the past. My mom has a preservationist’s heart indeed. She continues to love all of our preservation efforts and continues to encourage me with things like this:
Wherever all of this takes you, it will always be of your own making and not something you “just fell into” like so many other people’s careers. I think this was the perfect field for you; this mixture of the past and the future can be a very fulfilling combination.
And my mom even fuels the flamingo thing by buying me plastic flamingo lawn ornaments, a flamingo crossing road sign, and converse sneakers with flamingos all over them. (I’m not kidding.)
Here is photograph of me, my mom, and my sister Sarah on our big road trip two summers ago. We are in the Black Hills of South Dakota with Mount Rushmore in the background. Now that was a road trip.
Black Hills of South Dakota
Preservation in Pink 