I have been blessed to have so many “best” days that it’s hard to decide upon one. Also, if I describe only one, it limits my weekly enjoyment of responding to random questions from anonymous sources and leaves me with a gap in how to kill time..

The first best day I can remember occurred when I was about 11 or 12 years old. Our parish had a Holy Name Society which all men could join. The members attended together a 7:30 Mass one Sunday each month, which was followed by a pancake breakfast in the Church’s auditorium served by members of the Altar & Rosary Society, a group of women parishioners. Those were simpler times, when men were men and women were women. But that’s not my point. This one time at band camp, I mean, this one Sunday the Holy Name Society arranged for a father and son trip to the Bronx to attend a Yankee doubleheader. After early Mass that morning Dad and I and other fathers and sons boarded a train to New York City and made it to Yankee Stadium by game time. It was my first train excursion, my first trip to New York, and my first professional baseball game. It was a great day for father-son bonding and also for the Bronx Bombers as they swept their double-header with the Cleveland Indians.

While in the sports context, I’ll also mention days of individual achievement (sadly only two) and glory for my favorite teams. With respect to the former, in September 1985 I (an admittedly awful golfer) had a hole-in-one at Manor Country Club, and in May 1966 I rolled a 653 series (the highest in the league) in the championship match to lead my bowling team to victory. Those accomplishments need to be included in a discussion of my best days.

The most memorable sporting events that I attended involved the New York Baseball Yankees and the Washington Football Team (formerly known before the era of political correctness as the “R******S”). In October 1977 I was meeting with the stockholders of a client in Martinsville, Virginia and received a call from a D.C. attorney who knew that I was a diehard Yankee fan. One of his clients was a minority owner of the Yankees. The attorney invited me to attend Game 6 of the World Series at Yankee Stadium that night. I went back into my client meeting and told the stockholders that there was an emergency and I had to leave immediately. I offered no explanation other than that and they, being Southern Christians, said they would pray for me. I hightailed it in my rental car up to Roanoke and was able to get on a mid-afternoon flight to LaGuardia, and took a cab to the stadium, arriving around 5:30 and meeting my attorney friend at the Will Call gate. When we entered the stadium we were led to a wonderful pre-game buffet for the owners and their guests. George Steinbrenner’s box was next to where we were and his guests that night included several former Yankee players and NYC Mayor Abe Beame. I was thrilled to just be among such elite, but the real joy was the game itself. It was the night Reggie Jackson in consecutive at-bats hit three home runs in a World Series game, something never before nor never since done, and the Yankees won another baseball championship that evening. How cool was that!

As for that Football Team, at my request Dr. Norman Scott got 3 tickets for me to Super Bowl XVII which was played in January 1983 at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. I persuaded my wife to go with me and the third ticket was for Sue Michel who was then living in Los Angeles. We had a great time that weekend, which included touring Beverly Hills and Rodeo Drive and attending a concert by Johnny Mathis at the Hollywood Bowl, but the crowning jewel was the game itself, for that was the day of John Riggins’ epic 42 yard touchdown run and the Football Team’s first Super Bowl victory, and we were there as witnesses to history! Surely, one of the best days I remember. The trip back to D.C., by the way, was the last comfortable flight Claudia had for a number of years.

In my professional career three days stand out as great days for me. One was the day I learned that I passed the DC bar exam on the first try. I remember that I was working that morning in Clinton, Maryland on a nursing home audit for Arthur Andersen & Co. when a friend (who also passed) called to give me the good news. Happy Hour started early that day. The second memorable event is related to that. It was the day of my formal admission to the DC bar. As a surprise to me my Dad and my sister flew down to Washington from Scranton that morning to attend the admission ceremony in DC Superior Court. It overwhelmed me. I had to work that afternoon, so Dad and Joan went to my sparsely furnished apartment at McLean Gardens in Northwest DC. Joan took it upon herself during the afternoon hours to shop for a number of furnishings and household items I was lacking. Another surprise for me when I got home from work! That evening we had a celebratory dinner at Trader Vic’s, a popular Polynesian restaurant in downtown DC and enjoyed cocktails with umbrellas in them. What’s not to like about that day?

The third memorable professional day occurred in the mid-1980’s when I argued a tax case before the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia. I was involved in only a handful of actual trials in my career (I like to think that was because I was so successful settling cases with IRS without trial!), and this Fourth Circuit case was my first and only appellate appearance. It was a fulfilling experience to prepare the appeal brief and then argue my client’s case before a 3-judge panel who kept interrupting me with questions that I believe were designed to make me lose my train of thought. But guess what – RJT 1, IRS 0. Any day you win has got to be a best day.

Sometime near the end of the 80s Claudia and I went to the Big Apple for a weekend, and my sister and brother-in-law were also coincidentally in NYC that weekend. We stayed at the Essex House on Central Park West and I remember that on Saturday night we were in the lounge bar and saw Patrick Duffy there. He played Bobby Ewing on the Dallas TV series and was quite a handsome dude. My wife couldn’t take her eyes off him and when he got up to leave and started walking towards the elevator I was certain my wife had thoughts of following him, before I reminded her of our wedding vows. What I just described, however, is just an aside. It has nothing to do with one of my best days. That was the following day, because my good client, Dan Scott, arranged for tickets (great seats) to a Broadway matinee for all four of us and after that for dinner at a renowned French restaurant, courtesy of Scott Printing. I cannot remember the name of the Broadway show or the name of the restaurant, but I clearly remember how we felt so special that day. I suppose that going to a play and dining out are not events that readily make a best day, but it was for me because I shared the enjoyment with the three adults that I most loved, plus it was all gratis.

In the spring of 1985 I incurred a ruptured spinal disk. The accompanying sciatic nerve pain was excruciating. I could barely walk and could not sit without unforgiving discomfort. I was in bed at home for a week and then in traction at the hospital for 5 days, before the decision was made to operate. The surgery was successful and when I recovered from the anesthesia the pain was gone. Clearly, that was a really good day.

I think my most recent best day was the Thanksgiving Day surprise when unbeknownst to my sister and me all of our children and their families traveled to Cary for a wonderful weekend. It was simply so gratifying to have all of us together for a change on a happy occasion.

So there you have it, a selective sampling of my best days. But all of them pale, of course, in comparison to (chronologically) September 9, 1972, May 25, 1974, August 13, 1977, and February 23, 1984, and the life that followed.