A Letter to My Hometown...

Dear Sun Prairie, Wisconsin

Recently a high school classmate asked me if I would be attending our class reunion later this year. I really wasn’t sure how to answer that. As I honestly hadn’t made a decision. For years, the idea of attending an SPHS reunion struck me like asking a Titanic survivor if they were interested in attending a commemorative North Atlantic cruise.

It has been said that your hometown is the fire out of which the person you are today was forged. I find I struggle with that sentiment, and probably always will. My relationship with you, my “hometown” is, as Facebook might describe it… “complicated”. So, I thought it’s a good time to clear the air about a few things.

The primary motivation for moving back to the United States nine years ago, was to be closer to my parents. Having a number of lifelong friends who recently had lost one or both of their parents, I was keenly aware that I had fewer days ahead with them than behind.

So instead of being 4,000 miles and a 9-hour flight away in London, or 2,000 miles and a 6-hour flight way in San Francisco, for the past year and a half we were 940 miles and a 2-hour flight away in New York City

Then Nine months ago, I moved back here. The original reason was my dad’s health taking a prolonged downward turn back last June. When he passed away suddenly on his 87th birthday in early July, the reasons for moving back shifted to being here for my mom, but the overall context remained the same.

Now I find myself once again living back here. Granted, I live in Madison, not Sun Prairie, but it is still living in Dane county, some 30 plus years after I left. Which has been an odd experience. It’s like one of those Science Fiction movies where someone travels in time then gets back to the present and notices how the timeline was changed. Things are mostly familiar, but there are glaring differences that make it clear that the place you returned to, is not the same place you left.

The first thing you notice, is how much BIGGER the city is. Growing up here there were 5 elementary schools, one Jr. High and one High school. Now there are 10 elementary schools, 3 middle schools, 2 high schools and 2 of whatever Phoenix Academy  & Sun Prairie Virtual School are.

The area of Madison where I live in is also completely unrecognizable from when I was growing up. What is now a sprawling cityscape of strip malls, Costco, and apartment complexes, used to be just cornfields and a dive bar called the Twilight.

On a previous trip back here in 2022, the front page of the Wisconsin State Journal sports section had a full-page story on the first ever football game between the Sun Prairie East Cardinals and the Sun Prairie West, Wolves. A game that was played not just on Ashley Field, but rather AT Ashley Field IN the Bank of Sun Prairie Stadium.

My family moved to Sun Prairie when I was in first grade. I went from Pier Elementary School in Fond Du Lac, to Northside Elementary in the fall of that year. I remember at the time, thinking how, Sun Prairie with its proximity to Madison felt like a real “city” compared to tiny, small town Fond Du Lac.    In time, however, that feeling would wear off.

I have said my relationship with Sun Prairie is a complicated one, and that is very true. But let me be clear, I feel very lucky to have grown up here. It was a wonderfully safe, and yes for the most part, fun place to be from. Sun Prairie Public Schools, while certainly not perfect, were better than most and gave me a well-rounded education that has served me in life. I had and continue to have amazing and wonderful friends here. Friends who played a huge role in my becoming the person I am today.

Sun Prairie, Wisconsin is and will always be my ‘hometown’. It is where I am from.

But…

One of the nice things about getting older is that old friends can be honest with each other. So here goes...

I am from here, but I have never ever felt like I belonged here.

Growing up here you made it very clear, that … “noticeable individuality” was something that would make life difficult. It's safe to say that back then, I was not someone who was in with the "popular kids". My varsity letter (yes, I have one) was in Extemporaneous Speech. (Yeah, I know... you actually can letter in that, who knew?)

So, I didn't fit in very well. I was an awkward kid with mild stutter, who wasn’t at all interested in sports, had a graduate school level vocabulary and interests that greatly differed from most of my classmates.

And for better or worse, in the 1980’s, Sun Prairie was not a place that smiled upon being "different". As a result, it became clear that I would always be on the outside looking in. Consequently, moving back here has been an emotionally mixed experience. Part nostalgia and part PTSD.

Don't get me wrong, I had (and still have) amazing friends here and great memories. Yet “back in the day” (as the kids say), the “vibe” was quite different. Growing up here as a gay kid was a daily exercise in terror.

The ultimate put-down was to say something was "gay" or to be called a "fag". You saw kids who were even slightly effeminate or "different” tormented on a daily basis. Sun Prairie High School, while providing a very good public education, was (like most American High Schools), stratified to the point of making the caste system in India look like outtakes from “The Breakfast Club”.

In my Junior year, I was one of the editors of the school newspaper, the Cardinal Courier. An organization called “The United”, (a groundbreaking non-profit organization that provided support and counseling services to Gay and Lesbian teens in South Central Wisconsin) contacted us. They wanted to buy an ad in the paper advertising their crisis counseling phone line. The reaction was… stark.

Teachers and classmates that I had thought would be somewhat progressive were suddenly “seriously concerned”, angry even that we might be “promoting the homosexual lifestyle”, and even potentially pushing some poor confused soul into it, just by running an ad for a crisis counseling hotline.

The experience taught me a very clear lesson; Sun Prairie, while not a bad place to grow up, would be a very dangerous place to be grown up. There would never be a first date, a dance or a kiss stolen at a locker in between classes. To even attempt such a thing would be suicide. Literally.  

There was no such thing a Gay-Straight alliances, or “Safe Spaces” for LGBT youth. As much as my classmates would never want to admit it today, had a student in our High School class “come out” publicly as Gay or Lesbian, the response would have been quite simply, to bully him or her to death..

When I see streaming series' like "Heartstopper", "Young Royals" or any of the scores of high school romance series coming out of Asia, I can only smile and be grateful that in some ways and in some places society has moved on.

Thankfully one of the “alternate time-line” changes you notice coming back here is the daily reality for a gay kid at Sun Prairie East is, (at least to a certain extent) far better today. Yet even now decades later, driving around town still prompts very real memories of that feeling of being on the “outside looking in”..

While I don’t live in Sun Prairie, I do live right next door. As much as I would have liked my Parents to have moved to California, the aftermath of the Covid pandemic made that big of a move, impossible. And with my Dad buried here, it is not reasonable to ask my Mom to leave. So, here she will stay, and We will as well.

Yet at the end of the day, I am grateful to be able to say that I am from here. But I am also able to make peace with that fact that I did not, still do not, and never will, belong here.

Not a bad thing, just the truth. Who knows? I may even go the reunion. If for no other reason than to see who it is we all have become.

Go Cardinals… I still hope you beat the Wolves.

Love,
Dave

Truth Worth Sharing...

California based speaker and consultant Marc Puckett, recently posted this on LinkedIn.  It's worth sharing.

It doesn’t happen all at once.

There’s no announcement, no warning, no moment where life taps you on the shoulder and tells you:

“Look closely… things are changing.”

It happens quietly.

You’re busy — working, raising kids, paying bills, rushing through days that feel too short.
And then one afternoon, you go home to visit your parents…
and something soft inside you shifts.

You notice the small things first:

Your father gets up from the couch a little slower.
Your mother asks you to repeat something she once would’ve heard clearly.
The house feels the same —
but the people inside are aging gently, silently.

You notice they hold the railing when they go downstairs.
They double-check the locks before bed.
They sit more than they stand.
They nap more.
They walk a little closer together.

You realize things you never thought about before:

Who changes the lightbulbs now?
Who carries the heavy groceries?
Who helps them understand the new phone they’re afraid to break?

And suddenly, the roles you’ve always known start shifting.

The hands that raised you
now tremble when pouring tea.
The voices that soothed you
now need reassurance themselves.
The people who once felt invincible
now feel beautifully, heartbreakingly human.

You begin to understand something deeper:

Growing older isn’t just happening to them —
it’s happening to you, too.
And love starts to look different.

It becomes:

• driving them to appointments
• fixing things they didn’t want to ask help for
• listening to stories you’ve already heard
• staying a little longer instead of rushing out
• calling even when you’re tired
• appreciating all the little sacrifices you once overlooked

Because now you finally see it:

Your parents aren’t just aging.
They’re winding down a chapter they spent decades writing —
a chapter filled with you.

And the quiet truth is this:

They won’t say it out loud,
but they’re hoping you’ll walk through their door a little more often.
Not to fix anything.
Not to bring anything.

Just to be there.

To sit.
To talk.
To laugh.
To listen.
To remind them that they’re still needed…
still valued…
still loved.

One day, you’ll realize these are the visits that matter most.
Because time moves fast.
But moments with aging parents?
Those are the memories that stay soft forever.

Love them while you still have them.