Category Archives: Friends and Family

Child Advocates Superheroes 2022

October 17, 2022 by Jeff C | Comments Off

Another great event for a great Houston Charity. I think I’ve been involved with Child Advoocates events and fundraisers for 25+ years now. Proud to have chaired this event since its founding — each time with founding title sponsor MRE Consulting, and each time with awesome race director Angie Parker. Check out prior years’ posts to hear why CAI is a great charity you ought to support (or find something similar in your own town).

My photography can be hit and miss through no fault of the model/subject! The best images are below, with a second big batch of pictures below that. Forgive the algorithm that picks which ones are big or small! And forgive me if I didn’t get your cute kid’s picture (In my defense, there were lots of ’em out there.)

Downtown in December

December 11, 2021 by Jeff C | Comments Off

2,000 people on 3 blocks of downtown Vian?!?! Downtown in December 2021 — a big event in a small Oklahoma hometown. Click the first image to scroll through full-screen images. All images may be downloaded.

Superheroes IX!! – Child Advocates Houston

October 17, 2021 by Jeff C | Comments Off

It’s year NINE for our Superheroes Run — benefiting Child Advocates of Houston, and as always presented by MRE Consulting – thanks to good friends Mike, Shane, and Dru. MORE THANKS to all the other sponsors, friends, volunteers, race crew, and CA staff who made this happen. We’ve raised over $1 million for a great cause by doing this event each October since 2013. I’ve bragged, begged, and preached about it every year (See, e.g., 2016, and 2019), so I’ll get right to the cute photos.

NOTICE that there are 4 pages of thumbnails. (As always, I need to point out that these are NOT photos of the kids in state custody that are the beneficiaries of CA’s services. We don’t publish their pictures. These are Houston kids whose families brought them out to have fun and support a great cause.)

Superheroes for Kids VII — Child Advocates Houston

October 20, 2019 by admin | Comments Off

This was Year 7  for the Child Advocates Superheroes Run, and it was the best ever!   We had at least 1200 runners, parents and volunteers out at CityCentre, and raised over $150,000 to support Child Advocates’ work helping abused and neglected kids in Harris County.  A sincere thanks to everyone that made this happen.

Child Advocates serves kids who have been taken from their homes due to suspected abuse or neglect.  The volunteer Advocates guide, support, and comfort the kids, gather the facts, and work with the courts and the State to find permanent, safe solutions.  CA Inc. recruits, trains and supports those volunteers. 

My consistent pitch for Child Advocates as Houston’s best charity:

  1. CAI helps kids in our own hometown who are in desperate situations through no conceivable fault of their own.
  2. CAI’s one-time intervention seeks to permanently and efficiently solve problems and affect the kids’ entire lives, without creating dependency or requiring permanent or ongoing assistance.
  3. CAI’s cause is financially undersupported, largely because few potential large donors have close personal experience with, or risks of, this kind of extreme child neglect or abuse. There’s nothing wrong with donating to your own alma mater or church, or to charities addressing diseases that affect you or your family, but that can leave a huge gap for charities like Child Advocates.  I think this is true philanthropy.
  4. They do need the money:  Stunningly, there are thousands of kids removed from their homes each year, and CAI has the money and manpower to serve only about half of them.

Our seven-year fundraising total is now at almost $1 million.

All our sponsors were recognized at the event, but this year I need to give a special ‘shout-out’ to some personal friends of mine who have generously and patiently supported Child Advocates (and me) in this event.  Shane Merz, Mike Short, and Dru Neikirk at MRE Consulting are Founding title sponsors who have been with me all seven years.  This event would never have gotten off the ground without them.  Other “Amazing” Superhero sponsors (most of them also for all 7 years) are my friends Ned Barnett, Scott & Stacy Humphries, Jeff Kubin, Kim David (for Baylor College of Medicine), Reynolds Frizzell LLP, Gibbs & Bruns LLP, Sixfoot Studios, John Eddie & Sheridan Williams, and Grant & Elizabeth Harvey.  I’m proud of that sponsor list.

Hayley Jaska (CAI Events Director) and Angie Henderson Parker (Race Director) are the true Superheroes of the Superheroes Run.  I’m the ‘Chairman’ of the event, and in earlier years this meant I had a million things to do and lots of fires to put out.  This year I was a little uneasy all morning because everything was going so smoothly I didn’t have much to do!!   

Our top 3 racers. I’m personally pleased to say that the winner (Mark Speets, center) was from the Men’s 50+ age group. Second and third place were Rylee Board (left) and Joshua Fong (right).

Big Bjorn Hagelmanm was our lead-out guide rider, showing the runners which way to go. Bjorn is the COO of Founding/Presenting Sponsor MRE Consulting.

Croatian Sailing and Slovenian Cycling

April 20, 2019 by Jeff C | Comments Off

This wasn’t a ‘serious’ photo expedition like some of my trips.  This one was about sailing, biking and general sightseeing with a handful of friends, old and new.  Just a few thoughts and a few pretty pictures to share . . . .

Lake Bled, Slovenia was a highlight of the trip.

Sunset over the Adriatic Sea, from a hotel balcony in Rovinj, Croatia.

I always tended to think of Croatia and Slovenia as a lot more exotic and far away than European destinations like Italy or Austria or Greece.  But it turns out that the foreign-sounding capital city of Ljubljana, Slovenia is just a couple of hours’ drive from either Venice, Italy or southern Austria.  And the Croatian coast is just a hundred miles across the Adriatic from the east side of the “boot” of Italy.  That geographic proximity gives a pretty good hint of what you’ll see when you’re sightseeing: pretty coastlines, tree-covered mountains, hillside vineyards, Mediterranean islands, and towns that are a couple of thousand years old.

Somehow the people of both countries (very similar to each other but with different languages) seemed familiar.  Few would stand out in any American town, and I could imagine myself blending in almost entirely (lots of people with blue-green light eyes and Mediterranean skin).   Though tourism is definitely getting more popular here, it’s new and small enough that the people are happy to see and welcome visitors.

I spent one week on a sailboat off the Croatian Coast near Split, and the next on a bicycle going in and out of Slovenia, Italy, and Croatia.  Both were great trips with the good company of mostly new friends and my long-time colleague and law firm partner Grant Harvey.  Grant and I worked together then retired from the same Houston law firm, and he rides bikes, flies airplanes, and enjoys travel photography, so we’ve always got lots to talk about.  And we occasionally agree on something political!  Occasionally.

Split, Croatia, is a major cruise and boating port

 

 

 

This was a little gravel landing strip on the island of Hvar, Croatia. (No, I did not fly there! and yes, I resisted the strong temptation to steal that sign.)

Grant Harvey, my very good friend for the last 25 years or so. Grant organized this trip, so I’m in his debt. This is him on our chartered sailboat, somewhere between Split and Hvar Croatia.

 

Rovinj, from the sea, on a ferry back from Pula.

A quaint old lounge area at a hotel in Bled, Slovenia.

The biking went in and out of Slovenia, Italy, and Croatia. Croatia is a member of the EU, but somehow I still needed my passport even for a bike ride.

 

 

Sailboats off the Croatian Coast, near Split. Croatia is an extremely popular sailing destination. Even in the ‘off’ season when I was there, I could sometimes see 100s of other sailboats at sea.

The gallery here includes a shot of an old Russian submarine “garage” and hideout – a reminder of my Cold War youth and of times when we had a different view of this part of the world.  That horse in the bad selfie with me is one of the Lipizzaner stallions at their home in Lipica, Slovenia.  Almost all of them are white; the handful of black ones are genetic celebrities.  The ancient Roman looking stuff is ancient Roman stuff: at the fourth-century “palace” of Roman emperor Diocletian, and (with me) the colosseum at Pula.  That odd statue in the last image is a truffle, in the Istrian truffle region of Slovenia.