Читать книгу Fleeing the Past - Christopher LaGrone - Страница 9

MY SON CHRISTOPHER was a successful high school and college baseball player, and like most athletes, most of his focus was on his sport. After graduating from college with a degree in marketing and working in various jobs, he discovered that his true passion was not athletics or marketing, but writing. After uncovering his passion, it became his goal to become a published author. Chris began pursuing his dream earnestly while serving as a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

His loving father Mark, my husband, was a high school teacher and Chris’s baseball coach at Arvada West High. Mark, too, loved writing but kept it on a personal level. He encouraged Chris to write what became the Delta Tango Trilogy. The two of them would talk daily about their love of words, the challenges of working on the southern border, and the importance of pursuing one’s dreams. Mark was Chris’s rock.

When Mark died of cancer in 2014, the loss was tremendous for Chris, missing his daily visits with his dad. It was then that the LaGrone family’s dear friend, Alan Olds, became Chris’s confidant and mentor—and initial editor when Chris began writing his first Delta Tango manuscript. Retired from a full career as a highly respected and successful high school English teacher in Colorado, Alan guided and instructed Chris, who’d had no formal writing education. Our family is grateful for all the hours Alan spent with Chris, not only on his novel, but also as Chris’s devoted and loving friend.

When expressing thanks, the first person who comes to mind is Denny Dressman, whose role is detailed in the In Memoriam section. Without Denny, there may never have been a Delta Tango Trilogy. For more than two years, he not only edited Chris’s work and helped him develop his novel, ultimately into a trilogy; Denny also became a good friend to him during that time. Since Chris’s unexpected death, Denny has become a good friend of mine, a mentor who has guided and instructed me throughout the process of bringing the trilogy to publication. I am eternally grateful for Denny Dressman, a true professional who is also kind and compassionate.

Thanks, also, to Nancy Hestera, wife of my son-in-law’s brother, who first asked Denny if he would read Chris’s original manuscript. And to Terry Whalin of Morgan James Publishing, and everyone in founder David Hancock’s Morgan James family who helped produce this book and the entire trilogy.

It is with tremendous pride, as well as a heavy heart, that my daughter Aimee and I see Christopher’s dream realized, and his legacy preserved, with publication of the Delta Tango Trilogy. We miss both Chris and his father deeply, but we know that they have been reunited in a better place.

—Sherryl LaGrone

Christopher LaGrone