Category: Family Portraits

Many peo­ple say that my Uncle Corbin is the spit and image of his dad, my grand­pa. For the most part that is bang-on. He’s loud and stub­born and dis­ci­plined and ded­i­cat­ed and com­mit­ted to his fam­i­ly. He is a firm believ­er that if you are going to do some­thing, you should do it the right way [usu­al­ly his way] and to the best of your abil­i­ty. [A trait most of my fam­i­ly exhibits] When my par­ents divorced, Corbin decid­ed to be a father fig­ure for me when I need­ed one. For my 16th birth­day he got his hands on some Notre Dame foot­ball tick­ets, and I got to see Lou Holtz’s last home game at the sta­di­um, and vis­it ND for the first time.

Lat­er, when I start­ed going to school there, I’d see him just about when­ev­er he came to cam­pus, for a cou­ple’s retreat with his wife, my Aunt Mary. Life at ND was par­tic­u­lar­ly hard for me for a vari­ety of rea­sons and I once had a long talk with Corbin about the dif­fi­cul­ties I was hav­ing with my room­mate and women and his advice and will­ing­ness to share his own tough times were immense­ly help­ful, although I might not have real­ized it at the time.

Corbin is a pret­ty die-hard par­ty-line Repub­li­can. He refus­es to buy Grey Goose vod­ka because the French don’t sup­port the US, won’t buy Coors beer because they sup­port GLBT stuff and oth­er things I can’t quite wrap my head around.

Corbin gave me my first cig­ar, at my Cousin Luke’s wed­ding. When we go to Cana­da, he usu­al­ly has two or three for me as well. Corbin is a very good fish­er­man. It is hard to beat him when it comes to catch­ing wall­eye. He also knows how to cook. His steaks and ribs and baked fish are out­stand­ing. We always bick­er and get pissed off at each oth­er at least once on a trip to Cana­da, main­ly because we’re so much alike per­son­al­i­ty-wise and because I’m dri­ving the boat. We also get into fights when we are euchre part­ners, but again, that is the case for every­one in my fam­i­ly. After we’ve had time to cool down, it is like noth­ing hap­pened. But over and above all, his gen­eros­i­ty is unstint­ing and unend­ing and I’m glad he’s my uncle because my life would be much less col­or­ful and edu­ca­tion­al with­out him.