Buck Up:

Life, Wonderful

Hot off the press: Life’s about friends and family. It really is.

Buck Wargo

Buck Wargo

VEGAS INC Coverage

Hee Haw. Those two lighthearted words can stir powerful memories. Those two words were of course spoken by George Bailey in the film classic, It’s a Wonderful Life. The same words I hadn’t heard since 2004 were suddenly thrust into my consciousness at a recent California wedding of my buddy Paul who chose me as his best man after his older brother died. After the ceremony, Paul’s friends, Tony and Dave, shouted “Hee Haw!” to him and his bride, Mona, knowing that phrase came from one of his favorite movies. That same weekend, I was on the phone several times with my friend Mark who was back in my hometown in Illinois attending his mother’s funeral. Two different occasions a couple thousand miles apart brought back some painful memories and made me reflect.

As a child growing up in a town not much different from Bedford Falls in the movie, I never imagined my life’s events would lead me to Las Vegas.

Like a young George Bailey, I dreamed of travel and adventure as a foreign correspondent and pursued it, earning a degree in Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas. In the summer of 1990, I prepared to move to the region after getting to know the Iraqi ambassador, who liked a kid who had an interest in his then-reclusive country and knew it would be the place for a reporter to be. But just days before I was scheduled to arrive in Baghdad in August 1990, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and my visa was invalidated. From there, Iraq hosted media from around the world in its expensive hotels, making it impractical for me to be based there as a freelance reporter.

I spent the Gulf War reporting from Jordan, but a promise to my father to take care of my mother required me to give up my dream. So I did.

My dad, Bob, a clone of The Honeymooners’ Ralph Kramden in looks and personality, died of a heart attack when I was 19. My oldest brother, Ron, died in an auto accident at 20 (when I was only 10) and my second oldest brother, Randy, has been in and out of prison most of his life, scourged by a heroin addiction. My third–oldest brother, Craig, who was taking care of my mom, a modern-day version of Mrs. Walton, when I was in the Middle East, wanted to pursue his own career as a Hollywood agent.

Life kept spinning forward and I ended up in Southern California to work for the Los Angeles Times, and my mom, Theresa, lived with me. Later, Craig moved in with us.

In June 2004, my world was rocked yet again—as it had so many times before—when Craig was gravely ill with AIDS and my mom was diagnosed with brain cancer. I immediately took a buy-out at the Times to oversee her medical care.

Three months later I was in Craig’s hospital room with my ailing mom, watching It’s a Wonderful Life on a continuous loop. It was heart wrenching because I introduced him to the movie I saw for the first time as a boy in the mid-1970s and had watched every Christmas since.

Craig died the next day at the age of 48 and six weeks later, my mom, too, passed.

All of that led me to Las Vegas, where I have written about the pain in people’s lives caused by the collapse of real estate.

I know times have been unbelievably tough, but it will get better. It really will. We will overcome this Great Recession. We really will.

And, yes, I still worry about my brother Randy’s failing health from prolonged drug use and that of two other siblings, a sister and younger brother, whose lives have been uprooted many times by traumatic experiences. And like George Bailey, I’ve had to deal with my own hearing loss that hasn’t been corrected, despite ten surgeries.

But the memories stirred by a weekend at a friend’s beach wedding and a funeral across the country let me know how lucky I’ve been despite all the heartaches. Truly.

I recently closed on my first home, and an investment in a company that manufacturers fashion and craft products in China for national retailers might just change my life forever.

But, of course, I’d give it all back in an instant if I could. There are more important things than money. Life’s about family and friends. Weddings and funerals remind us of that.

I think it’s time to sit back on the sofa this Christmas and watch George Bailey just as my brother Craig would have wanted.

Hee Haw, big brother. Hee Haw, all of us.

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