This year, the Brewers have abandoned tradition to spend our Christmas holidays away from home.
In fact, we will be taking a 10-day Disney cruise through the Caribbean. Our itinerary calls for us to spend Christmas day on St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Other stops include Key West, Antigua, St. Lucia, St. Maarten, and Castaway Cay in the Bahamas. We will stop to visit Walt Disney World in Orlando before returning home in time to watch the WV Mountaineers vs. Florida State in the Gator Bowl.
Our family webmaster is Carolyn, 15, now a sophomore at George Washington High School. This is her 2nd year in the school band. Last year, the concert band was selected as the state’s honor band. In addition, it was the first high school band to perform in Charleston’s new performing arts venue, the Clay
Center. She has been learning to drive since getting her learner’s permit last March and is looking forward
to getting her regular license so she can drive to school in her Dad’s Chrysler Sebring convertible. Carolyn was one of three students from her school selected to join 37 other WV high school students who will be going to Australia for three weeks this summer with the People to People Ambassador Program.
Emily, 11, is now in the 6th grade at John Adams Middle School. Last spring, she was selected to
perform with both the All-County Chorus and All-State Chorus. The All-State Chorus performed in Wheeling the day after Carolyn’s high school band and Grandma and Grandpa Yunker and Aunt Karen Weber came down from Elyria to see their performances. Emily has started playing trumpet in the school band while continuing to take piano lessons. She is also active in a local Girl Scout troop. Emily played on her school’s junior varsity volleyball team and is now playing in a local club league. Both girls are also playing church league basketball again this winter.
Katie’s part-time job picture has been changing like a kaleidoscope. She is still working as a retail sales clerk at T. Frances clothing store in South Hills but not for long, because the store is going out of business at the end of December. She has also started teaching CPR for the Red Cross one or two days a month. Once it became clear that T. Frances would be shutting its doors, she started looking for a part-time nursing job in the local hospitals. Finding no enthusiasm in the hospital hiring departments for a nurse who had not actively plied her trade for over 16 years, Katie inquired at the local hospice where she had completed a volunteer training program 4 years ago. They were happy to add her to their per diem staff and she is now in the process of completing their orientation program.
Of course, two or three part-time jobs are not enough to keep Katie off the streets so she still
volunteers at both girls’ schools, answering phones in the office and coordinating the parent volunteers who
perform lunch monitor duty at Emily’s middle school. She is also active in the Band Boosters at both
schools. This year, Katie began serving on the Parish Council at Blessed Sacrament where she continues
playing guitar in the choir.
In March, Lew took over as Executive Director of the WV Ethics Commission. As fate would have
it, what had been an almost invisible state agency became the subject of intense controversy as the
Commission conducted simultaneous investigations of two long-term State Legislators for misusing their
public positions. The Charleston Gazette and Daily Mail have one or two articles nearly every week
focusing on some government ethics issue and Lew has appeared frequently on TV and radio news
programs. In November, both Legislators lost their seats in the general election and one of them has entered
a no contest plea to misdemeanor charges of destroying public computer records as part of a scheme to
thwart the Commission’s investigation. Moreover, West Virginia’s new Governor-elect, Joe Manchin, has
indicated that his top priority is to give more authority to the Ethics Commission so it can properly police
state government. Stay tuned for further developments.
When not at his job, Lew still plays tennis two nights a week. He also sings in the choir and serves as
a lector and collection counter at Blessed Sacrament. Finally, he is now in his 7th year on the Board of
Directors for the Friends of WV Public Television.
After 11 years in West Virginia, we decided to try one of the local tourist attractions, white water
rafting in the New River Gorge. The four of us went on a one-day trip down the New River in July, just two
weeks after a 14-year-old girl drowned on the same excursion with the same outfitter. After signing enough
legal releases to generate carpel tunnel in our writing hands, we set off in a 9-person raft with our guide who
explained that although this was only his first trip down the river, he had received extensive training over the
Internet. Just kidding, of course. Despite some concern about the wisdom of placing our children at risk of
life and limb, we embarked on our adventure. It was truly exciting and invigorating with spectacular scenery
and challenging rapids up to Class V, and only one really dicey moment when we struck a rock and three
adults, including Lew, were thrown out of the raft. How soon can we do that again?
The rest of the year was pretty tame by comparison. Katie and the girls got to visit the Biltmore in
North Carolina on a long weekend and Katie and Lew flew out to San Diego in October to attend the Air
Force Retired JAG Reunion. The entire family enjoyed another week of family camp in July at CYO Camp
Christopher near Akron, after stopping in Columbus to see the traveling Broadway production of The Lion
King. Thanksgiving found us in Elyria where all of the Yunkers got together and Katie attended her 25-year
high school class reunion.
We hope this has been a good year for you and that our greeting finds you well and ready to enjoy the
holiday season.
