By Timothy D. Naegele[1]

Today is Mother’s Day, 2024. Several years ago, I wrote:

My parents were a ‘golden couple’ with everything going for them. My father was in real estate; and he bought part of the Al Jolson-Ruby Keeler estate in Encino, California, which he planned to subdivide – keeping one of the building sites for us. Plans were completed for a new, lovely home on it. Then, like a bolt of lightning out of the blue, my mother was determined to have the convergence of two rare skin diseases: Lichen Sclerosus et Atrophicus and scleroderma. They were diagnosed by doctors at the Scripps Clinic in La Jolla, California, and later treated by doctors who had been trained at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, the state in which my parents were born and raised and where they met in grade school. These conditions occurred before the advent of health insurance, which would have helped our family financially. They affected only the right side of her body; and she came to my sixth grade graduation in a wheelchair. Such conditions ceased abruptly when she had her right leg amputated; and she learned to walk with an artificial leg.

Years later, during the Vietnam War, she organized volunteers at the Red Cross’ offices in Westwood, California, where we lived and where the UCLA campus is located. She was honored for the work that she had done by being named the local chapter’s ‘Woman of the Year,’ in helping U.S. military families and their service members in the war zone connect and cope with the stresses of family emergencies in the states, and emergencies that the service members encountered in Vietnam, Cambodia and elsewhere that the U.S. was engaged. My father worked seven days a week to pay the staggering medical and other bills; and my parents are my only heroes in life.

Thank you, God, for her and them—on this my mother’s day.

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© 2024, Timothy D. Naegele

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[1]  Timothy D. Naegele was counsel to the United States Senate’s Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, and chief of staff to Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal recipient and former U.S. Senator Edward W. Brooke (R-Mass).  See, e.g., Timothy D. Naegele Resume-21-8-6  and https://naegeleknol.wordpress.com/accomplishments/   He has an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), as well as two law degrees from the School of Law (Boalt Hall), University of California, Berkeley, and from Georgetown University.  He served as a Captain in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency at The Pentagon, where he received the Joint Service Commendation Medal (see, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commendation_Medal#Joint_Service).  Mr. Naegele is an Independent politically; and he is listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Law, and Who’s Who in Finance and Business. He has written extensively over the years (see, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/articles/ and https://naegeleknol.wordpress.com/articles/), and studied photography with Ansel Adams.  He can be contacted directly at tdnaegele.associates@gmail.com

[2]  See https://naegeleblog.files.wordpress.com/2020/07/timothy-d.-naegele.pdf, p. 380, n.3.