Brian McCade:
CLASS OF 1978
W.T. Woodson High SchoolClass of 1978
Fairfax, VA
Wakefield Forest Elementary SchoolClass of 1971
Fairfax, VA
Brian's Story
Hello all,
I sure hope this Classmates thing is not the beginning of my midlife crisis, I haven't even thought of buying a Porsche yet. Although, oddly, the older I get the more I feel a need to try and connect with the past. I hope my future doesn't hold an urge to seek out my nursery school mates. As I recall, I was a real asshole in nursery school. Hopefully, I've grown, and I don't mean into a bigger ass.
I'm going to attempt to briefly share with anyone who is interested, my journey since W.T. I will make every effort not to let this read like a resume. I have read a few of these, and the folks that get caught up in listing their professional development like it's a job interview, initially may seem interesting, inevitably make me feel like I should be doing their "Performance Review". Let's not judge, it's not a contest. Remember the wise words of America's most sage philosophers: "I am what I am, and that's all that I am", along with "nobody puts baby in the corner" and "more cowbell".
After high school, I played a lot of golf, basketball, and semi-pro football for the VA Charges for a year, until another knee injury and a pretty serious addiction to pain killers and "sprinkles". I put em on everything. All the while I was working construction during the day, and attending NOVA at night for construction management and design. I did manage to squeeze in a few music classes, and play a job every now and then to keep my chops; as they were. That's hip music talk for the uninitiated. Somewhere in there I started to work in the Engineering department at Commonwealth Drs. Hospital (Graveyard shift) to help supplement my tuition costs and my growing addiction to sprinkles. I was becoming insatiable. At some point I started what can only be described as "side work", building decks, rec. rooms, installing hardwood floors, remodeling baths and kitchens, and small editions. This is starting to sound like a resume. I quit the hospital (was too young to resign) and started McCade Construction inc. My little brother Danny, and retired father Joe Sr. came on board, and we made what seemed like a lot of money. Unfortunately, we didn't pay a lot of taxes. I should say I didn't pay a lot of taxes. After about six years of working seven days a week to get ahead, all I had to show for it was bad knees, a bad back, and a worse addiction to "Skittles"; I could'nt get enough. Although, to this day, I can't even go in a donut shop, or walk down the cake decorating isle in the supermarket without "Joansing" for sprinkles.
Danny went on to CLC, and now works in Charlottesville at an online legal editing firm as the systems design person, and builds websites on the side with his wife Lisa for most of the local wineries and businesses. They have two girls, Devon and Laina.
Dad finally retired for real, and toured the country with my mom Mary in their mobile home for about two years before settling in the home we built in Winchester. They are now in their eighties and play golf enough to make me jealous, while spending summers in the mountains of northwest North Carolina, and winters in Myrtle Beach.
I made the jump to Inova Health Systems Fairfax Hospital, originally as a carpenter and locksmith. This August will be my 23rd year at the "Mother Ship", where I'm now a project manager in the Design and Construction division of the Engineering Dept. Remember that place when we were kids? Well, if you haven't seen it lately, it's grown significantly. When I started there we had 700,000 square feet, we now have over 3,000,000 and I built every foot with these two hands. They pay me in Skittles, what a great job!
While at the hospital I met Lisa, and we had Dani, kids can be a joy. Dani just turned 21 and is a Jr. at UNM with a double major in Chemistry and Geology. My dream is that one day Dani will become an Alchemist, and I will be able to fill my garage with skittles from the booty she earns with her secret elixirs.
My older brother Joe, also a W.T. graduate class of 75' is a tenured professor at Millersville in PA, along with his wife Jane, and two boys, Thomas and John.
I spend a lot of time these days with the family, on the boat, and golfing. I have a house in Falls Church that's eleven minutes from the hospital. On the weekends, I'm either on the Bay, in Charlottesville helping to teach Devon the finer points of basketball, (she wants to make the freshman team next year), in Lancaster with Joe and family, or at my folks playing golf and relaxing with a book, a drink, and an occasional cigar.
Life is good, if I could just kick the skittles cold turkey. Oh, I just recently heard that Porsche makes an SUV that I might look good in?
Regrets? I've had a few: like not being around enough when my daughter was little. Although, she turned out exceptionally well. Dani is the most well balanced, sweetest and smartest person I know...and, she's damn cute too. It's a good thing she takes after her mother. I wish I had bought more AOL when it was at $5.50 per share. I wish I had listened to the "Crawdaddy" when he advised me to move most of my 401k into bonds just before the bottom fell out. When I think of all the Skittles I lost. I know they're not lost until you cash in, or eat them. Lets hope for all of our sakes- the economy starts to bounce back. I really wish I had put up more of a stink, and demanded that the woman custom's agent with the smallish hands do the body cavity search at the border crossing; instead of the six foot Swede with Micky Mantle hands. And finally, mostly because I'm getting tired of typing, I let the love of my life get away. You know who you are. I just wish I knew how she got the ropes undone, and out of the "Pit of Despair" in my cellar.
Enjoy every breath...
-Brian
Buzz Kill-
A real adventure
It was Sunday night about 10 pm and We were half a 12 pack of Heineken bottles in from my parent’s retirement property on Lake Holiday, at the Summit, off Rt 522 in Winchester VA. My partner in crime was Big Bill Crawford, AKA the “Craw”. We met in high school playing football. The Craw always had a slightly slanted sense of humor, and that is the main reason we got along so well. Craw volunteered to come out to the lake for the weekend to help with the build of my folk’s dream retirement home. Building a house in the summer heat and humidity can be exhausting, and we were ready to head home. As we thundered down the mountain on RT.50 Headed East, in the luxury of dads relatively new Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme Brougham, with AC cranking, music blaring and the beer flowing, we almost missed the turn onto Rt 17 South towards Rt 66. Now, at that time, the closest thing to civilization was the little hamlet of Paris Va. Right at the corner of Rt. 50 and Rt. 17. I do not know if they even had a post office, or any other municipal buildings or services then; I seriously doubt it. We did make the turn despite various distractions. Rt. 17at that time was, for all practical purposes, a bridge to Rt 66 and home. Rt.17 was a stretch about 12 miles between RT. 50 and Rt. 66. There were maybe 3 or four farmhouses along what was otherwise pastures. As we cruised around the first substantial corner in the blackness, at speed, we began to see various car parts strewn about the roadway causing us to slow considerably and swerve to avoid them. As our high beams swept the scene, we could see the carnage. A Chevy Chevette had broadsided a fully-grown black angus cow that had strayed onto the roadway. It was obvious that all this occurred at ...Expand for more
a very high-speed, judging by the damage. For those that are not familiar with the Chevette, it was GMs first real foray into the super compact car market; meant to compete with the foreign market of small and affordable. This was before air bags by the way. The Chevette was a crumpled ball that looked like it had survived re-entry from space. The cow lay some 60 feet down the road, on the left shoulder, in the ditch that was created by the slightly raised pasture along the length of Rt 17 and the roadbed. While the initial impact did not send the “cow over the moon”, the flight path it took was obvious. The 2-foot-wide streak of fluids left on the road leading to its current location, painted a sobering picture. I was amazed that except for the cow no one, at first, seemed seriously injured. We pulled over to the shoulder and began to render assistance and deal with this quite unexpected situation. The first thing that became apparent was that this road is rarely traveled at this time of night on a Sunday, and not only were we the first on the scene, but most likely would be for a good long while. We needed to act. It did not take long before we realized that we were wrong, people were seriously injured. What a buzzkill. Craw gathered all his strength and lifted the incapacitated mother away from the road and onto the embankment to relative safety. She appeared to have two broken legs and could not walk. Craw then took his shirt off and wrapped it around the daughter’s head, her eye was bleeding; then he moved her beside her mother on the embankment. I jumped back in the car to get help (this was all before cell phones). About a quarter mile down the road I saw what I could only guess was the father wondering along the shoulder, mumbling to himself and refusing to get in the car. I left him to get to the nearest farm for help. The first place I came to no one answered the door, and it seemed that no one was home. I drove down the road another mile to the next farm and beat on the door. After a while, some lights came on and a grizzly fellow answered the door with a bit of an attitude. “What do you want”, he asked me in a most annoyed tone. I asked if the black cows with the red ear tags were his? His demeaner changed slightly as he affirmed my query. “Why he asked.” “I suggest you start making some calls ;call your insurance agent, your attorney and an ambulance but not in that order because one of your cows got out onto the road and was hit broadside, at a rater hi speed, by a small car and people are probably dyeing at this moment. I got to go…” On my way back to the scene, I managed to wrangle the father into the car. As we pulled up it was obvious no one had shown up on the scene yet. Craw had the mom and daughter on the hillside away from the carnage. I brought the father up to sit with them. Meanwhile, mom kept babbling that she could walk, but every time she tried, she would collapse back down. The craw almost had to sit on her to make her stay in one place. The daughters eye seemed to have stopped bleeding as the craw held the makeshift bandage in place and tried to comfort her as best a 320-pound offensive lineman can. Mom seemed almost oblivious to the fact that she had an injured daughter, I think she was in some sort of shock. Dad sat there mumbling something about his college days and why he should have never gotten married. About this time, the first of what would eventually become several cars came on the scene. Two elderly women and their daughter got out and asked what they could do to help. We asked them to sit with the family while we began to clear the road of car parts as to avoid any further collisions. Another car pulled in, they had been camping and were able to provide sleeping bags to swaddle the victims in while we all waited for the rescue squad to arrive. A few more passing motorists all stopped to render assistance or just because they were curious. About 10 minutes in, a state police car pulled up lights flashing, but no siren. Two state boys got out, put on their hats, and proceeded to take charge. One was tall, older and had a marine drill Sargent demeaner about him; he was the “boss man”. The other was smallish, younger, twitchy and Barny Fife-like. They checked on the injured and assured them the rescue squad would be there soon. I then heard the din of what turned out to be the farmers John Deere chugging up the road towards the scene. A few more motorists stopped adding to the surreal gathering. As the farmer arrived with the John Deere tractor to attempt to extricate the injured animal laying helplessly in the roadside ditch; all four legs crumpled beneath clearly of no use. The growing crowd of interested bystanders moved in for a better vantage point to watch the operation. As this macabre scene began to take on a carnival-like atmosphere, calls from the locals were sent forth, like “I got a gun in the truck ifen you wants me to shoot her, and I can bleed her out fer ya too.” As I stood by the side of the road with the Craw on my left, and the State boys, Barney Fife and the big boss man, on my right. The gruesome show began. The farmer was attempting to scoop the injured animal up in the front loader bucket of the John Deere. The slope of the embankment and the rise to the road created a sort of gully or ditch that the animal was wedged into. This made getting a good angle on the injured cow difficult. The farmer tried time and again to scoop the animal, but it kept scooting away down the ditch on its four broken nubs, unable to raise itself off the ground enough to make any significant escape. This grizzly odyssey was like watching a train wreck, no one could look away, but we all should have. There was dead silence from the crowd, except for the Craw who proclaimed he was “tasting Nichols”. As the struggling animal bellowed, and fluids continued to leak from both ends, the farmer finally got a good angle and managed to get the poor animal into the bucket. But as he was raising it into the air, the cow made one last struggle for freedom, and managed to roll itself out of the bucket, spinning completely around while falling the 3 feet, or so, back into the ditch with a sickening thud; as more fluids sprayed from both ends. With that the animal let out a particularly urgent bellow of distress. The stunned crowd looked on in horror and silence. Right then at the apex of this surreal drama, the Craw elbows me and says, “somebody better stop him, I’m getting a hard on”. As I am trying to process what I’ve just witnessed along with the Craws epic comment, I realize, Barnet Fife was not prepared for the Craws declaration. He started twitching looking around, touching his gun, clearly on overload, he looked to his senior partner for a response. The big trooper turned to look at me and smiled, showing a single gold tooth right up front, and said “Yall drive safe and remember to buckle up”. I took that as our back-country cue to beat feet out of this Redneck Jamboree and let the yocalls sort out the details. The rescue squad had arrived and were loading the victims, although we had not noticed while the horror show was playing 60 feet down the road. I felt relief as I climbed back into the blissful safety of dads Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme brougham. Luckily, the big state boy had a twisted sense of humor, because Barney Fife seemed ready to lock us up, or shoot us. As we drove off down the dark road two things became apparent, Craw was out his favorite “Big Boy “shirt, and we were going to need more beer.
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