Memories Are Made Of This..... Poem by James B. Earley

Couple months prior to my 2006 retirement from Robert Mondavi Winery, Mrs. Mondavi extended an invitation to me and seven additional guests of my choosing, to an elaborate dinner in my honor, hosted by she and Robert at their Wappo Hill home in the Napa Valley.

Thanking her profusely, I promised I’d get back with a guest list, and confirm the details at some point in the near future. What I’d not envisioned, was the throng of possible choices that would have given their right arm for the opportunity to dine with Margrit and Robert at Wappo Hill. I thought of the varied others throughout the years, which have paid tens of thousands of dollars to some charitable cause, just to exercise the very same privilege that I, in the company of a few friends, was about to gratuitously experience.

My monstrous task was paring an enormous list of potentials down to the limited eight. A few weeks passed, and still I was as far from a decision as ever. I received an inquiring call from Mrs. Mondavi, saying 'Jim, I haven’t heard back from you.” “I owe you an apology, ” I said. I’ve been bogged down by choices, I explained. But thanks to your call, at this very moment I can see clearly. Our granddaughter, I continued, will soon enter college. She’s a brilliant, level headed young woman, maintaining an envious scholastic average, and I believe that she has a great future waiting. I’d like her to appreciate firsthand some of the possibilities available within the sphere of a good education and strident determination. I want her to literally witness success. 'Mrs. Mondavi, ' I said, “I’ve decided on the guest list, which I’ve narrowed to a total of five; our granddaughter, her parents, my wife, and me. That I’d much rather our granddaughter be the center of attention that evening.”

And the center of attention she’s continually been; having graduated high school with scholastic honors, graduated University of California at Davis, with similar accolades, and today 16 May 2015, still stuck in that scholastic rut, she graduates with significant honors from her father’s Alma Mater, Langston University, Stillwater, Oklahoma.

Congratulations to our granddaughter, Tiara Martin-Thompson, Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT)