Times and Seasons Welcomes Curtis DeGraw

There are those who get invited to guestblog at Times and Seasons because they’ve been a regular in the Bloggernacle for ages and we figure their turn has come. There are those who get invited because it collectively occurs to us that we and our readers would really benefit from hearing from a circus animal trainer/professional skydiver/registered Democrat/Hollywood movie star/John Birch Society chapter president/illegal immigrant/11-year-old chess master/French chef/member of President Hinckley’s security detail/quantum physicist/polygamy rights activists/dude on the corner handing out pamphlets/female panda/etc. And then there are those who get invited because we just plain like them. Curtis DeGraw is one of these.

When asked to describe himself, Curtis says he’s just a social studies teacher at heart, though in fact he’s a master of more trades than that. He says his “single best decision” ever was marrying his high school sweetheart 21 years ago, after returning from a mission to Sapporo, Japan. He was the only married freshman in institutional memory at the college he attended (which means it wasn’t BYU), as well as the first graduating senior with multiple children (he and his wife now have six, ranging in age from 19 to 5, meaning they have one starting college this year and one starting kindergarten). His favorite calling of all time is seminary teacher, which he’s been able to do twice; his single greatest Church-related pride, however, is that he’s thusfar managed to have never been called to elder’s quorum president, Relief Society president, or bishop (knock on wood). If he can look back as he is dying and still say that, he believes he will be able to go on to his eternal reward happy and content.

Curtis is going to share his wit and wisdom with us for a while. “Curtis DeGraw” really is his actual name, but keep an eye out, as he’ll occasionally comment pseudonymously, just to mix things up. Welcome aboard, Curtis!

20 comments for “Times and Seasons Welcomes Curtis DeGraw

  1. His favorite calling of all time is seminary teacher, which he’s been able to do twice; his single greatest Church-related pride, however, is that he’s thus far managed to have never been called to elder’s quorum president, Relief Society president, or bishop (knock on wood).

    My friend Fate says he’s tempted.

  2. Welcome aboard!

    Oh, and don’t be so sure that your Y chromosome protects you from being the RS president. My former institute director told a story that while he was on his mission (I don’t remember where, Midwestern US somewhere), he was in a branch so small that he got called to be RS president. (However, he was known for telling tall tales, so I’m not sure if he made that one up.)

  3. I know a man who was “RS president” in a small branch in China. In the philippines, we navigated around this problem by only having the first two hours of church for the first year or so a ward was in operation.

  4. I was a rs president on my mission. The week before I arrived there was a fistfight between branch pres and eq pres, so the district president released all members from callings (there were only 12 of them) and my comp and I ran the ward for 3 months.

  5. Thanks, everyone – except those of you who shattered my security about never being called as a RS Pres.

    This is a bit nerve-wracking, but we\’ll see how it goes.

  6. Welcome aboard, Curtis! This announcement certainly is a ray of light. (And, are you by chance related to the country singer?)

    I did serve as RS President on my mission. It was an area where there were no literate women (and very few literate men), and I was also the branch president.

    Just to warn you. :)

  7. Provided your post libels Steve Evans. Otherwise we prefer if you limit it to one or two syllables.

  8. Smart-aleck, Steve.

    I’m sure I’ll test the length limits. I didn’t ask about restrictions on sentence length. I figured it was better to ask forgiveness than permission.

  9. Adam, your standards are not inconsistent. It’s entirely possible to libel me with a couple of syllables. See, e.g., “Man-whore.”

  10. True, Steve E. But when it comes to libeling you we feel like there’s no such thing as excess.

  11. Sigh. I crossed the line and my comment had to be deleted. At least it was Ardis Parshall breaking the news.

    Lead on, kindly light.

  12. Welcome to T&S, from, umm, everyone at M*! ^_^ I’d have been by this thread sooner but the shiny “look, a scavenger hunt” post totally distracted me.

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