{"id":58550,"date":"2025-07-02T00:00:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-02T00:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=58550"},"modified":"2025-07-02T00:00:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T00:00:09","slug":"that-was-some-celebration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=58550","title":{"rendered":"That was some celebration"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I have been home for a couple of days, but I remain filled with emotion over an event I attended this past Saturday in the church where my wife and I belonged for more than two decades.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

It was a celebration of life to honor a woman who lived a glorious, joyful and faithful life on this Earth. Her name was Caroline Woodburn, a former Potter County district clerk, a self-described Barry Goldwater Republican, mother of three accomplished children and wife of a district judge in Amarillo.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The church sanctuary was packed. The Woodburn kids — two daughters and a son — all spoke eloquently about the life their mother led. The music was appropriately dignified and glorious. The preacher who presided gave a wonderful eulogy, filled with humor and love.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Then came the kicker.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

As the service neared its end, a musician from Amarillo — Chuck Alexander — decided to play the great Neil Diamond hit “Sweet Caroline,” and he invited everyone to sing along. If we didn’t know the words, he said, you’ll know the refrain. Then he began. The song is played at every Boston Red Sox game at Fenway Park and is popular among Sox fans.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

When we got to the refrain, everyone in the church sanctuary belted out “Sweet Caroline!”<\/em> … and then followed that with the “bom, bom, bom”<\/em> contained in the song. What a great moment!<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

As God is my witness, I am certain there couldn’t possibly have been a dry eye in the room as we sang that song to honor our friend. I also am certain as surely as I am typing these words that there were as many tears of joy as there were of sadness. My own eyes were drenched with tears, but it wasn’t a sad moment for me. I was laughing and crying at the same damn time!<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I walked away from that service thinking one thought only. That was a true celebration of a life well-lived. If only we all could bring such joy to those who we meet along our journey on this good Earth.<\/p>\r\n\n

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I have been home for a couple of days, but I remain filled with emotion over an event I attended this past Saturday in the church where my wife and I belonged for more than two decades. It was a celebration of life to honor a woman who lived a glorious, joyful and faithful life … Continue reading That was some celebration<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,15],"tags":[276,3105,4668],"class_list":["post-58550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","category-religious-news","tag-amarillo","tag-mlb","tag-texas-panhandle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58550"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58553,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58550\/revisions\/58553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}