I am sorry for my extended "absence" from Little League and from you all. I have let a personal devastation interfere with my duties and it has extended to making it difficult for me to think straight. I probably would have stepped down as D.A., except that the person who I have been training to take over - Steve Bove - died last month after being diagnosed with lymphoma in early January. I hope you will bear with me. I know for many of you this will be TMI - Just skip to the blue part. I am not sending this for sympathy. I don't need a lot of messages supporting me - especially on the WADAS thread which will go to everyone. If you want to send me a message, please do it on my personal email separate from this and WADAS. PLEASE NOTE MY NEW DISTRICT EMAIL ADDRESS -* wdist3ll@gmail.com <wdist3ll@gmail.com>*. THIS IS DUE TO A COMPUTER CRASH, NEED TO HAVE A FLUID WAY TO PASS POWER TO MY SUCCESSOR AND FOR PRIVACY SINCE MY WIFE AND I HAVE SHARED THE gpdickason EMAIL I HAVE BEEN USING. I have set up a gdickason34@gmail.com to replace the gpdickason email for personal email. I probably would have done this, anyway, since I can no longer trust Outlook as a reliable email vehicle. I apologize for the length of this and for the rambling and disorganization. I would make a student write this over, but I'm not sure a second attempt would be any better. The action part is in color and highlighted. Feel free to skip ahead. It is with great difficulty that I write this. I have only told a few trusted people about this, so making it "public" is difficult and making it more real. I have given the full narrative at the bottom of this email, but that is just my need to pour out my feelings, and probably isn't of interest to most of you. The short story is that after 48 years, my wife has found a well-to-do farmer who has promised her a great life apart from me (and also apart from her children, grandchildren, sister, who want nothing to do with her and her boyfriend; and without the Christian values and morals that I thought had been mutual and was a reason that we have had such a happy and successful marriage). Until very recently I had been praying multiple times daily that she will see through this guy and decide to stay with me permanently. In the last few days I have gained peace and acceptance that she needs to be out of my life and to face the consequences of her decisions.She continues to say I didn't do anything wrong - this guy just has more to offer - and by still living in the same house with me until Saturday and retaining my last name, she is proving it. I trust God enough to believe that this is what is going to happen, I will come out the other side landing on my feet - wiser, sadder and untrusting of other people - but on my feet. *I need to set a spring meeting. Kim is working on a date and place (unless the majority wants a Zoom meeting). I'm not sure what would be on the agenda. Not enough people are going to California for the March 15 meeting, and I doubt I could hook up a reliable Zoom link from there - especially since we couldn't use a meeting room. Please let me know your thoughts about date in late April and also agenda items, please. * *The Mariners Little League day on the 27th, means we could have a Zoom meeting on the 26th, but an in-person meeting would have to be the week before or after. * Patty's betrayal, and the death of my two cats, one from cancer, and one a few months later of old age drove me further into despair and I really couldn't think of anything other than saving my marriage or being alone for the rest of my life. I probably should have stepped back from Little League, because it became pretty unimportant to me. Complicating issues is a problem with my email account that lost years of historical emails that helped keep me informed when things came up. I have used Outlook for 20 years, but it crashed Jan. 1 and none of it was recoverable. I talked to Microsoft who couldn't help. I have a pile of emails with no sender and no subject, but a date and time. I can't open them. I was able to get on the server and download everything for 9 months prior to the crash. Sorting through more than 10,000 emails, figuring out which I had taken action on and which I still needed to take action on. Luckily, senility hasn't completely crept in, so other than the sheer volume, I didn't have too much trouble with the sorting. I am starting to wake up, accept this horrible hand that has been dealt me and see the need to either quit Little League and everything else immediately *or* get in gear and face reality. For now I want to get in gear, and continue on. Due to having plenty of money for two to live together, but not enough for one to live on half that amount (actually way less than half liquidity, since I am buying my wife out of the house), I will need to go back to work part time through the school year and probably full time during the summer months, which will affect my availability. This isn't how I expected to spend my retirement years after sacrificing "fun" through my life to be sure my wife and I would be able to travel and enjoy retirement. *Following is the long version (as a teacher, I would say that this is not required reading) because I have known some of you (and you have known Patty) for a long time and might be interested in more information:* We went to my wife's 50th class reunion. Ironically, I had to talk her into going. We have been married for 48 years. As will happen with such things, my wife and classmates from her elementary school in Centralia (1 of 6 schools at the time, I believe) decided to get together in two weeks to talk about old times. They went to the eventual marriage crasher's farm. Around a campfire everyone told their stories and eventually all but my wife and the guy who would disrespect our marriage vows - a neighborhood kid who had left the Centralia district at the age of 14 were left. In their time together, he (now a well-to-do farmer in the Napavine area) apparently used a lot that he knew - such as she had grown up in a rural community and might miss animals, etc. - to persuade her that she was unhappy and needed a new adventure before she died. Farm animals, pets, a larger garden plot than we have on our 1-acre home, animals she can consider hers and get to name, and introduced her to his son - a developmentally delayed 28-year-old male who "needed a nurturing mother figure" in his life. He promised her he would put her in his will so she would inherit the farm if he died (as long as she continued caring for his son). She fell for it all and was in bed with him two weeks later. She moved in with him a week after that, but moved back out after 2 weeks when our kids told her she was unwelcome in their homes. She apologized and said she wanted to be back with me. This was apparently a ruse so she could have a last Thanksgiving and Christmas with our children before leaving us all permanently. She and the farmer apparently continued seeing each other when she could sneak off, but since she was with me most, she started leaning toward staying in her marriage. He apparently started feeling this, so he eventually just before Christmas gave her an ultimatum - him or me - and reminded her about how her heart raced when she was with him (most would recognize this as the adrenaline rush you get when sneaking around and doing the wrong thing) and no longer raced with me. She filed for divorce two weeks later. She continued living at home with me, because it "would be wrong" to move in with him before marriage (but okay to continue a sexual relationship with him). She freely admits that I (Glen) have done nothing wrong, and have been nothing but good to her. In fact she told her sister that me spoiling her for all our married life is one reason for leaving me. She needs a bigger challenge, apparently. She moved out March 1. The divorce is final April 14 (that is the first time I have written that and it still seems completely unreal to me). She plans to marry him on April 19. My personal thought is that he needed liquidity (farmers tend to be land rich and cash poor), and she will bring a lot of cash into the marriage which he will use to fix up buildings. He has already promised to make improvements to the barn and an outbuilding and to build an addition to the home so she can keep all her stuff safe and live in a home that includes her furniture and decorations. If you got through to the end of this rambling, I appreciate that you care that much for me. The mere writing of this detail helps me to clear my head and accept the new reality. For those who know my wife, you know how completely out of character this is for her. I would just as soon no one contact her until after April 14, because she is ashamed and/or guilty and wants no one to know, so if she is contacted before April 14 it could screw up the divorce. After that date, feel free to talk to her if you want.