Monday, January 12, 2009

Happy retirement, Tom!

As I mentioned in my previous post, yesterday was the open house in honor of Tom Kubat's (my father-in-law) retirement from the Lafayette Journal & Courier. I'm posting the following pictures for family and friends to enjoy.

This first one is a picture of the boys waiting for Mike and I to finish our shopping at Sam's Club. 13 lbs of cheese, vegetables, fruit and $125 later, and we were ready to go.Matt, my brother-in-law, has a friend who works at a sign printing business. He made three banners for the event - free of charge. Super cool!

Here is a photo of Mike and Matt working hard in the kitchen. They did all the cooking + they got to bartend. Now they're talking about opening their own restaurant!

Here are all of Tom's awards on display with the help of Miss Anna Vanna. She's such a good model!

The kids did such a great job at the event. We had to get there way early to get everything prepped and ready to go and they were such troopers despite being there for over 8 hours.

The older cousins...

And the younger ones... I don't even want to know how many M&M's Seeger ate!

Here is a photo of Tom receiving his Governor's Award from Indiana State Senator, Ron Alting.
Just as the party was picking up, Lafayette Mayor Tony Roswarski (in the yellow shirt) stopped by with a gift for Tom. I love that he had to wait in line to talk to him!
Eric Van Cleave (in the sweater vest and jacket) was probably a favorite guest of the Kubat's. They love that guy!

Here is a photo of my mother-in-law Bobbie (in black checked jacket) with some of her work friends.

Finally, the last photo from the day (and the only picture of me!). Sure, we're in front of the men's room door and Seeger is swatting Nick's hand away but that's the Kubat family. Take us as we are!

Just a few words about Tom. As I've come to know him over the past 12 years, I've learned how much family means to him. He is a great husband, a great father, and the best grandfather. I see how much Mike looks up to his dad and I truly believe Tom is one of the reasons why Mike is such a great husband and father. I've also witnessed Tom's dedication to his career as a Sports Writer. He worked long and hard and was a traditional journalist who was able to adapt the rapidly changing world of mass communications. I'm pretty sure he doesn't realize how much of an influence he was to our community. As a transplant to Lafayette, it took some time for me to get used to meeting strangers for the first time and having them ask if I was related to Tom. (This has happened to me well over 100 times.) They always had great things to say about him or his reporting. In fact, I don't think anyone ever complained to me about a story he did (and Purdue fans are pretty passionate about their sports!)
His writing will be missed.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

13 lbs of cheese? Yes, that's the fact I got stuck on right from the start. What do you make with 13 lbs. of cheese and how long does that last you Kubats?

Natalie said...

Silly - that's 13 lbs. of cheese AND veggies and fruit. I didn't actually weight the cheese itself (actually, I didn't weigh anything - I was estimating) but if I had to guess, we probably bought about 5 lbs of cheese. Actually, now that I think of it, 13 lbs. was probably underestimated since we bought two 5 lb. bags of carrots. I still have a bag and a half. What am I going to do with 7 lbs. of carrots???