leon gave me the most precious gift in life. the two most wonderful boys! I wish he got to know them as adults, i know he would of been proud. thank you .

I remember a time when Leon was learning to fish and he was always coming home and say how the big one got away. But one time he came home and said the fish was too big and was afraid to hook him, still brings a smile to my face to see him telling to the story of the fish to big to catch!

They may still yet come to me, but my favorite memory of Leon wasn't from our shared childhood, but rather it was us interacting as adults. (Or as close to being an adult as we got.)

I was back home during one of my extended breaks from Colorado and Leon was there at the house, too. He had set-up a pretty elaborate shooting range for his archery the straw bales stacked high with realistic animal targets on them and he would practice for quite a long time. And you know, he was good at it. Okay a stack of straw ain't a deer or a bear, but what do I know about hunting?

My collective knowledge around archery stopped at some point with a fiberglass "wrist snapper" as a boy. Once you lost all of your arrows, you were done. And when I asked Leon how everything worked he patiently explained how a compound bow worked so you could easily hold it at full extension and how the different arrows and tips behaved and what their function was. He was locked into the mechanics of it all and really an amazing teacher.

He loved to hunt and fish and take on nature. I wish I could have taken him to Cabela's and let him buy whatever his heart desired. His eyes would have popped out of his head.

I hope there is a place for him to be a back woodsman again.

Bruce