I had dinner with a couple wonderful young folks I am mentoring this summer. With us at dinner was a young man I mentored 17 years ago, with his four year old boy. I am Facebook friends with a guy I mentored in 1979, a grown man with grown kids who I remember as a teenager.
It has been my privilege to work with folks in their late teens and 20’s for more than 30 years. It has been a life’s work: still is. There are scores of them now. Some stayed in archaeology and preservation, and some moved on to wherever their opportunities and passions led. They are a remarkable and diverse slice of humanity, and for the most part they became wonderful people, colleagues, friends. I have been to many of their weddings, have consoled some of them at the loss of loved ones, held their children on my knee, and have witnessed in wonder as they accomplished great and beautiful things. I have watched so many young men and women stand on the edge of something, swallow hard, summon their courage, and leap, perhaps to falter just a moment, and then extend their wings and soar. 
All I want to say is how humbled I am, and how grateful for this unlooked-for good fortune. To have played even a small role in that great act of bravery is an honor I’m not sure I ever deserved, and surely can never repay. I have been given a gift, and while maybe I was an unlikely recipient, at least I have the good sense to know it and to be thankful. Most of you guys will never know how much I have learned from all of you, and how much I gained from your energy and courage.
But I know.
I promise to keep doing it until I fall apart at the seams, and I promise to try not to do that anytime soon. I’m having too much fun…
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