My Favorite Toys and My Favorite Brother

Okay, it is true that Sam is my ONLY brother, but that doesn't mean he can't be my favorite too. This entry is about Sam and Su and following your bliss. I MAY have written this same sort of entry sometime else in the last four and a half years, but at this time of the year, and in this kind of economy, it doesn't hurt to give 'em another plug.

My brother Sam was with Goodwill Industries for a long time, including several years as director at at two different regional systems in California before becoming CEO of Goodwill Industries International. After some restructuring there, he and Su moved to Carbondale where their son was in a residential school and Sam did administrative work there. Then when Courtney graduated, Sam decided to follow his bliss and open the toy store, My Favorite Toys at University Mall. It is a large store, with inventive non-high tech, but very high touch toys, old and new, some for little babies and some their great grandparents would enjoy and simply absolutely a fun place to go.

Su is marvelous with kids, and Sam loves people in general, and has very good business sense (I think) and they make people happy every single day. Sam especially likes the old toys, and St Louis Cardinals items. I like lots of things---the variety of dress-up hats, the Rosie the Riveter figurines, the jig saw puzzles, the arts and crafts items, the little finger puppets, the Groovy Girl dolls, and of course the St Louis Cardinals items. I buy small toys for each of the cabinet members for the first meeting after assessment week when we start making appointments so that they can use their toy to celebrate appointments that they approve of (a two inch wind up kangaroo, for instance, that flips all the way over) or to make their feelings known when they don't approve (a two inch pair of wind up walking shoes that you can point towards the door). Of course no one asks me to buy these, but I follow my bliss and get them anyway.

This toy store is a vocation for these two folks, if vocation can be defined as work through which you can delight God and serve neighbor. It is a very arduous work in many ways...I don't even like the think about the number of hours they work in a week. It is in our home town. And it is truly a good and joyful thing.

P.S. If you are within driving distance of Carbondale Illinois and end up at the store, tell them Susan sent you and ....well, I'm not sure there any discount involved, but I bet, as you look around, you'll end up smiling...