The Butter Rum Cartoon: CUTTING IN LINE

When we lived in Everett, Washington, we watched this on EWTN and cried. It's when Pope John Paul II visited Los Angeles.

Little did we know then that we would eventually move to Branson, Missouri, and that Tony Melendez and his family would also move to Branson, and that his family and mine would become close friends.

Remember the Lennon Sisters on the Lawrence Welk Show? When I was young, my family and I would watch this TV show every week, and our favorites were the Lennon Sisters. We especially liked Janet because she was the youngest. These singing sisters grew up on Lawrence Welk. Here they are in 1956:

I never imagined, as the son of a Methodist minister, that one day I would join the Catholic Church, that my own family and I would move to Branson, that the Lennon Sisters would be regular performers in Branson, and that Peggy Lennon would be a Eucharistic minister in our church and that several times I would accept the cup from her during Mass.

Peggy has since retired, but the other Lennon Sisters still perform in Branson, along with Janet's three granddaughters, Lia, Ana and Jenna. And the granddaughters attend the Dance Branson school with our youngest daughter, Disa. A few weeks ago, after the show, as people were lined up in the lobby for photos and autographs, the girls spotted Disa across the room and began excitedly calling her name. So Disa joined them; and their mother, Amy Bernhardi, who had given us complimentary tickets in Disa's name, took this picture. Meanwhile my wife Micki overheard people in line asking, "Who's that? Is she another granddaughter?"