It’s fairly safe to assume, however, that each of us has been guilty of doing just that – wasting time and squandering moments of opportunity. Yes, it’s also true that life is short and the older we get the more we feel it, especially as we get set to observe the ineluctable conclusion to the year that was and turn our attention to the one that looms just before us.

Ladies and gentlemen, Christmas was indeed a glorious time for my great-great-grandmother, Sarah Ann Roberts Gossett, and her family. “Grandma” Gossett was born in 1843 down in the hills of Highland County, where she lived practically all of her life.

There was no indoor plumbing and no central heat for the cold and snowy winters in the home of my great-great-grandparents, James Worth (born in 1847) and Sarah Ann Roberts Gossett (born in 1843). On their approximately 200-acre farm where they raised cattle and hogs and planted crops, there were no tractors or the kind of equipment we have today – or even the type of equipment my great-grandparents used later in life.

In honor of Worth and Sarah Gossett and their eight children, a Gossett reunion is held the third Saturday of June each year, and it’s safe to say it’s a tradition that has been around longer than all of us have been alive.

In honor of Worth and Sarah Gossett and their eight children, a Gossett reunion is held the third Saturday of June each year, and it’s safe to say it’s a tradition that has been around longer than all of us have been alive.

James Worth Gossett was born April 24, 1847 in Highland County. Sarah Ann Roberts was born in Highland County nearly four years earlier on June 4, 1843. According to tales that have been passed down through the years, young Miss Roberts was engaged to be married … but not to young Mr. Gossett. However, there was an event in history that happened called the American Civil War. Like so many who fought in the Civil War, Miss Roberts’ fiancé didn’t come home.

I never realized as I walked out the door on a warm, sunny day in June that I wouldn’t be walking back through that door to see him on Dec. 18 – or ever again for that matter. Instead of celebrating Dr. C. Ted Roush’s 80th birthday on Dec. 9, there will be a celebration of his life at 2 p.m. that day at Hillsboro Christian Academy. I was fortunate to see Uncle Ted the day he passed from this earth. The last thing I told him was, “We love you and will miss you, Uncle Ted.”

I never realized as I walked out the door on a warm, sunny day in June that I wouldn’t be walking back through that door to see him on Dec. 18 – or ever again for that matter. Instead of celebrating Dr. C. Ted Roush’s 80th birthday on Dec. 9, there will be a celebration of his life at 2 p.m. that day at Hillsboro Christian Academy. I was fortunate to see Uncle Ted the day he passed from this earth. The last thing I told him was, “We love you and will miss you, Uncle Ted.”

“We’ll scatter to the east and west, when college days are done. And memories will cling around, the dreams of everyone. We’ll play the game of living, with head and shoulders high! And where in wear the spirit of ‘The Buckeye Battle Cry!’”

Ladies and gentlemen, as I sit on the front porch of the Mother Thompson Home in a time long past, Mrs. Marie Thompson Rives, the daughter of temperance pioneer Eliza Jane Trimble Thompson, is reading me a letter that longtime national president of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union Frances E. Willard penned to Mrs. Rives’ mother.

Ladies and gentlemen, as I sit on the front porch of the Mother Thompson Home, Mrs. Marie Thompson Rives, the daughter of temperance pioneer Eliza Jane Trimble Thompson, pauses as she finishes an account of the 500 White Ribboners visiting the historic house in Hillsboro on Nov. 16, 1903.

Ladies and gentlemen, in the winter of 1873-74, Hillsboro’s Eliza Jane Trimble Thompson, daughter of a governor and wife of a judge, helped lead a temperance crusade that is still remembered to this day.

Ladies and gentlemen, during our chat on the porch of the Mother Thompson Home, the friendship and admiration between Hillsboro temperance crusader Eliza Jane Trimble Thompson and fellow temperance pioneers Frances E. Willard and Lillian M. N. Stevens, both longtime presidents of the National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, has become evident.

Ladies and gentlemen, during my chat with the daughter of famous temperance crusader Eliza Jane Trimble Thompson on the porch of the Mother Thompson Home in Hillsboro, I realized I had not yet asked the daughter’s name – but it turns out I did not have to do so.

Ladies and gentlemen, when we left the Mother Thompson Home last week, the daughter of famous temperance crusader Eliza Jane Trimble Thompson was reminiscing about the golden wedding anniversary celebration that was held for her parents in the historic house on Sept. 21, 1887.