Boy am I Lucky

I’m hoping this little piece might offer some insight into what Hualalai has meant to me.

Over the past years I have shared with many folks how lucky I’ve been throughout my life, and that’s exactly what I would like to do with you, today.

I was born in 1947 as one of the baby boomers.  How lucky I was to be born in the United States, a country that had just won a major war for the right reasons.  I wasn’t born in a third world country, or in a dictatorship; I was born in a country that was moving in the right direction.  (At least for a white boy.)

Further, I was lucky enough to be born to parents who had the means to feed me well, maintain a roof over my head, and protect me from anything too awful.

Lucky enough that my parents valued education and made sure I stayed in school, went to college and even graduate school.

I was lucky to be born at a time when medicine was making great strides:  at the age of 12 I had an appendicitis attack and medicine was advanced to the point where safe anesthesia was used and sterile conditions were routine, so I survived.

I was lucky enough to be a gay man just as society was beginning to accept that people like me are as normal as anyone else.

And how spectacularly lucky I was to meet and share a life with a man I adore.

How lucky I am to be with my best friend, my lover, my confidant for 43 years.

How lucky I was too have two careers that I thoroughly enjoyed.  One was my passion alone and one with my partner.

How lucky to have built a successful career and life doing what I and my partner enjoy doing and making enough money to live extremely comfortably.

And how lucky I am that America finally came to allow us to marry.  Both my husband and I never thought that would happen in our lifetimes.

And then:

By Mike Sack

How lucky I was to spend 40 years visiting Hawaii and then 27 years owning property in Hawaii and 15 years owning a home at Hualalai.  But, this last bit of luck I consider to be the frosting on the cake; the whipped cream on a Sundae.