Blithering On

My father-in-law, Simon J. Kittler is nearly 89 years old. When I look at him today, I’m reminded that all around us, we see old people whose days of impassioned vigor have been replaced by a gentler pace and whose youthful boldness and audacity have been replaced by a wariness of even the next step they take out of concern that they might fall. When we look at them and take stock of their years, it’s difficult to imagine that among them are great heroes who gave so much of themselves and were once willing to sacrifice everything. My father-in-law is one of those people. He grew up in a troubled household in Michigan, but was able to secure a Congressional appointment to the United States Naval Academy in 1949 as a member of the Class of 1953. He was one of four brothers who received congressional appointments to the Naval Academy. After he was commissioned as a second lieutenant on June 5, 1953, he was able to fulfill a dream inspired by his childhood employer and mentor to

The author is the former Director of Transportation for the Escambia County (Florida) School District.  The Escambia County School District Transportation Department manages one of the largest student transportation operations in the United States, transporting some 24,000 students twice a day every school day.  The author is also the co-founder of the Escambia Pathways Coalition, a public-private body organized to identify and correct hazardous walking conditions in Escambia County. Background One does not need not to look far to discover that the current hazardous walking conditions parameters described in the Florida education code (Section 1006.23) are not realistic or practical by any measure.  The statute language itself is a challenge to follow on the first few readings.  That makes a routine critical analysis of its implications very difficult.  It’s almost as though the statute was written to satisfy a need for a criteria - almost any criteria - but not necessarily