The Great Giffer

We had a wonderful vacation in Maryland. It was great to see family and spend some time relaxing, sleeping in, and eating obscene amounts of ice cream. We even got to see Nana, James's Great Grandmother, and his Great Aunt Jet who were up from Florida for Nana to spend the summer months in Maryland.

I also have a nice little story to tell from the flight home. When we got on the plane, one of the stewardesses said that James was the cutest kid in the world. A few minutes later, she returned and said that a passenger a few rows back had overheard and informed her that, while our kid was awfully cute, he had 10 grandchildren that were even cuter, so James had to be relegated to 11th place, to which I smiled politely but didn't disagree or bother to look to who made the remark, as James was squirming around as he is wont to do.

Then about three hours into the flight I notice that the man standing a few rows in front of us talking with someone was none other than former BYU Cougar quarterback great Gifford Nielsen. I did not get a chance to talk with him during the flight or at the baggage claim, though.

But when we met Uncle LaDell for our pick up, I noticed Gifford and his wife Wendy were standing there waiting (I presume) for their kids to bring the car around to load up. So I went and shook his hand and we spent a few minutes talking about his playing days, his recent retirement as a sportscaster, and the current football team. I was at the game where Giff had his jersey retired when BYU played Arizona at LaVell Edwards Stadium in 2007 along with my childhood hero and Heisman trophy winner Ty Detmer:


Anyway, it turned out that Giff was the one who said that James was the 11th cutest kid because of his Grandchildren, so we had a chuckle about that. At any rate, he was remarkably gracious and didn't seem to mind at all taking a few minutes to talk with a die hard fan. I'm sure he gets plenty of that particularly when he's in Utah, so I really appreciated it. It was a fun experience for me. I was surprised at how tall he was...height and weight stats are often slightly inflated, but I bet he's every inch of 6'5". Anyway, I suppose it would be appropriate to end with a picture from his playing days: