Joe's Aggies

In January of 1995, I was still very much new to Houston. After a divorce, I was looking to move to a new city and start over. And typical of moving to a new town or city, I was looking to make a few friends and get rid of the loneliness that had been with me the past few months. Little did I know, I was about to meet people who would my best and closest friends. But I'm starting to get a little ahead of myself.

One of the things I figured that I would do was attend the weekly luncheons of the Houston A&M Club. I figured that getting to know a few Aggies in the area would surely help me to get to know people. When I went to those luncheons, however, what I found was mostly a bunch of "grumpy old men." Now, please don't get me wrong because I love those old guys, but if you are a recent grad., that connection is not always there. I did keep going though, and I was accepted "by the tribe" sort of speak. Ironically, with every passing year, I am slowly becoming one of those guys. In fact, now I've moved up to the front table. The joke is that once you have made it there, there is only one way that you can ever leave. That is to join the great A&M club in the sky.

The real fun, however, began when I started volunteering for Aggie functions outside of the luncheons. There is where I met my closest and dearest friends. One by one, I started to "hang out" with my "gang." And then, little by little, we started to grow in numbers. Within our group we had people like me who had recently gone through their own battles. Just like me, one of the group had just gone through a divorce, another whose fiance had passed away a few months earlier, another person whose fiance had broken up with him, etc. It seemed that everyone had a story to tell.

The great part of the story is that we all found each other at just the right times in our lives. We could all lean on each other and together with love and laughter, we found that we could get through life.

For the next five years we were inseparable. Every event that came along we were part of. Whether it was the A&M Club that needed us, or some event that needed help with volunteers around town, we were there. I don't think so much that it was the fact that we liked volunteer, it was just that we always had so much fun together. Our late friend Joe Mattei '53 once called us some of his favorite Aggies. A title that we have just recently adopted as our namesake.

Every Friday and Saturday night, it was just assumed that we would all do things together. Most of us spent the week planning out what our group was going to do for the next weekend. We even took a very memorable trip to New Orleans together for a birthday party. It was the greatest weekend that I still don't remember.

We were a great team, but as often happens, life moves on. One by one we got married and lost touch. You see, although we were close, we knew that someday the day would come when the group would break up. Hey, if it happened to the Beatles, it could happen to anyone.

The other night several of us got together for a "reunion" of sorts. We try to get together at least once a year.
It's strange to look across the room and see wives, husbands, and kids. It is fun though as I survey the room, to think back to those days when we all single and spent almost all of our time together, mostly laughing. The memories just start "flooding" back.

Yes, life moves on and I guess we all had to grow up sometime. But I want to thank all of the other members of "Joe's Aggies" for helping me become the person that I am today.