Wednesday, November 9, 2011

mr. adam droge

adam is a guy that i have grown quite fond of in the short time we have been acquainted. he is a good man and a good friend. i wrote a short poem about him that i will now recite. (imagine me reciting it in a soft british accent):

there was a man of quickly wit
who never lost and never quit
he was a man of surpassing wonder
who never made a single blunder
in life

quick as a fox and fast as a cat
he lived in a box and slept on a mat
there was no other quite the same
indeed i'll rather envy the dame
that gets him

a man of courage and intellect
he always gets what he sets out to get
healthy and cheerful and jovial too
he knows his math, like "two plus two
isn't five"

yes i'd say he is like no other
not like his dad, not like his brother
he has a way of doing things
a lot of peace and joy it brings
his friends

at the age of twenty-two
he took a trip to Hogle Zoo
monkeys and zebras and lions, yes,
he even saw a rhinoceros
with a horn

quite a silly whippersnapper
he once dreamed of being a mapper
then he heard the word 'cartographer'
quit right there and became a stenographer
(he writes quick)

once as a child but two years old
he crawled into the street i'm told
sat in the road without a clue
a man took him home without ado
no babies in the road!

cuz of a horrible traffic accident
a dog named duke is tragically absent
his brother cried, and you would too
if you lost your man's-best-friend to
a hit and run

continuing our saga of road rage
a nice man of elderly age
broke adam's leg with a car

green cast, purple cast, wheelchair too
followed by a stint in a walking boot
adam broke his first bone ever

but don't you worry-the story's not over
you see, adam is no lame-brain loafer
he hit a girl with a car on his mission

the moral of the story is:
be careful of cars.

adam: the man, the hulk, the beast
his clothing well pressed, with creases all creased
a striking figure, stalwart and bold
above and beyond an earthly mold
fit and dashing, a man among men
oh the places he'll go, the places he's been
always we'll know him as one of great worth
a jovial smile, his heart full of mirth
long may he live, and full be his life
with a loving family and a home free of strife






















good work adam--think road safety


for more information about mr. droge, please refer to the soon-to-be-published autobiography that is posted in the comments section. it is like 12 pages long... (it is a good read, i assure you)

12 comments:

  1. I was born on January 21st, 1989, just after midnight. So being that I saw one year of the 80's and we are now in 2011, I have lived in four different decades. I was born in the great city of Layton, Utah. I never lived in Layton, but that is the location of the Hospital that I was born in. Davis Hospital I think. I was quite the lively baby. Shortly after being born, I reached over and grabbed the doctor's tools. The Doctor said he had never seen that before. And My parents lived in Bountiful when I was born and they live there right now. After my parents were married, they actually moved around a lot in Utah. They lived in Bountiful, Centerville, Ogden, and St George, with a few different homes in some of those locations. Coincidentally, shortly after I was born they settled in and I lived in the same home since I was six months old. The home I lived in the first six months of my life, I obviously don't remember, but I've heard many stories about it and have seen it on many occasions. It's a fun little home because what it is is an underground house. The roof and maybe four or five feet of wall is above ground, but the rest of it is all underground. It's quite the fun little home. It's on main street in Bountiful near the police station for anyone who is in Bountiful and wants to go hunt it down. But we moved from there in July of '89 to go live with my Grandpa on my Dad's side, which is the home my Dad grew up in. I say my Grandpa and not my Grandparents because my Grandma Droge died in 1987, two years before I was born. My Grandpa Droge died shortly after we moved in, sometime in 1990. My mom tells me I always loved playing with Grandpa's chords to his oxygen. After he died, my parents took over the home and still live there right now. It is quite the historical home in that it was built in 1906.

    A little bit about my family real quick. My parents, Lynn and Maxine, were married on Friday the 13th of August, 1976 and have been happily married ever since. They had a total of 8 kids, meaning I have 7 siblings, 6 brothers and 1 sister. So yeah, we are a family of mostly boys. I am number 6 out of 8. My 4 older brothers and 1 older sister are all married now. I have 8 nephews and 3 nieces. My oldest brother was married when I was 11 (2000) and I became an uncle for the first time when I was 15 (2004). All my older brothers served missions and all five older siblings are married in the temple, so I have some good examples. We all get along well. And of course, pets are always considered family. I had two dogs growing up and lots and lots of cats. We always had a cat because if we didn't have a cat, wild mice would decide to live in our home. Cats and dogs were our main pets, but we have also been the owners of rats (domestic rats are amazing pets by the way. Very cute and fun, albeit a little on the smelly side if you don't clean their cage regularly), hamsters, fish, a gecko, and even a snake. I love animals.

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  2. One notable story from before I can remember came from when I was two years old. My mom was in the bathroom and when my older brothers went outside, they forgot to shut the door, so me as a little two year old wandered outside and sat in the middle of the very busy road that we lived on. Shortly after my mom got out of the bathroom, there was a knock at the door. It was one nice gentleman that decided that a two year old in the road was a bad idea and brought me home. I imagine my mom nearly had a heart attack when she was told this.

    So my earliest memories came when I was 4 or 5 years old, a year or two before kindergarten. One was our dog dying. I remember I was in my room and my older brother walked into my room after his paper route in the morning and was crying. Him crying is unusual and so I asked what was wrong. "Duke died," was the reply. The story behind that is that he always took Duke, who was a great black lab, with him on the paper route. This time around he was hit by a truck. The guy was an angry guy and came out and shouted, "Get out of the road, you dumb dog!" He then drove away. Duke limped over to my brother. While my brother held him in his arms, he said a prayer that Duke wouldn't suffer. Duke died right there in his arms a few moments later. We buried him in the corner of the garden (we have a fairly large garden in the corner of our yard by the garage - its a corner house) in his favorite pink blanket. And for a while there was also a homemade sign with his name on it, marking his burial site.

    The other early memory was of me breaking my leg. I remember it was Christmas time when I was 4, I think, and we were going to visit Santa. On the way home I was in the back seat of the van and put my legs up on the seat in front of me, of which my brother occupied. He decided to lean the seat back and that broke my leg. I was not a quiet little kid on the drive home. My family tells me I was screaming the whole time home, which I think was from Salt Lake to Bountiful. I had a pretty green cast at first which was followed by a shorter purple cast by the time Christmas rolled around. I remember having a wheelchair towards the very beginning, at least for a short period of time. I guess putting a 4 year old on crutches doesn't really work great, or something like that. I had a walking boot towards the end, I think. After that experience, I went on a streak of nearly 18 years without breaking any bone before breaking that streak with my broken thumb this past August.

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  3. So onto more vivid childhood memories. Specifically school. My memory is pretty good once I started Kindergarten in 1994. I went to Elementary School at Hannah Holbrook Elementary School. I loved all of my teachers there. I was baptized in 2nd grade at the age of 8. The date on that was February 2nd, 1997. I remember enjoying hot wheel cars and stuffed animals. My collection of stuffed animals got up to around 70. All of them had names. And still do have names at that. And I still have them all, by the way. Not here at Stadium Terrace, but stored at my parents home for the time being. I do plan on getting them later. I also enjoyed playing the Super Nintendo that we had growing up. Home Improvement was my favorite TV show. I would come home from school and watch it everyday, both episodes that were on. Towards my later Elementary days, namely around 4th grade or so, cards became the big thing. Namely Pokemon cards, Yu-Gi-Oh cards, and Magic Cards. Pokemon Cards came first. I loved collecting them. I even loved the game and the cartoon. Yu-Gi-Oh cards were next and the Yu-Gi-Oh game was very fun to play. I enjoyed playing them. I enjoyed that cartoon as well. As far as magic cards go, I never really got into them, but at one point in 5th grade, my friend gave me a bunch that I organized into decks. And for everyone's information, I still have all three card collections with me. Never got rid of any of them. And in fact, since they don't take up much space at all, I have all of them with me here at my apartment in Stadium Terrace. I don't know if I've ever told anyone that, so that's an interesting fact. Now toward the end of the Elementary years, another notable event in my life was my trip to Oregon to visit some cousins over there. It was a great week. They lived by Portland. Notable experiences in this was my first of two visits to the Ocean and also the visit to Mt St Helens. The one that exploded in 1980. I also loved basketball during these years. I started playing on my own when I was 6 and joined two Junior Jazz leagues (little league basketball for non-Utahns) in third and fourth grade. I never have played on a Junior High or High School team, but I love playing on my own or with a group of friends. And of course I love my Utah Jazz.

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  4. So the last story from Elementary that seeps a little bit into Junior High is probably the most interesting thing in my life. That is of my best friend growing up. The one that I mentioned that gave me the Magic Cards. His name is Julien Woodbury. The reason that he is worth noting is that his mom, Catrine McGregor, is a fairly well known casting director. My friend Julien has thus met several famous people, one of note being Mark Hamill. There was a picture of him and Mark Hamill on the wall. Being connected like this, I got to meet a couple of people as well. Not many, but a couple. Specific people that I have shaken hands with are Thurl Bailey (former NBA player, current Jazz broadcaster, and also a very talented singer - the occasion I met him was when we went to one of his concerts and Catrine introduced me to him before hand - he was very tall and had had huge hands), Don Shanks (mainly a stunt man, who also acted in a few films - very buff - a noteable role for him was that he played Michael Meyers in Halloween 5 - being a stunt guy, he did his own stunts in the film), and Margot Kidder (she played Lois Lane in the classic Superman movies with Christopher Reeve). Also going along with that is that I had the great opportunity of being an extra on several occasions, mostly in smaller TV movies or commercials. My most notable appearance as an extra is in the Disney Channel movie of The Luck of the Irish. One of the former members of this ward had the movie recorded and I borrowed it and watched it. I found myself. So if there is anyone who has it or has seen it, I have the capability of pointing myself out in that movie for those interested. While I'm talking about them, Julien and his mom took me with them in one of my favorite vacations I've gone on - Yellowstone. Amazing place. It was also on that vacation where I met the actress for Lois Lane.


    Moving on, I graduated Elementary (K - 6 in Utah) in 2001 and started my Junior High years. I attended Millcreek Junior High. It went quite fast. I remember Elementary dragging on, but as soon as Junior High hit, time just sped up. During Junior High, the pretty much scheduled things for you, but with my electives, I chose to take Band and French. I took both classes all three years during high school. So I love French. Don't know very much of it at this point, but I know a few basics. It has been a dream of mine to one day visit France. I wanted for the longest time to serve my mission there, but where I actually went was great, but we'll get to that a bit later. Purely coincidentally, in Band I played the French Horn. And yes, it was coincidence. Every one of my siblings played an instrument and upon signing up for Band, my sister (who was in 9th grade when I was in 7th and played Flute throughout Junior High and High School) talked to the Band instructor and he (Mr. King - best band teacher ever and probably my all time favorite teacher in any form of school I've been to) suggested me play the French Horn. So I did. And I loved it. It is one of the prettiest sounding instruments in my opinion. I loved it enough to continue playing it throughout Junior High and all of high school. So that is six years of French Horn. Yes, I'm a band geek. And proud of it. It was also in Junior High that I really started to get into football. I never played, I deemed it to late by then (9th grade), but I started to love following it and watching it, especially the NFL. I also have always loved my BYU Cougars football team. But yeah, that hobby started around 2003 or 2004 and people who know me realize that it caught like a wildfire and I absolutely love it.

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  5. Final Junior High memory I will share gets its own paragraph. November 2002. 8th grade. I was walking home with my friend (Julien) and we were going to his house, so we took the back way like we always did. We came upon the one busy intersection we had to pass. We had crossed it hundreds of times probably, but this time was different. Like always, we waited for the cars to stop for us. And they did. So we started across. Well, half the intersection stopped. On the other half, there was a older gentleman going down to the dry cleaners to pick up his temple clothes or something like that to do with the temple, who had the sun in his eyes and didn't see us. Until it was too late. He hit me head on going about 30 MPH. flew about 10 feet and landed on my head and right elbow. I was holding my French Horn in my right hand and that took a lot of the impact I'm sure. It was smashed along with the case. I thought the French Horn was a gonner, but they actually fixed it. And I got a brand new case, which was awesome. The older one was a horrible case. The school also got a brand new French Horn in addition to the one that I had. The case came with two keys. I still have one of them on my key chain. I forgot to return it and now just keep it as a keepsake. Oops. Back to the hit by a car story, the man who hit me got out and asked if there were any other Melchizidek Priesthood holders around. There were and they gave me a blessing. Yes, only in Utah would you hear a story like that. I was taken to the hospital and checked out. Got 13 stitches on my bloodied up arm that looked like raw hamburger and after being in the hospital for 3 or 4 hours, I went home. I returned to school a few days later. So nothing bad happened. Just gave everyone a scare. And amnesia actually. I told you that story mainly off of second hand information. I still can't remember it. I remember right up to the point where I was about to cross the road and then it is blank. I remember having a dream about getting hit by a car, but it was a different road. Then I remember waking up in the Hospital while they were poking my arm. That hurt. Then I realized I was getting stitches. No, I was not unconscious at any point. My friend who was with me the whole time told me that I was awake and talking. By the way, what he did is an example of a true friend. He didn't hit head on, but he got his foot ran over and got hit with the side view mirror. But he didn't focus on him at all. It was all about me. Later that evening the doctor asked him if he was alright. He said his foot hurt a little, but he was fine. He had a sprained ankle the whole time and didn't even pay attention. What a great friend. But like mentioned, I was fine.

    The side story to that is that a few months before, my mom was praying very hard that we would find a way to get my mission payed for. Then I got hit by a car. The guy was extremely nice and even gave me a Turkey later that month for Thanksgiving, but his insurance company wasn't. They refused to pay more than 3,000 of the 11,000 dollars in medical bills. So we got a lawyer and took them to court. Right before we sued, they gave in and payed for it all and made an agreement in addition to that that they would give me $5,000 a year from my 19th to 21st birthday. That's $15,000. Mission payed for. My Mom's prayer answered, but certainly in a way that she wasn't expecting. She didn't pray as hard for my younger two brothers. :D. When I got home, there was about $6,500 left over because it was actually around $5,500 per year. I used $3,100 of that to buy my current vehicle, a 2003 Chevy Impala. It was at an auto auction that I bought it. The book value was around $7,000, so I got a great deal.

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  6. Moving on, after graduating Millcreek Junior High in 2004 (Junior High in Utah is 7th grade through 9th grade, with 10 - 12 being in High School), I started High School at Bountiful High School. Not a whole lot of epic memories worth sharing at this that stand out from other people's experiences, so I will be short here. I continued band in high school and enjoyed performing at the football games and basketball games. I got into the games free because of that. The home games anyways. I loved Seminary. Got good grades (ended around 3.9) and an average ACT score (23). Those last three got me into BYU. My low ACT score kept me away from a scholarship, but I still got in. My senior year was kinda scary because I actually had to start thinking about real life, or life after high school. On top of that, 3 of my siblings got married my senior year within 4 1/2 months of each other, so suddenly I become the oldest sibling in my family that was not married. That kinda prepared my mind for marriage more than the average student. Not that I was planning on running off and getting married, I still had a mission to serve, but I accepted that marriage was a step that I soon needed to take and I was good with that. Now its currently been two years since returning from my mission and it still hasn't happened yet, but that's alright with me. Timing is key and finding the right person is also key. But yeah. Towards the end of high school was the senior band trip. Didn't have the funds to make it the first two years when they went to Orlando and San Diego, but I made it to this one in Anaheim. Thus came my first time ever going to Disneyland and California Adventures. That was fun. I learned it would've been more epic had I been as a child, but I still enjoyed it. And thus I graduated in the BHS class of 2007. That was a weird day. Never thought that day would come, but suddenly it was there.

    We are getting to the end of this, so hang with me. I got accepted into BYU back in January of 2007. The plan was to go to freshman housing, but I never received the memo as to when I needed to sign up and I missed it. I looked at the end of May and everything was full. So I looked at my other options and found this place called Stadium Terrace that was really cheap and right next to the football stadium. Sounded like a good plan. So I went there. I was one 4 or 5 freshman in the BYU 196th Ward. 3 of us were in the same apartment. Apartment number 1. Great apartment. Right next to the laundry room, pool, office, and parking lot. The Volleyball court that they had was also fun. Yes, you read that last paragraph right. I lived at Stadium Terrace before my mission in the exact same apartment back in Fall of 2007. And yes, Stadium Terrace had a Volleyball court. I was saddened when I came back and learned that it was gone in order to expand the parking lot a bit. But that semester was very fun. I loved the ward and loved my roommates. Didn't do so well in school when comparing my college GPA to my High School GPA, but that's alright. I went there for a semester, got my mission call in November of 2007 and went back home in December of 2007 to prepare for my mission, of which I would leave in February of 2008.

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  7. So yes, next chapter is mission. Loved it. Insert all the cliché missionary phrases. Best two years of my life. Or rather best two years FOR my life. It was hard, but worth it. It changed my life. I came back a completely new person. The mission I went to was the Texas Lubbock Mission. It covered west Texas and east New Mexico and was twice the size of Utah in terms of geographical area. One of the largest missions in the continental United States. But that was because it was one of the Smallest population wise. It was a new mission that was formed in 2002 and struggled for the longest time, but the promises to West Texas is amazing. President Eyring at a Stake conference (he was Elder Eyring at the time) said that this area would blossom with members. Still a lot of work to do for that mission and they've only scratched the surface, but I saw the initial phases of that as halfway through the mindset changed from "this is not a baptizing mission" to "this is a baptizing mission". And we double baptized in that last year of my mission because of that. I had 12 companions and 5 areas in the field, plus an additional area and companion of you count the MTC. Longest time with one companion - 6 months. Longest total time in one area - 9 months. Longest consecutive time in one area - 7 1/2 months.

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  8. One mission story real quick. In a small redneck town of 5,000 people, we were going back to our apartment one night at the edge of town. It was during homecoming festivities and half the town, or at least half the high school, was at Sonic, which was on the way home. I got caught in the left lane behind a huge line of cars and soon realized that the right lane was empty, so I switched lanes and passed all the traffic. However, when I was passing the last vehicle, a huge truck, a 7 year old girl darted out in front of me without looking, headed for her home across the street. I swerved and slammed on my brakes, but it was too late. I hit her and she flew off to the side. Before I knew how she was, I experienced the worst feeling of my life. Not knowing if the little girl I hit was alive or not. Got out as quick as I could. She was fine. The impact from the car didn't hurt her at all really. She got a bit scraped up from hitting the ground afterwards, but that was it. They flew her to the hospital to make sure nothing internal was wrong and there was nothing wrong. She went back to school a few days later and bragged that she got hit by a car and was fine. The worst part of the story came from the reaction of the city. The whole town knew about it really fast because of the small size of it. So fast that I made the the front page of the paper the next morning. The town made it a huge deal. It was ridiculous. Every single member without fail asked about it. No non-member gave us crap directly, but we knew they were talking about it behind our backs. We caught countless people staring at the dent that was made in our car. Needless to say, it was very stressful and I talked with my mission president almost every day. We had it planned out that I would get emergency transferred out of there, but right before that, I talked with the girl and that eased my mind enough that I asked president to keep me for the rest of the transfer before taking me out. So horrible experience at the time, but looking back on it, now that it has been a few years, its a fun story to share and I kept the newspaper that told the story. I have it at my apartment and show it to people when the subject comes up.

    But that's about it. I returned from my mission in February 2010, relaxed for a few months, bought my impala, and because I loved Stadium Terrace so much before my mission, I moved back in June of 2010. When Catherine saw that I had been here before, she put me in the same apartment again. The whole ward was different. The same bishop that was there before my mission was still there at first, but got released after the first month, but despite everyone being different, the feel is the same. Great people. Great ward. And I have been blessed with great roommates. I've lived here the second time for 17 months now and have been through a few sets of roommates, but they've all been great. Life is good. And I'm studying Statistics by the way. Being a Sports Statistician would be fun, but I haven't looked into the specifics of that yet.

    -ADAM DROGE

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  9. Whoever decides to read my autobiography that Jeremy put in the comments should mention something in these comments after doing so. It will be interesting to see who now knows my life story

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  10. Wow! I can’t imagine the time Jeremy put into helping you with your “autobiography.” Adam should publish an annotated anniversary addition.

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