Written for my wife's 2022 run at the Andover School Committee. The campaign is long over; the argument is what I'd keep.
I’d like to take a moment to endorse my wife, Emily DiCesaro, for one of the open seats on the Andover School Committee.
If you’re hanging with me for a bit, let me tell you a little about our household. I'll start at the heart of it: my connection with Emily.
I met Emily in Chicago, IL, during a stint I had out there in search of the best life to live. I was fairly selfish and disinterested in the world, most things bored me. It took no time for me to realize that Emily wasn’t like most people that I was meeting in the Midwest. She had traveled (mostly alone) to parts of the world, and lived in several of them that I would never have considered destinations; Cambodia, New Zealand, Scotland, London, China, to name a few. I not only fell in Love with her then, but quickly grew to love her family, the most accepting and genial group of people I had met. (I struck Midwest Gold - don’t Google that, it’s my thing.) I cannot emphasize enough how much Emily and her family have influenced my own personal growth.
We established this residence in 2013, moving from Chicago with our two boys. They were small enough then for the cargo hold, but Emily convinced me to spring for seats on the airline, and she managed to get them both here safely. I was charged with bringing our vehicle to the East Coast, so I wasn’t able to lend a hand with that adventure.
Since then I’ve seen Emily overcome endless challenges from parenting two boys that are tainted with my proclivity toward nonchalance while growing a career that is fully on the leading edge of industry, working for revered financial brands and storied institutions such as The Weather Company (now IBM). I would be remiss if I didn’t mention her own personal growth in our community too. Not to take credit for it, but I’m inspired at how this midwesterner came east and won hearts (starting with mine) from Mass. natives to transplants from around the world. I don’t need to play up Emily’s case on diversity any further, you can learn more about that in her endorsements, like this one, and this one, and that one. Oh one more, those are just from one week (check out the rest).
I can tell you this much about how Emily, and I, view the world: We believe that Love is the foundation of our spirit, and science is the foundation of our learning. We understand that change is the only thing that is truly guaranteed in the universe. Certainly death and taxes are things that we now know can be avoided with enough advancement and/or sheltering (not firsthand experience, for the record). We talk with those boys (now far too large for the cargo hold) honestly about what’s happening in the world, locally as well as far away. We talk about their, and our, place in it and the distance that we are privileged enough to have from it, for now. We talk about our heroes - Martin Luther King, Jr., Malala Yousafzai, Jackie Robinson, Lucille Ball, Rosa Parks - and the herculean efforts and sacrifices they made for their own constituents. Go ahead and ask my boys. We can always do a better job of living up to our values, of course, but we try our best to embrace what matters and shun the fear that often comes with change.
Emily lives these values every day by putting in the time with our friends and community members and being the change she wishes to see in the world. She has grown into a powerful force, and has fully adopted a philosophy from one of her own heroes, her former employer Ginny Rommety, who often says, “Growth and comfort never coexist.” I don’t think I could ever garner the kind of support that she has already; I’ve seen hundreds of handwritten postcards commissioned for her campaign, dozens of volunteers holding signs on the street in the rain, not to mention the unconditional support of her family.
I write tributes for a living — eulogies, toasts, send-offs and keepsakes. See how that works.