Lots of people keep asking how Tim is doing so it must be time for another blog post.

This picture says it all!

Mary Emma Hartley

Mary Emma Hartley is the greatest blessing to our family. Her birth on October 13 marks the beginning of many great adventures ahead.

Tim is doing well but is experiencing more fatigue. Naps on the weekends are definitely on his menu, as well as college football. He is in great spirits and walking through the steps as they come in this journey.

We are still in the process of finding a living donor. For any of our friends who are interested in learning more about this, you can call the Integris Nazih Zuhdi Transplant Institute at 405-949-3816 and ask for Belinda Bell, the Transplant Coordinator. You can also find more information online at integrisok.com/transplant. The first requirement is that your blood type be A. The RH factor, or + and -, doesn’t matter.

We don’t know how long any of this will take. It looks now like summer of 2019 might be our window, pending finding the right living donor and his or her schedule. I’m going through the process myself. Wouldn’t God have a great sense of humor if the girl from Cushing who married the Washington state guy turns out to be the best match?

You would think with this major health issue that our traveling might be curtailed. You would be wrong. With Sarah and Nathan’s move to Denver, our new sweet angel in Springfield, Missouri and ESPN College GameDay actually going to Pullman, Washington, we still have travels ahead.

Thanks to our dear Coug friend, Cameron “CJ” McCoy, we got tickets to the game and a place to stay. And not just any place, but we are staying in the home of Gail Gleason, mom of Steve Gleason. He is one of my nonprofit heroes for the work he and Team Gleason have done around research and support for ALS patients and their families.

Other than occasional tweets, my dear husband doesn’t “do” social media. I have granted him guest blog status before and I’m doing it again. If you’ve read this far in the post, you are in for even more of a treat. Yes, the morning of my 57^thbirthday on Sunday, October 21^st, I will be waking up in Pullman. Let the fun begin!

On College GameDay, We’re Gonna Win the Day for Crimson and Gray

With all the excitement about ESPN finally bringing its traveling College GameDay show to Pullman on Saturday, the memories are washing over me in waves. Not just about the seven times I’ve waved Ol’ Crimson on the show, but also as a kid born on the Palouse and later a student there.

Butch, the Cougars’ mascot, was once a live animal in a cage on campus. For a little boy from Moscow, there’s no memory stronger than a family ride in the car to Pullman, a stop for ice cream at Ferdinand’s, and a chance to look directly into the eyes of a real cougar. I knew where I was going to college when I was 6.

When I returned, Butch was gone. Times had changed. We had somebody in a costume. We may not have loved the new Butch like the original, but in a contest sponsored by a credit card company, Butch was eventually recognized as the best college mascot in the country. On Saturday when Lee Corso tosses Donald Duck aside in favor of Butch T. Cougar, I’m imagining a nation rising in unison: Go COUGS!

I spotted the Cougar flag on GameDay the first time it appeared in 2003. Cool, I thought. Who is that nut? Go Cougs. Then I spotted it again. And again. And then news came that the show was coming to the University of Oklahoma campus less than two miles from my house. I sent a message to something called CougFan.com, and a couple days later I received an email from a guy named Tom Pounds. It was too late in the week for him to ship the flag to me, so he drove it to my house. Eight hours on I-40 from Albuquerque. It was so much fun, waving that flag on that TV show. Sounds silly. We know it’s not.

I waved the flag with my brother in Stillwater a year or two later and with my son every chance we got, including once at the OU-Texas game in Dallas. By 2008 we were up to 74 straight shows and ESPN did a story about us on GameDay – with Tom Pounds in the role of Chairman Emeritus and CJ McCoy running the Ol’ Crimson distribution network like clockwork. The brain trust at Oklahoma had banned flags at College GameDay but ESPN overruled, and ours were the only two flags on the show that day, Nov. 22, 2008. Chris Fowler called out my name on the show, and later the Cougs beat Washington in the Apple Cup. That was a big day.

But what’s coming Saturday on the campus of Washington State University will be much, much bigger. When we met Mr. Fowler and Mr. Corso after the show that day in 2008, I remember saying, “You think a couple of Cougar flags are cool? Imagine hundreds. No, thousands of Cougar flags.” I saw the look in Mr. Fowler’s eyes, and I knew we would one day host College GameDay.

And then the years droned on. At one point, I even urged CJ to quit. He politely declined: “No way, man.” So here we are, 10 years later, up over 200 consecutive appearances now, every single one a road game. “Undefeated Fans,” it says on a #wavetheflag T-shirt. How quaint. Yet also true. And now, we finally get our home game, our chance to win the day for Crimson and Gray.

Our closely guarded secret, our majestic Palouse Country, will have a turn on center stage. Is she ready? Our university, our beloved Ol’ Wazzu, will be in the national spotlight. Can we handle it?

You know the answer, just as sure as you know we’re going to run out of beer.

See you there. Go COUGS!

-Tim Hartley ‘83