When our significant others enter the story, it only makes sense that each of the guys would introduce their spouses. As the chronology of our story unfolds, each member of Core will have the opportunity to share a few thoughts about their wives in their own words. The page is intentionally left blank, so to speak, so that there is freedom for the author to say whatever they want to about their wife. First up, Krue.
Hollee
Hollee is unique in that she predates Core. I fell in love with her at Windy Gap Young Life camp in the summer of 1984. She is a year younger and so I met her when I was a senior in high school. Hollee is creative (dance, writing, some drawing), philosophical ("why?"), a lover of people and has a genuine love for God.
She watched Core form since I literally wrote her a letter every single day of my freshman year of college. She was like a sister very quickly and affirmed the hopes we had for being friends. She ended up coming to Vanderbilt for college a year later, made new friendships and further built Core's growing friend group. Hollee has been an integral part of Core. She and I got married after her sophomore year (my junior year) and did a six month road trip in an old RV named "Bessie."
Hollee was the first to get married (1989), first to have a child (Hudson 1991), first to buy a house (The Cabin 1992), first to lose a dad (John Huckaba 1996), first to become a grandmother - Lollee (2011), first to walk across Spain (along the Camino de Santiago 2019), etc.. She has been a trailblazer and has grown in wisdom over these past 38 years. She has built real relationships with each of our wives and has been intentional with all of our children. She's a real tree hugger and fan of life in the woods. Hollee is a geography nerd and has traveled to many places around the world (India, Indonesia, Honduras, Guatemala, Brazil, Slovakia, Slovenia, Kenya, Australia, Ecuador - to name a few).
I had never been "struck" or "moved" by someone like Hollee and I am honestly more "struck" and "moved" by her today. She continues to do the work of staying in the path of Love, getting up when life knocks you down, asking fundamental questions and having a curiosity of how things are. Hollee currently is deep into the study and work of bioenergetics (in fact she is a practitioner) and the quantum world. She ideates with the best of them (typically several new ideas a day).
Hollee enjoys a unique cocktail (she is right in-between a four and five on the Enneagram) and recently became a Blackstone griller. She is an anchor and a gift to me, six kids, six grandkids, and many more. I have always been attracted to her as a thinker and her ability to ask big questions. I am even more attracted to her now, as Hollee is learning to connect her head to her heart and enter the second half of our relationship together.