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Today's Featured Biography

 
Scott Graves

Being a dad is absolutely the best! Elisa and I started our family a bit later than most. From reading the bios I see quite a few of you with pre-teens - so, give me a call if any of them are interested in baby sitting our daughter during the reunion?? Ha ha, just kidding.

Anyway, our starting a family later than many wasn't totally by choice… we had our share of challenges and heartbreaks that I won't get into right now. Anyway, our two year old is a great little girl and makes life truly a joy.

But now let me back up 16 years. After graduating from Iowa State, I wanted to continue my education somewhere with year 'round golf and a good football team. So I landed at the University of Texas at Austin for grad school, had a blast, met my wife-to-be, played some golf, enjoyed the sunsets and margaritas, and suffered through some very mediocre Longhorn football teams. By then the Olympics were coming up in Georgia, so I got engaged and decided the Deep South would be a fun place to try, so we moved to Atlanta. Then one summer day in 1994 a few AHS grads - Paul Clem, Sudeep Gupta, Brian Jarnagin, Scott Applequist, and Sammy Baig - paid me a surprise visit in Atlanta to throw me a bachelor party. The last thing I remember is getting kicked out of a place called the Pink Pony… and we're all sworn to secrecy, so don't even try to get any more details. After seven years of traffic misery and fried food, we moved back to Austin, Texas.

So here I am in Texas, still married to the same girl, with a fun-loving two year old and a high strung Sheltie. I don't play as much golf as I'd like, but I do a lot more running - from 5 and 10Ks to one very painful marathon. We have season tickets to the Longhorn football games and have seen a few pretty good seasons lately. On a more serious note, when our daughter was four months old my wife Elisa was diagnosed with breast cancer, so we went through a very rough time with her surgeries and treatments about a year ago. On the bright side, Elisa is healthy, and through this process I was able to spend a lot more time with my daughter than I otherwise would have. It also taught me the importance of optimism even when the news is bad, and also to not get so worked up about life's little details. Both of those traits kind of go against my personality. Luckily I went to Ames Hi, and learned to "Aim High!" right?

So please drop us a line if you're ever headed to Austin, and maybe we can catch some good Tex-Mex or BBQ. And we'll be in Ames in July for the reunion. I am really looking forward to seeing everyone!

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