It’s odd the things that pop up in one’s memory feeds. Like these three images this morning.

I’m pretty sure that these were taken by the Love of My Life (aka Evelia) on an unusually warm morning on this day in 2017 on the Saint Joseph’s College Campus. As can happen in Northern Indiana, the sudden transition from sub-zero temps to above freezing actually will cause the snow to evaporate, making things foggy as all get-out. It can be a beautiful, if somewhat haunting, break to the winter cold.

Regardless, these quick phone-snapshots, which Evelia is prone to doing, were likely of her walk from her car at the Lennane Computer Center, where I had my offices as Chief Information Officer, to the Halleck Student Center, where she would have grabbed a cup of coffee before her classes in pre-law.

In other words, on the surface, a typical uneventful morning in Higher Education, and one that is played out at Colleges and Universities all over the U.S. (and the world).

However, just 18 days later, the Board of Trustees would vote to close this school, and suspend operations of the underlying non-profit organization while seeking ways to keep it out of bankruptcy.

As the newly “official” CIO and soon-to-be member of the President’s Cabinet, I was of course aware of the disaster that was unfolding. And I was indeed doing a lot of crisis-management as a result. But even so, emotionally a part of me was still doing various strategic plan scenarios that assumed an attempt to continue operations, coupled with the belief that, like so may times in the past for this institution, we would somehow find a way to avoid our date with the executioner.

It was not to happen.

For anyone interested in the story about the Saint Joseph's College closure, there is a well-written book out there by Dr. Jonathan Nichols that covers it:

amazon.com/Requiem-College-Jon…

And remember, in the immortal words of Ferris Bueller… Life Moves Pretty Fast. If You Don't Stop and Look Around Once in a While, You Could Miss It.