David Ramsey in Beijing

While vacationing in Colorado with my family recently, I enjoyed catching up one evening in Colorado Springs with longtime friend and 1981 ACU graduate David Ramsey. He and I and our spouses walked the grounds of the Broadmoor Hotel, where the U.S. Senior Open golf tournament was being held, and visited over coffee at a nearby Starbucks. David was helping with coverage of the tourney.

Another former Optimist writer who has distinguished himself (I am prejudiced about this, mind you), David is one of the featured columnists and sports writers for The (Colorado Springs) Gazette (www.gazette.com). A terrific (one of his favorite words) writer, he has won a number of awards for his freelance work in ACU Today magazine. He spent quite a few years as an award-winning sportswriter for the daily newspaper in Syracuse, N.Y.

David and his family also are happy globetrotters. His wife, Sheryl, is the daughter of the late ACU education professor Dr. Kelly Hamby, who helped establish a thriving mission work in Zambia. She was still recovering from jet lag from a trip to Zambia with her mother, Eleanor Hamby, when we met up with her and David in Colorado Springs. David's latest work-related assignment is in Beijing, covering the Olympics for his newspaper. Colorado Springs is the home of the U.S. Olympic Training Center and the headquarters for the U.S. Olympic Committee, so stories about the Games are of high interest to David's readers.

You can follow the stories he posts from China at www.gazette.com/sections/sports/livefrombeijing