Ron's Cousin Don And Me

Cowboy Ron Williams has just posted a new poem about his cousin, country singer Don Williams. I have my own Don Williams story. A few years before I retired from teaching school, the school district set up every teacher in the district with his or her personal web page. With this web page, parents could get copies of any assignments due, even if the student was sick and could not attend that day. They could also check on the student's actual grade and any missing tasks. They could not see the grades of any student but their own. There was also a space where the teacher could upload a picture of himself or herself, if desired. One day just for fun, I found a picture of Sean Connery, whose beard looked somewhat like mine, and uploaded that picture to the website. One of my students asked me: 'Mr. Barney, why do you have a picture of Sean Connery on your webpage? ' I laughed and asked her if she didn't think it looked like me, and she said: 'A little, but not that much.' That night I searched the internet and found a picture of Don Williams, who looked a lot more like me. I uploaded that picture. The next day, that same student said: 'I see that you took Sean Connery's picture off and put your own picture on instead.' I just smiled and forgot about it, until several years later when I retired. A writer for the local paper, the Davis County Clipper, wrote a story about my retirement and used that picture from my webpage! She got several angry calls from readers saying: 'That's not Mr. Barney, that's Don Williams! ' Poor girl. She had no idea who Don Williams was. I went out and bought four or five copies of the newspaper, and still have them today.