It was a beautiful February day in Alexandria, Nebraska.

It wasn’t a sad day… it was a day we celebrated the life of Uncle Dale, my father’s closest friend. He lived to be 98 years old and had an incredible life. After the service, we gathered at the Methodist church, sharing stories, laughing, remembering. It was there that I was handed something I had never seen before… my great uncle Edwin’s senior portrait from 1919.

I remember saying, “Oh, I can’t take that…”

And the response came back quietly…

“There’s no one left to give it to.”

That moment stopped me in my tracks.

The portrait had been passed down through generations… surviving more than a century… through the Great Depression, through wars, through time itself. It had been preserved inside its original presentation folder, protected in a way that feels almost foreign today. It was given to me by Edwin’s great-grandson, who simply wanted it to remain with someone in the family… and in that moment, they knew it needed to come to me because of what I do, and because of the portrait I had created of Uncle Dale years earlier.

And as I held it, I began to think about everything it had taken for that image to still exist.

Edwin’s parents cared enough to travel to a nearby town to have it created…The photographer cared enough to create something beautiful… something technically excellent… something worthy of being kept. And through the years, someone cared enough to protect it… to pass it down… to make sure it didn’t disappear.

Until finally… someone cared enough to place it in my hands.

Because someone cared.

And in that moment, I realized something I hadn’t fully understood before.

The kind of work I had always been drawn to… the work I cared most about creating… was never accidental. The Santa sessions, the children’s portraits, the Heritage Series… they all carried the same intention. I just hadn’t yet seen how far that intention could reach… how it could live on long after we’re gone.

That portrait didn’t change what I love to create.

It revealed it.

It showed me that what had always been there… was something deeper. Something passed down. Something worth continuing.

And now it sits with me as a reminder.

That the responsibility has been handed forward.

That the work matters.

That how we create… how we teach… how we guide others… it all becomes part of something bigger than us.

Because someone cared.

And now…

I’m the one who has to.