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| 2008 This year’s theme is Do & Remember The time to plan is over the Galli’s spent 2008 DOING!!!!! As you should know by now, each year, we have a theme for these letters. This year it clearly was the year of Do & Remember. I can’t tell you the ride the Galli’s have been on in 2008. I have pinched myself more than once. We are truly blessed. Betsy and I spent the first 8 months of 2008 getting ready for our trip to China and helping to run the 2008 International Wheelchair and Amputee Sport (IWAS) Federation Junior World Games along with the 2008 Wheelchair Sports USA National Junior Disability Championships. The IWAS Games were exciting. We had 20 countries represented and over 200 athletes to compete in Track, Field, Power Lifting and Swimming. Betsy and I were part of a large Children’s Specialized Hospital team. Our role involved bringing the international countries to the Games. It turned out to be a 40-hour a week second job from January to July for Betsy and me to gather the International teams’ forms, to get them through the US Visa process and to arrange for their housing and transportation while they were in the US. To accomplish this we tapped all of our friends to help and we want to thank all of you who that gave us tens of hours of your time. We really appreciated Joe and Rose Tatarski coming up from South Carolina for the week. I don’t think Joe and Rose would have come if they realized how much work they had to do running transportation from 6AM in the morning to 12AM at night, I really appreciated it. I also want to thank the neighborhood poker guys for the many hours over 12 days driving to and from the airport. They really did anything that was asked of them to make the games a success. As you can see from all the pictures on the website, our trip to China was fantastic and the Chinese people are wonderful, but let it be said that there are a lot of people, 18-19 million just in Beijing. The city is huge but getting around was pretty easy with the subways and the cabs (as long as you had the place you were going written out in Chinese by the hotel staff). We did a lot of walking and saw Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, the Ming Dynasty tombs, the old city, the Great Wall, a silk factory and of course the Night Market where Christine D’Aguillo (our neighbor who came with Katy, Betsy and me) ate scorpions, and beetles (see the video, it’s gross). I will say that China is a great place to visit. Food and living were reasonable and we picked up a lot of bargains from pearls to custom made suits for Jessie and me. Katy’s year was no less exciting. She spent the spring semester in London at City University’s Cass Business School studying Finance and she spent her weekends traveling through Europe (tough life!!!) She visited Ireland, Scotland, Spain, Italy and France. In the summer, she interned at Ford in Dearborn, MI in the Global Purchasing department looking to reduce Ford’s costs to purchase differentials for some of their car lines. This fall she spent most weeks interviewing and traveling to companies wanting second interviews. Katy’s hard work paid off with 5 job offers. We really are proud of her getting such great offers in this economy. She has chosen Great American Insurance and will start her working life in Cincinnati, Oh. Finally, what can I say, Jessica had the year of her life, sports-wise at least. She started the year being named the USOC’s Paralympian of the Year, followed by an ESPN ESPY nominee for Best Female Disabled Athlete of the Year, a trip to LA as a celeb for the ESPY’s and in July was named a 3rd time US Paralympian. She left with the USA Team in late August for Okinawa, Japan to train and, then on September 4th she flew to Beijing. The Paralympics were all she could have imagined. After a Silver Medal in Sydney and 4th and 5th place finishes in Athens, Jessie was in top form for China. As most of you already know, she won the 400M race breaking her own World Record with a new time of 54.88, won a silver medal in the 100M and 200M both in personal best times, a silver medal in the 800M losing by 1/1000 of a second (a heart breaker) and a bronze medal in the 4x100M relay. All in all, she earned 5 medals and became the most decorated USA Track and Field athlete at the Games. Since returning home, Jessie has been busy: she was introduced during halftime at a Chicago Bears’ football game in Chicago, was the University of Illinois Homecoming Grand Marshal, was the starter of the wheelchair division of the Chicago Marathon, went on a trip to Washington, DC with fellow Olympians and Paralympians to meet the President, traveled to Las Vegas and Hillsborough to address school children about her experiences in Beijing, and in December she was named USA Track and Field’s Disabled Athlete of the Year for the second time. The 10 years of 6 days a week practice and dedication to being the best really paid off in 2008. We will finish this letter as we always do saying we would love to see you if you are around. We will be at Andrea’s (Roz and Ron’s daughter) for Christmas Eve, home for Christmas and then the four of us will travel to Cape Cod for a few days of R & R, returning to Hillsborough for New Year’s Eve. We all wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Phil, Betsy, Jessie, Katy & Midnight
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