LeRoy Lawson - Velcro Families: They Stick!

Roy and Joy Lawson Tigard, Oregon 1960

F or several years Joy urged me to publish the story of our Velcro family. I hesitated, and for the best of reasons: I didnt know how to do it. Even now I offer these pages with some trepidation. I dared to try because Mark Taylor said hed help. A good friend.

I still dont know how to do it for a general reading audience. It was the idea of publishing that stumped me for so long. This is my thirtieth book, starting with Very Sure of God , my revised doctoral dissertation, which came out in 1974 . The last one appeared in 2004 , Conformed to His Likeness . This one, like most of my books, was written on assignment from Standard Publishing. It was another adult Bible study for Standards annual Vacation Bible School program. These studies sold well, met a need, and helped me hone my research and writing skills.

In other words, I had some experience in book writing. What I didnt know was how to publish one. Or market it. These were the duties of the publisher, so I pretty much ignored them. There was something else. You cant really write a book until you define whom you are writing for and to . Aye, theres the rub: Who was my audience? Who would read a book about a Velcro family except the Velcro family? Who even knows what that is? So I procrastinated. For a long time.

Until now. I could just say that Joy wore me down. She not only has long urged me to get on with it, but she recruited other family members to add to the pressure. There were also the others. When nonfamily members heard of our experiment, several wanted to know more. What is this thing called a Velcro family? How did you get started? How do you keep it going? Think I could do it?

So over time I began secretly thinking through how to tackle the challenge. Now, at long last, Im ready. I work best against a deadline, and a potential deadline is loomingalthough that may change, depending on Covid-. Im writing this introduction in the midst of the pandemic. Were locked in, increasingly restless with our enforced isolation. Now a date we set in 2018 seems threatened. By the time this book is completed well know whether we can keep it.

Im talking about our all-family Sixtieth Anniversary Cruise. On June , 1960 Joy Annette Whitney changed her last name to Lawson. She and I have now weathered and mostly enjoyed six decades together. We joined forces in Oregon, left the state in 1965, and did not return to reside here permanently until February 2020 . In the intervening years we formed our biological family and then, without thinking much about it in the beginning, our Velcro family.

They are the real reason Im writing. This book is for our biological and Velcro offspring. Ive tossed aside any idea of publishing a widely read book. I still think Im right: the public at large isnt clamoring to read about our family, as wonderful as we think we are. But we will read it. Its our family story. But its not just for our current collection. Long after Joy and I are goneand that deadline looms pretty large when youve hit your eightiesour kids kids and their kids will ask questions that only the contributors to this volume can answer. One of my biggest old-age regrets is that I didnt pepper my own parents with questions I didnt even know enough to ask then but am bedeviled by now.

That deadline I mentioned several meandering sentences ago is rapidly approaching. Thanksgiving week, . Thats it. Most of our whole big Velcro family will be cruising together on the Caribbean (over of us at last count). We did this once before, for my seventieth birthday. That time forty-three of us sailed for a week along the Mexican Riviera. That was when we discovered that cruising may be the most economical, most convenient, and most rewarding way to bring a few dozen people from several states and two countries together, keep them fed and entertained for a week, and help them build memories and cement relationships for a lifetime.

We had such a good time in 2008 were going to do it againthe pandemic permitting. Joy and I couldnt think of a better way to party for our anniversary than to gather up our brood once again and go sailing, this time south from New Orleans. That cruise is my deadline. I want the book ready to distribute by then.

What you just read was the truth when I wrote it, especially the part that says, the pandemic permitting. Well, the pandemic didnt permit. In July 2020 I sent an email to the family postponing the cruise. Covid- was once again on a rampage, with no signs of abating in time for us to sail in November. Sothe cruise is off, but the publication deadline hasnt changed. I still hope to deliver copies of this book to the family in November. Then maybethe pandemic permittingwe can cruise together next year. In the meantime, enjoy reading.