He was fishing with absolute passion on the rocky shores of Resurrection Bay.

My son was stationed in Alaska for three years while serving in the Army. His MOS (military occupation specialty) was 13F – Fire Control Specialist. That meant that he was assigned to work with the artillery to assure that the weapons fired by the artillery were hitting their targets. It also meant that he would need to be close enough to the target to see the impact. In the winter, he spent a lot of time working and training in the Alaskan wilderness.

In the summer, his assignment changed. During the short Alaskan summer, Josh volunteered to work at the Army-Navy Recreation camp in Seward. Seward sits on the northern shore of Resurrection Bay. The bay is more like a fjord. It’s extremely deep and is very well known for fish and wildlife.

Josh’s summer job was to take soldiers and sailors, who had traveled to Seward for a little rest and relaxation, fishing on the entire bay, all the way out to the edge of the North Pacific. He was excellent at what he did. He excelled as a fire control specialist and earned awards as a fishing guide.

I had always wanted to drive the Al-Can Highway to Alaska. My son, Danny, wanted to go, and so did my Dad. So, in July of 1991, we headed northwest on a driving adventure. It was a grand adventure — a 4,000 mile one-way drive through a landscape unique in wilderness beauty.

Shortly after arriving in Seward, we got settled into our Quonset hut housing. Later, we found that there was a lottery every evening to win a seat on one of the fishing boats. A few days after we arrived, Dad and Danny were the winners of an outing on the boat with Josh. That gave me the opportunity to cruise around the small village of Seward on my own.

Seward is a small fishing village of about 2,500 people. It is surrounded by steep mountains that hug the shore, seemingly growing from the water’s edge. Beautiful doesn’t come close to describing this small village. As I drove around, I went to the Seward Waterfront Park just off Ballaine Boulevard.

There I saw a man fishing with passion. He wasn’t just fishing. He was totally immersed in the sport. There were at least three lines in the water and he was casting another. His Coleman stove was on and heating up a cast-iron skillet. It was obvious that he expected that a fish would soon be sizzling on that skillet.

He stood casting his line from the edge of the bay. Beside him was his old pickup truck. It had been fitted with what looked like a homemade, plywood camping shell. It appeared that he had used a paint roller to paint it sky-blue. Along the sides of the camper he had printed in white-lettering everyplace he had ever fished. From Mexico, along the Pacific Coast, lakes, bays, rivers throughout the west – my new friend had fished them all. You could tell by just watching him that fishing was his passion.

A lot of people have hobbies. Very few have passions. What a blessing it is when a person’s job is also their passion. I’ve seen it a few times. Virgene Peterson has a passion for teaching children. She taught school or volunteered in the Wilmington school system for 70-years. Most people are delighted to retire after working 30 or 35 years. Virgene doubled that. She had an absolute passion for what she was doing. Teaching children has always been her passion.

Our good friend, Dr. Nathan Hale, had many passions. He loved performing surgery. He loved helping people. His mind was rarely at rest. He invented surgical instruments and procedures to improve his ability to perform appendectomies and tracheostomies. Dr. Hale was always available. Christmas dinner with his family would have to wait so he could perform a lifesaving procedure on an injured farmer.

When not practicing medicine, Nathan and his close friend, Fred Anliot, could be found trekking across fields and forests in Clinton County looking for the largest tree in the county. He loved nature. He was considered an expert on fossils that could be found in the area. Physician, surgeon, inventor, biologist, arborist, paleontologist … Nathan Hale’s thirst for knowledge and the application of that knowledge was his passion.

Dr. Richard Bath was an original member of the Clinton Memorial Hospital medical staff. He was the hospitals first chief of staff, but more than that – he had a passion for life. Dr. Bath was one of the last area physicians to routinely make house-calls. Besides his love of medicine, Dr. Bath also was a jazz musician. He composed original rag-time and jazz music.

Even toward the end of his long, passionate life, he performed publicly with his own jazz combo, The Bathhouse Five. Like Nathan Hale, Dick Bath also was an amateur paleontologist. His office and home housed a museum-quality collection of fossils. His passion was for serving others and living his life to the fullest.

I feel sorry for people who have never discovered their passion. If you haven’t found your passion yet, keep looking.

It’s never too late.

Randy Riley is President of Council of Wilmington.