Thanksgiving reversed is “Giving thanks.”

Each year that passes, I pause to acknowledge those who enrich my life in many different ways. I am grateful to them, especially during this time that is so difficult for all of us with the limitations we have seeing one another. Unfortunately, phone calls, texting and social media have become the ways we communicate now rather than getting together in person.

I begin by offering my thanks to my son, Richie, and my daughter, Sadie. They continue to make me proud to be their dad. They have excelled in academics. Richie plays baseball for Jim Thorpe Area High School, and Sadie is on the eighth-grade basketball team. They are my lifeblood and I’m reminded every day there is no greater love than this dad has for his children.

I’m grateful for Mike Tedesco, my friend of 56 years. We’ve been through the good, the bad and the ugly, and through it all, we keep our loyalty to each other. I am blessed to have a friend I call my “brother” for over half a century long.

I’m grateful for my dear friend, Sharon Kay. She’s a wonderful person with a kindness that never wavers, a giver of her time and her love, a woman filled with an extraordinary spirit that brightens my day with her presence and lightens my burdens with her smile.

My thanks go out to Sean Cuffe, Sandor Csapo, Jeff Grose, Tim Mason, Michael and Karen Daugherty, Bill Carroll, and Billy Nyers for staying in touch with me as I do with them. Friendships do not require daily or even weekly conversations. When you pick up the phone and talk with someone who has been an impressionable part of your life for years, it doesn’t matter how much time has passed. Good friends whenever are good friends forever.

A special thanks to Midge McClosky, who manages the Shawnee Playhouse and to those who voted my play, “Mind vs Heart” to be produced on an outdoor stage. It was a wonderful show!

My appreciation extends to my Voyage Media team who is nearly finished with a screenplay for my novel, “Upon a Field of Gold,” which we believe will get financed and produced as a major motion picture in 2021.

Thanks to Vern, Chuck, Neil, George, Bob and Greg, who bowl with me on Tuesday mornings and put up with my whining about my lousy scores.

Thanks to my high school reunion friends, especially, Ray, George, Russ, Clarence, Bob and Jan. A half century might have passed, but we’re still Piscataway Chiefs forever.

Thank you, Emmett McCall, sports editor for this newspaper and a wonderful boss who gives me exciting local sports to write about every week.

Thank you, Marta Gouger, editor-in-chief of this newspaper, for giving me many interesting feature assignments and for still allowing me to babble about anything and everything in this weekly column.

To all the football coaches I have interviewed this season, thanks for making yourselves available for late weeknight interviews after a full day of work and after school practices.

A special thank you to Alex and Pat Stasyk for allowing me to fish off your backyard for another summer season. Even when I didn’t catch fish, I still left your property feeling refreshed and with an incredible peace of mind.

As chairman of the Penn Forest Recreational Park Advisory Board, I greatly appreciate committee members Jen Bevilacqua, Robin McGeehan and Todd Fox. Your diligence and hard work have helped make our park a center of sports and community activity each and every day. We also appreciate Penn Forest Township Supervisors Roger Meckes and Chris Bartulovich for your attendance at our meetings and for your support for all of our ideas to improve the activities and facilities at the park.

I would be remiss to not thank all the first responders and medical personnel, especially those in our area, for your unconditional and exhausting dedication to care for those afflicted with the coronavirus along with other patients who have more conventional ailments.

As a former teacher, thanks to the instructional staffs at L.B. Morris and Jim Thorpe Area High School for teaching my son and daughter. I’m also grateful to Joe Mirakwa, Tim Hubbard, Pat Joyce, Tom Lienhard, Neil Yurchak and Brian Schwartz, my son’s high school baseball coaches. You have provided your coaching skills to my son and to his teammates to make them better baseball players and responsible young men.

I am sincerely grateful to the Keystone Press Association for selecting me as a first-place winner for a feature story I wrote about Clarence Smoyer, a World War II hero who protected the lives of his tank crew while disabling several German tanks that helped end the war in 1945. My personal interview with the Bronze Star recipient is an experience I will never forget.

Last but not least, I thank you, my readers here and on Facebook, for taking the time from your busy lives to read my columns and stories. Stephen King explains the relationship writers have with their readers that express my feelings, too.

“Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, or making friends. In the end it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life as well. …”

And so I raise my glass for another year in gratitude to all of you. Let’s hope 2021 brings us health, freedom and the return to what we used to call normal living.

We should all be grateful when that happens and never take another minute of the time we have left on this earth for granted.

Rich Strack can be reached at richiesadie11@gmail.com.