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🦋 From Butterflies to Bravery 🛡️ Sometimes the first step into the unknown is the one that teaches you the most. ☘️ 📸: 📣 First year cheerleading! First year on the cheer squad. Curious. Nervous. Willing to try. 📖: https://t.co/oxZItjcMD3

“I stayed with the game - and the game stayed with me.” 🥅 I played hockey off and on through all three years at @SaintJoeHigh School, finishing my senior year still chasing improvement. Today, I #coach my son’s #hockey team. Same lessons. New generation. Go Mavericks. 🏒

#Coaching changes lives... especially when it comes from home. My second year, my dad coached our team: Coke Is It! I could skate now, but more importantly, I belonged. At the end of the season, we surprised him with this hockey stick signed by every player. I look at it daily.

🥅 I couldn’t really skate yet, but I knew I wanted to be out there. 🏒 I discovered hockey when I was 6 or 7, watching my cousin @padaignault play for the @NDHockey team. It looked dangerous. Fast. Beautiful. I fell in love immediately, and asked my parents if I could play.

... see the human body as both beautiful and expressive. Art gave it context; it wasn’t about shock, but understanding form, light, and presence. 🖼️: "Jade" photograph by JWC, 1985. This experience shaped how I view beauty, respect, & the artistic potential of the human form.

Being the son of an artist, I was exposed to the human form at an age when it felt natural and unremarkable. Growing up with a Catholic education, I had seen nudity before in art through the stories of Adam and Eve, or in classical representations, and I quickly learned to ...

A little 8-year-old looking up in awe at the Eiffel Tower, Paris, 1985. 🇫🇷

An 8-year-old’s first adventures on the Seine, Paris, 1985.

Just an 8-year-old, mesmerized by a fountain at the Centre Pompidou.

One night that summer, the Seine turned into a dance floor for Bastille Day. I remember the lights, the crowds, the whole city was ALIVE!!! Playing was Tarzan Boy by Baltimora - the single to my first real memory of joy in movement, people, and art. https://t.co/Z2SxgoEuKh

Looking back, this was more than a childhood trip. It was my first experience seeing how art, storytelling, design, and meaning come together - a thread that would quietly weave its way into the foundations of who I am today.

That summer left its imprint on him, too. He captured a photo of the bridge Pont Neuf that he later turned into a poster ad for Litho Arts, a lithography commercial printer. As the story goes, he traded the design in exchange for free posters - classic creative-barter energy.

Two moments from that trip still stay with me: • Seeing the Mona Lisa at the Louvre, realizing how art can hold cultural power far beyond the canvas. • Hearing my dad explain the meaning of the word “priceless” in a way an eight-year-old could understand 🌱

In the summer of 1985, my father, John Walter Cernak, took a photography course in Paris, France. I was eight years old when I flew out halfway through his program to meetup ✨ a chance to explore a new country and immerse myself in art for the very first time.

@SBTribune Looking back, it reminds me how powerful those early relationships were and how the values of kindness, curiosity, and gratitude created bonds that stayed with me long after I left the classroom.

I must have made an impression at 🌼 Little Flower Montessori, because my teacher, Miss Kruk, asked me to be the ringbearer in her wedding. I was six years old, and the moment was special enough that the wedding appeared in the @SBTribune on Sunday, December 11, 1983.

This photo ran in the @SBTribune with the article “School Before Kindergarten?” Here I am with my teacher Mrs. Anna Schlemma at 🌼 Little Flower Montessori - 3 years old - the place that first taught me to be kind, curious, and grateful. Foundations that still guide me today. 🌱

✨ Be Kind 🔎 Be Curious 🙏 Be Grateful First school I ever attended was 🌼 Little Flower Montessori in Mishawaka, IN. It was dedicated by Rev Hesburgh, president of the @NotreDame for 35 yrs. He's known for principled, servant leadership rooted in faith, excellence, and service.

Before I reveal my 2026 keystones 🚀 the principles guiding where I’m headed ✨ I want to shine a light on the foundations that built me. The experiences, influences, and philosophies that set my trajectory. This is where my story of light truly begins.

BREAKING: Company to reclaim Twitter trademarks 'abandoned' by Musk’s X and bring back Old Twitter to compete against X. Musk can't do anything about it. Twitter is coming back very soon.