I’m not sure what got into me, but one of the stories I covered for this newspaper last week literally brought me to tears.

In fact, after I covered the story and was driving home I had to pull my car over to the side of the road when I began sobbing like a little girl.

No, I wasn’t feeling “sad” as one county commissioner said she felt last week about the lawsuit the county board had just filed against the county prosecutor. And I wasn’t upset about the bureaucratic delays the would-be developers of the former Leelanau County courthouse property keep running into, which I also reported on last week.

I must admit that I was pleased – but did not cry tears of joy – after learning that my 14 year-old daughter’s ski team was heading to the state championships as reported in our Feb. 18 edition. Besides, I’m not allowed to cover skiing because my daughter is on the team.

Nor did I cry over the fact that my 12 year-old son did not make it onto the six-member county spelling bee team as he did last year even though he was declared the Leland Public School spelling bee champ two weeks ago. Although the county spelling bee was Page One news last week, I didn’t even break down over the fact that I wasn’t allowed to be a judge at the bee and cover it as I had for nearly a decade because my son was participating in it again this year.

Believe it or not, what really did a number on me was related to the tiny news item I wrote that appeared inside Section 2 in last week’s edition along with a few pictures I took at the Leelanau Childrens Center (LCC) annual winter carnival.

We have a framed photograph on a hutch at home that someone from the LCC took of me, my wife and our two children during an outing to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in the summer of 1998. At the time, our kids were toddlers and I was still on active duty in the U.S. Marine Corps, albeit on “terminal leave” pending retirement after 25 years of service including three combat tours.

We had just arrived in Leelanau County and were exploring preschool options for our kids who, today, are both LCC alumni.

I have always volunteered to cover the LCC’s annual winter carnival if for no other reason than it’s an easy way to come up with a few “cutsey” photos of local kids that people might enjoy seeing in the newspaper. Besides, the LCC is a class act in my estimation, and I have always had a warm spot in my heart for it.

The winter carnival this year was a little different from past years because it began with a free concert by LCC teacher and musician Doug Hansen and his band, playing their repertoire of children’s songs. The scene in the Performing Arts Center at the Leland school was one to behold – dozens of little kids and their parents jumping and dancing together to the music. As people walked into the room, you could see their faces light up instantly when they heard, saw, and felt what was going on.

One of the things that also struck me was how many of the people in the room I knew personally, some of them for many years now.

For a guy whose previous life took him to a new duty station every other year or so on average, to say nothing of temporary duty in at least 50 countries including a few foreign cesspools where people were actively tyring to kill me, being in the same room with so many friendly, familiar people having such fun with their kids is something special.

And, unlike some places where I show up with my camera and notebook these days, pretty much everybody at the LCC concert seemed happy to see me. I even got a few hugs.

It wasn’t until I had finished covering the LCC event and was driving home that I began reflecting on what I’d just experienced. I recalled that there were several times in my life when I was quite certain I would never live to see a day anything like that one. That’s when I lost it.

Maybe I really do know what got into me. It was pure gratitude.