In Memoriam: Irene Waddell

Irene and Randall Waddell at their 50th anniversary celebration in 2019.

Edith Irene (Ward) Waddell

74, Dacula, Ga.

Edith Irene (Ward) Waddell, of Dacula, Georgia, died on December 11, 2025, at Northside Hospital Gwinnett in Lawrenceville, Ga. She was 74 years old.

Born on November 21, 1951, at Fort McPherson — a U.S. Army military base located in Atlanta, Ga. — Irene was a devoted wife, loving mother, and cherished grandmother and great-grandmother. She was known for her kind heart, joyous attitude, and unwavering love for her family. Irene found her greatest joy in spending time with those she loved and took pride in the life she built with her family. 

She is survived by her husband, Randall Waddell, of Dacula, Ga.; her daughters, Shannon (Daniel) Ross, of Jasper, Ind., Kimberly Waddell, of Winder, Ga., Amanda (Dennis) Morrison, of Columbia, Tenn.,, and Brandie (David) McDaniel, of Dacula, Ga.; ten grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren, all of whom were a source of immense joy and pride in her life. She was preceded in death by her father, Charles Ward; mother, Clara Ward; and brothers Charlie and Jimmy Ward. Her sister, Trish Scott, died 13 days after Irene on Dec. 24, 2025.

Irene will be deeply missed by all who knew and loved her. Her legacy of love, devotion to family, and spirit will live on in the hearts of those she leaves behind.

There will be no visitation or formal funeral services. Instead, a private family memorial service will be held at a later date.

The Ward Family, Christmas 2017: Trish Scott, left, Charlie Ward, Irene Waddell, Jimmy Ward, Clara Ward.

Music Favorites 2025

In the past, I've often taken time at the end of the year to review what I considered to be the best music of the year. Caveat: I can't — and don't — keep up with everything. This post is me telling you what are my favorites among the music I actually purchased/downloaded/streamed, in 2025. Links will be for Apple Music, as that is my streaming platform of choice (however, I have physical copies — vinyl and/or CD — of many of these). You can also go directly to the PLAYLIST I've made — and friend me on Apple Music.

The Books I Read in 2025

A few years ago, I set a goal to read at least one book a month, as I had allowed my phone, social media, etc. to greatly lessen my ability to stay focused. In 2025, I continued this challenge and read 36 books. This was not planned, but I did have quite a pile of books waiting for me at the conclusion of 2024 and I got through January with two books completed and four knocked out in February. So, I thought to myself 'I think I can read three a month if I plan it well.' As of this writing I've read some part of a book every single day of 2025 and it's definitely been a personal best. I will not attempt to repeat this goal in 2026 — or increase it. I know lots of folks read 50 or more books a year, but also include audiobooks in this (more power to you, if that's you). Towards the end of this run, I started to feel like I had homework every day — and I definitely don't want reading to become that!

Without further ado, here's what I read with my favorites, listed in order of reading, at the end of the post. 

Good Reads: "King: A Life"

Book 28 of 2025 (Sept. 28 to Oct. 13) was a near-masterpiece of biography writing. I picked up my copy at The Next Chapter in Jasper — and you should too (have them order it if it's not there).

"King: A Life" by Jonathan Eig

Non-Fiction, Biography

On the next-to-last page of the epilogue of "King: A Life" by Jonathan Eig, the author writes what is probably the most profound sentence in the book (I highlighted it in an otherwise unmarked book). 

"But in hallowing King we have hollowed him."

Creed Thoughts

“We've seen our share of ups and downs/Oh how quickly life can turn around/In an instant/It feels so good to reunite/Within yourself and within your mind/Let’s find peace there.” — My Sacrifice (from the album Weathered, released 2001. Songwriters: Scott A. Stapp and Mark T. Tremonti)

Less than a decade ago, a mention of the band Creed would garner snickers and derision from most people — music and non-music fans alike. The band, exceedingly popular and one of the, if not the, biggest rock band in the world in the late 1990s (when rock music was still a dominant form of popular music) up until the band's substance- and fame-fueled implosion in 2004 (mostly driven by. by his own admission, the lead singer's struggles) quickly became a source of scorn. It’s often the case for artists who are equally earnest in their songs and interviews. And Creed had earnestness for days. A three-year reunion, complete with their (in my opinion) best album, Full Circle, and touring — which started semi-successfully in amphitheaters in 2009 and ended, less successfully, in smaller theaters by 2012 — also ended in a second break-up with lead singer Scott Stapp’s continued drug use and mental health creating great peril for him in the mid-2010s.

But, a funny thing has happened in the past three to five years: Creed has caught on again. Gen Z and millennial athletes started using their anthemic brand of hard rock as motivation in clubhouses with the mega-hit Higher. TikTok, Instagram Reels, and other social media made the chorus of One Last Breath a new kind of anthem and helped usher in a new era in cultural relevance for the band. Add all of that to younger Gen X-ers, who may have never stopped listening to the three-album run of My Own Prison, Human Clay, and Weathered, keeping the band’s memory alive with their own kids (today’s Gen Z-ers), and you have a recipe for a massive comeback opportunity.

On Wednesday night (July 9, 2025), in Lexington, Ky., Creed continued their return to the cultural mainstream by kicking off the Return of the Summer of ’99 Tour with special guests Daughtry (replacing the originally-scheduled ’90s-to-’00s hitmakers 3 Doors Down — after lead singer Brad Arnold’s diagnosis of stage 4 cancer) and Mammoth (Wolfgang Van Halen’s stellar band). The show was over-the-top, epic, loud, full of pyrotechnics, and completely earnest — and you wouldn’t want or expect anything less than everything Creed presented.

A few observations/thoughts:

• The band — never introduced on stage, from what I recall — of bassist Brian Marshall, drummer Scott Phillips, lead singer Stapp, and guitar hero Mark Tremonti were aided by Eric Friedman on guitar, Zeppelin-esque mandolin, and backing vocals, seemed to be in top form on the opening night of the tour with Stapp’s voice in fantastic shape singing songs that are not a cakewalk to belt out night after night. I have seen the main musical trio of the band as Alter Bridge (with Myles Kennedy on vocals and featuring a much more progressive hard rock sound and style) and they are a well-oiled rock machine, displaying the tightness and precision formed by playing together for nearly 30 years. Tremonti also gave away a guitar to a kid in the crowd — the only portion of the night that deviated from the desert-scened, story-telling-infused journey the crowd was on together.
• Stapp’s Pentecostal-preacher-styled stage rapport could have been seen as ham-fisted and way-too-earnest except that almost everyone in the room was with him and willing to “go on a journey” with him. Indeed, the journey was exposited song-by-song with Stapp — using all of his charismatic-Christian-faith upbringing — giving a brief sermonette in the lead-in to almost every song and ending his proclamations with the title of the song — to which the crowd would, naturally, respond with enthusiasm to Tremonti’s opening licks. 
• I’ve never seen more people in a crowd wearing a band’s merchandise (and variations on the theme such as: 1. Dallas Cowboys jerseys with ‘Stapp’ on the back, recalling the band’s 2001 Thanksgiving Day halftime performance in Dallas. 2. T-shirts with the title ‘Creed’ — with images of The Office character Creed Bratton). Metallica shows are the only real comparison — often rife with the band’s shirts — but this night was fairly next-level. I would wager 80% of the people in the room were wearing their allegiance to the band on their chests and backs — with merchandise lines long enough to be sure they had gear for their next shows.
• The crowd ‘pop’ that occurred as Creed began One Last Breath was among the loudest I’ve ever heard a crowd be in person. The GenZ-ers who waited all night for Tremonti’s opening salvo and Stapp’s lead-in to “hold me now/I’m six feet from the edge and I’m thinking” joined their peers, people their parents age, and a few younger kids in a MASSIVE sing-along. A band playing at full volume matched by a crowd singing is rare — but it was in full force at Rupp Arena on this July night.
• Prior to the song One (from 1997’s My Own Prison), Stapp spoke with the most fervor of the night in defense of unity, freedom, and liberty. However, what was implied in 1997 and what is reality in 2025 may be vastly different things when one starts speaking of those concepts in the United States. While he never got politically explicit (as his spiritual and musical forerunners Bono and Eddie Vedder might), I was left wondering how he would define those terms in contrast to how others in the room might — and what the resulting cheers were really about. It makes one yearn for a previous era — though the 1990s might not be as blissful as memories may make them either.
• The name of the tour was appropriate as there was no song in Creed’s set newer than the Weathered album (for me, this was the only real bummer as 2009’s Full Circle is a stellar work of under-valued hard rock earnestness). For this comeback, it’s all about 1999’s Human Clay (its tracks making up fully half of the 16-song headlining set).

Nostalgia, it is said, is a heckuva drug. However, despite a set featuring no songs as young as my 22-year-old daughter, Creed’s show felt less like nostalgia for the ghost of days gone by and more like a celebration of endurance. People love to gather together and celebrate commonality, need to feel affirmed in their humanity and encouraged in humanity’s (and personal) struggles, and love to raise voices together in celebration of a shared love.

As a Jesus-follower and a minister, there are some things the church could learn from this show, but I won’t digress into that too much, other than to say practices currently derided and songs written long ago may come back around again and we should not fall so easily prey to the tyranny of the new.

It’s a short trip, these days, to cynicism, especially in an environment like this show where there weren’t many songs not amplified by pyrotechnics and the well-trodden “quiet verse/loud chorus” present in nearly every song (most of which were, yes, earnest, mid-tempo songs full of pleading and angst). However, for one night, my wife, our friends Bryan and Jaime, and I gathered with 23,000-plus people, in a place normally reserved for college basketball enthusiasm, to celebrate “the journey” of our lives, individually and collectively, that Stapp spoke so much of during his stage raps.

Unsubtle? Sure. 

Fun? Absolutely.

Life affirming? Without a doubt.