Some people are born with a gift for hospitality. I'm not sure I was born with it — but I was raised in it.
Growing up in the 1970s, my family owned a small business, and from an early age I absorbed the culture of that store like a sponge. The customer is always right. Treat everyone with respect. Value every person who walks through the door. Those weren't just business principles — they became the way I saw people.
That foundation followed me everywhere.
Practicing hospitality toward others isn't always easy. Life gets busy, frustrations build, and we find ourselves laser-focused on our own agenda — often missing the people right in front of us. Recently, I was standing in line at Sam's Club making a return when I noticed the woman ahead of me was struggling. The employee helping her was growing frustrated too. The issue? A receipt locked inside an app that kept throwing an error message every time she tried to log in.
It was a last-minute decision. I turned to my wife and said, "Let's go to the Christmas parade." Simple enough. The annual Burleson Christmas Parade in Old Town — what we locals call our downtown area — was the perfect spontaneous plan for a cold winter evening.
We parked and made our way toward Old Town central, and that's when it hit us. Miles of people. Kids bundled up in lawn chairs lining the curbs, faces lit with anticipation. Everyone wrapped so thick in coats and scarves they looked like they were headed to the ski slopes, not a Texas street parade.
Hospitality is about making people feel seen, valued, and welcomed — without expecting anything in return.
In one sentence: Hospitality is the intentional act of creating space where others feel they belong.
Have you ever watched someone scream at a store employee over something simple? Finger in their face, veins in their neck — all over something that could've been fixed in thirty seconds with a little grace.
We were in my son's college town for a big parents' weekend. Found a hotel, got in line to check in. Long line. One clerk. My patience was running on fumes.
My wife and I had escaped to the beach for a week of sun, rest, and the kind of fun that’s supposed to slow life down. But somewhere between the sand and the souvenir shops, we began to notice something that didn’t belong there. At first, it was subtle—easy to dismiss as a coincidence. Then it kept happening. Again and again. Almost everywhere we went.
While the news cameras were focused on the chaos, the crowds, and the heartbreak unfolding on the beaches of South Padre Island this spring break, something quietly extraordinary was happening in the middle of it all.
Beach Reach was there.
Rudeness didn’t appear overnight, and it won’t disappear on its own. It has been learned, tolerated, and eventually normalized. But what has been learned can be unlearned—and what has been normalized can be interrupted. Hospitality is that interruption. It doesn’t shout. It doesn’t demand agreement. It simply changes the atmosphere the moment it enters the room.