Statement from Crown Cues

JesPiddlin

Designed by Mother Nature
Silver Member
Hi everyone!

For anyone who doesn't know who I am... I am the wife of Crown Cues. I am usually the "voice" of Crown Cues, also. :wink:

We have missed all of you over the past year. A lot has been happening with us that was way beyond our control and we are finally free to fill you in on it.

Late last year, we decided Gene would not work on new cues during 2011, so he could devote the year to catching up on all the orders he had waiting. That WAS our intention. However, life had a different and much scarier turn for us.

Some of you will remember that a couple of years ago, one of our sons was loosely diagnosed with cancer, possibly Hodgkins Lymphoma. But, nothing was really done about it, except to keep a watch over him and wait to see if anything changed. Well, change kept coming, but nothing kept being done about it.

This spring, our son finally got an official diagnosis - He had Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. He called me and gave me the specific diagnosis over the phone, which I immediately looked up on the computer. From the diagnosis and the severity of his symptoms, I was able to determine he was in STAGE FOUR. As scary as this was, we quickly determined that we could not tell him this news and would leave it up to his doctor to tell or not. However, we knew this meant we would have to be available at any moment to watch his kids, while he went through the chemo treatments, rushed to the hospital, etc..

For much of the year, our son spent more time in the hospital than out of it. He was on a first name basis with the emergency room personnel and found a good friend in one of the doctors he met, there. He even found a new church home, thanks to all his visits to the hospital.

Shortly after he began his treatments, our son confronted me with the lack of info on what stage his cancer had developed to. I simply told him that the docs would let him know, if they felt it was important. But, since they didn't tell him and they said it was treatable, he should just do what they said and we'd do our best to be there to watch the kids, or transport him back and forth to the hospital, etc., when he needed us. During all this time, we chose to be quiet about what stage our son was, in case the doctor had continued not telling him. WE DIDN'T DARE tell anyone else, for fear that word would get back to him and give him doubt, which might shake any chance of his survival. We couldn't write it in an e-mail, or speak it over the phone. We just had to sit on the news and help him through it.

However, while we went through this, many of you thought we were abandoning ship. We have often been unable to respond to calls, e-mails, etc.. When the problem wasn't a lack of time, it was the fear we might accidentally tell the purpose for our absence, then it might be shared and our son find the news on a thread in a forum, or being discussed on a stream. We simply could NOT afford to give him any reason to doubt his chances of recovery.

During all this time, we had two major computer crashes that were devastating to us. One hard drive literally BROKE beyond retrieval. Well, they said they could TRY to retrieve the info for $1000, possibly more, but the drive actually broke inside, so it was possible we could pay the money and get nothing. A few months earlier, the recordable cd/dvd drive broke and we had not had time to fix it. We had an external drive, once. But, we quit that, after it almost burn the house down. Since the son was so ill and we spent so much time helping them out, time to get it fixed was just not happening. So, there was no back-up for about a year's worth of files. That's why I said it was devastating to us. It really was.

Updating the Crown Cues website has just not happened, this year. There has been little spare time. When I did have time, I didn't have brains.

During all this, I've had to continue working toward my recovery from my heart attacks and cancer. It seems like it has taken forever, but I'm a real human, again. FINALLY. However, I still exhaust much more quickly than before and when I'm down, I'm down hard for a few days, not just overnight.

Back to our son - A couple of weeks ago, he received the news about his most recent tests... He was completely free of any detectable cancer!! They said he will still have about 6 months of recovery care and they will have to keep a close eye on him, because this round was quite aggressive and they can't take a chance of it returning. they also FINALLY told him he had been stage 4. So, while he recovers from all the chemo and we all try to find some semblance to our prior lives, it is much like a cool down period, so we can ALL recover from the intrusion in our lives, caused by the cancer.

Basically, we THOUGHT we took 2011 off to work on cues, but God gave us the time to help our son stay alive. We are glad we were able to help them out, but we now have to return to our lives and try to rebuild from where we left off.

If you will all bear with us for just another month or two, while we try to catch up on the things in our life that have to be caught up, we'll try to resume the cue business and get back to our AZBilliards family, once again. We have missed you all. To all of you who kept us in prayer during our absence, we thank you! It was evident that God was very present in all our lives. We still have our son and we are SO THANKFUL for that!

Sometime within the next month, or so, we will ask for correspondence from those who have cues on order, so we can all get back on track, together. We hope you will forgive us for seeming a bit distant, but it was for the sake of our son and his life. There is nothing more important than that. We simply could not share the whole story, until now, so it seemed much more shallow than it truly was.

On another good note, I was able to begin designing products, which are finally starting to sell pretty regularly. We are hoping this will be a good income to help us afford the mess of all my medical bills from the past 6 years and the extra expense of having the grandkids so much, this past year. If you are interested in checking out some of the products I've designed, the link is in my signature.

Thank you all from the bottom of our hearts, for being so patient with us through this year.

Oh... To those who are used to getting Christmas cards from us every year, we will NOT be sending them out, this year. It isn't because we don't love you, but we are still in the process of rebuilding our files lost from the computer crashes and dealing with major time issues, too. Please help us spread the word.
 

dr9ball

"Lock Doctor"
Silver Member
Hi everyone!

For anyone who doesn't know who I am... I am the wife of Crown Cues. I am usually the "voice" of Crown Cues, also. :wink:

We have missed all of you over the past year. A lot has been happening with us that was way beyond our control and we are finally free to fill you in on it.

Late last year, we decided Gene would not work on new cues during 2011, so he could devote the year to catching up on all the orders he had waiting. That WAS our intention. However, life had a different and much scarier turn for us.

Some of you will remember that a couple of years ago, one of our sons was loosely diagnosed with cancer, possibly Hodgkins Lymphoma. But, nothing was really done about it, except to keep a watch over him and wait to see if anything changed. Well, change kept coming, but nothing kept being done about it.

This spring, our son finally got an official diagnosis - He had Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. He called me and gave me the specific diagnosis over the phone, which I immediately looked up on the computer. From the diagnosis and the severity of his symptoms, I was able to determine he was in STAGE FOUR. As scary as this was, we quickly determined that we could not tell him this news and would leave it up to his doctor to tell or not. However, we knew this meant we would have to be available at any moment to watch his kids, while he went through the chemo treatments, rushed to the hospital, etc..

For much of the year, our son spent more time in the hospital than out of it. He was on a first name basis with the emergency room personnel and found a good friend in one of the doctors he met, there. He even found a new church home, thanks to all his visits to the hospital.

Shortly after he began his treatments, our son confronted me with the lack of info on what stage his cancer had developed to. I simply told him that the docs would let him know, if they felt it was important. But, since they didn't tell him and they said it was treatable, he should just do what they said and we'd do our best to be there to watch the kids, or transport him back and forth to the hospital, etc., when he needed us. During all this time, we chose to be quiet about what stage our son was, in case the doctor had continued not telling him. WE DIDN'T DARE tell anyone else, for fear that word would get back to him and give him doubt, which might shake any chance of his survival. We couldn't write it in an e-mail, or speak it over the phone. We just had to sit on the news and help him through it.

However, while we went through this, many of you thought we were abandoning ship. We have often been unable to respond to calls, e-mails, etc.. When the problem wasn't a lack of time, it was the fear we might accidentally tell the purpose for our absence, then it might be shared and our son find the news on a thread in a forum, or being discussed on a stream. We simply could NOT afford to give him any reason to doubt his chances of recovery.

During all this time, we had two major computer crashes that were devastating to us. One hard drive literally BROKE beyond retrieval. Well, they said they could TRY to retrieve the info for $1000, possibly more, but the drive actually broke inside, so it was possible we could pay the money and get nothing. A few months earlier, the recordable cd/dvd drive broke and we had not had time to fix it. We had an external drive, once. But, we quit that, after it almost burn the house down. Since the son was so ill and we spent so much time helping them out, time to get it fixed was just not happening. So, there was no back-up for about a year's worth of files. That's why I said it was devastating to us. It really was.

Updating the Crown Cues website has just not happened, this year. There has been little spare time. When I did have time, I didn't have brains.

During all this, I've had to continue working toward my recovery from my heart attacks and cancer. It seems like it has taken forever, but I'm a real human, again. FINALLY. However, I still exhaust much more quickly than before and when I'm down, I'm down hard for a few days, not just overnight.

Back to our son - A couple of weeks ago, he received the news about his most recent tests... He was completely free of any detectable cancer!! They said he will still have about 6 months of recovery care and they will have to keep a close eye on him, because this round was quite aggressive and they can't take a chance of it returning. they also FINALLY told him he had been stage 4. So, while he recovers from all the chemo and we all try to find some semblance to our prior lives, it is much like a cool down period, so we can ALL recover from the intrusion in our lives, caused by the cancer.

Basically, we THOUGHT we took 2011 off to work on cues, but God gave us the time to help our son stay alive. We are glad we were able to help them out, but we now have to return to our lives and try to rebuild from where we left off.

If you will all bear with us for just another month or two, while we try to catch up on the things in our life that have to be caught up, we'll try to resume the cue business and get back to our AZBilliards family, once again. We have missed you all. To all of you who kept us in prayer during our absence, we thank you! It was evident that God was very present in all our lives. We still have our son and we are SO THANKFUL for that!

Sometime within the next month, or so, we will ask for correspondence from those who have cues on order, so we can all get back on track, together. We hope you will forgive us for seeming a bit distant, but it was for the sake of our son and his life. There is nothing more important than that. We simply could not share the whole story, until now, so it seemed much more shallow than it truly was.

On another good note, I was able to begin designing products, which are finally starting to sell pretty regularly. We are hoping this will be a good income to help us afford the mess of all my medical bills from the past 6 years and the extra expense of having the grandkids so much, this past year. If you are interested in checking out some of the products I've designed, the link is in my signature.

Thank you all from the bottom of our hearts, for being so patient with us through this year.

Oh... To those who are used to getting Christmas cards from us every year, we will NOT be sending them out, this year. It isn't because we don't love you, but we are still in the process of rebuilding our files lost from the computer crashes and dealing with major time issues, too. Please help us spread the word.

God Bless you and Gene, Renee, there are many of us out here in the world that care a great deal for you and your family. You are always in our thoughts and prayers.
 

JesPiddlin

Designed by Mother Nature
Silver Member
God Bless you and Gene, Renee, there are many of us out here in the world that care a great deal for you and your family. You are always in our thoughts and prayers.

Thanks, Rufus. It's been a tough year, but a huge success, overall. The main thing is that our son is still alive and no cancer is found. Life is really good!

How are you guys doing? I know you've had a couple of tough spots, this year, too. I haven't had a lot of time to keep up, tho. It sure wasn't due to lack of interest!
 

dr9ball

"Lock Doctor"
Silver Member
Thanks, Rufus. It's been a tough year, but a huge success, overall. The main thing is that our son is still alive and no cancer is found. Life is really good!

How are you guys doing? I know you've had a couple of tough spots, this year, too. I haven't had a lot of time to keep up, tho. It sure wasn't due to lack of interest!

We're still trying to get settled here in Atlanta. My wife hasn't moved down yet. We're hoping before Christmas but not sure yet. Send me a message on Facebook and I'll fill you in.
 

Kickin' Chicken

Kick Shot Aficionado
Gold Member
Silver Member
Wow, what an ordeal.

Sorry for what you all have had to endure.

Here's hoping for continuing uptrends for you and your family. :)

You guys were very nice in letting me get some practice on your table at SBE when pretty much all the tables in the joint were occupied.

Best,
Brian kc
 

12squared

AzB Gold Member
Gold Member
Silver Member
Renee,

So sorry to hear what you and your family has been going through, but it sure seems to be the best possible outcome. You & your son (and whole family) will continue to be in our thoughts and prayers moving forward.

Dave
 

ArizonaPete

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
So sorry that you had to go thru such hard times, but so glad that your son is now cancer free. Here's hoping that 2012 will be a banner year for you.
 

robertno1pool

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Crown Cues

Thanks for the update.

From Stage 4 to cancer free is an awesome miracle.
This is one of the best post I have read this year.

I have a cue on order - but do not worry about being late.
(Just a brief post by you or someone else on your behalf can go a long ways in letting us in the forum know things may be delayed a bit.)

I am glad you have you and Gene took the time to take care of what is definately more important.

Wishing you, Gene and your family a MERRY CHRISTMAS !

I will keep both of you and your family in my prayers.
 

Jim Baxter

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Wow , All this makes the Tornado kinda trivial , God bless you , you have had a tough time . I have missed the cues you have made in the past , Praying things get better soon . Jim
 

JesPiddlin

Designed by Mother Nature
Silver Member
You guys are great. And Robert - thanks for understanding. And yes, it HAS made the tornado a rather trivial issue.

Oddly, when I finally sat down to write that first message in this thread, last night/this morning (before I went to bed), I actually had to wake Gene up to ask him the name of the forum. It really upset me. I couldn't imagine EVER forgetting the name of this forum! But, we've had so much going on and I always refer to this place as "the forum" so much, that I totally forgot. When he said, "Are you talking about AZ Billiards?" I knew what to write in the browser address...

"forums.azbilliards.com"

That gets me here EVERY TIME. I just needed a kick-start to remember it. :):thumbup:

In my writing, last night, I forgot to tell you about a few other things. Many of you will remember that I often traveled to see my 97 year old grandmother in Louisiana, or Michigan, (depending on where she was at the time) at least twice per year. We were supposed to leave early and visit her on the way to the Super Billiards Expo, this year. We had a last minute financial issue which prevented us from leaving early. So, I called to let her know we would have to meet up in Louisiana, in May. Unfortunately, it soon became clear why we were not able to get the funds to leave early. Grandmother died on the Sunday we would have been there. So, we had to rush away from the Expo on the last day, to get to her funeral in Louisiana. The rest of the family was wonderful enough to delay the funeral long enough for us to be at the Expo and still get to the funeral.

Just about a month later, our little 16 year old dachshund died. His memorial page is at http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSfn=Samson&GSmid=47143887&GRid=68686586& Grandmother's is on findagrave, as well, but that is tmi to share on here.

AND, while I was on one of the follow-up trips to my grandmother's house, my cell phone died. Today's cell phones are so wonderful, with the little Sim cards, and all. The only problem - when you think you highlighted to save a number to the sim card, you only saved it to the phone. :( So, I lost many of your phone numbers. Unfortunately, someone gave out our phone numbers (this summer) on some insurance page and we have been overrun with calls from insurance companies. We STILL get the calls. So, I don't answer the phone from long distance numbers, unless I can see who it is. More often than not, I am not home and have forwarded the home phone, so I just let the voice mail get it. The voice mail sometimes just clicks and I get no message. :( I just bought an answering machine for the home phone, so we can screen the calls when we are here and not miss them, when we are gone. I haven't had time to hook it up, yet. It will get done.

So, if you think we had your phone number and/or home address and/or e-mail address, please pm them to me, so we will have them, for sure. Many of them I still have, but haven't had time to go through our book to be sure who I have info on and who I do not. I am hoping to have time to sit back and put all the numbers in my phone over the holidays, or shortly afterward.

With the deaths of 2 VERY SPECIAL family members, our son overcoming stage 4 cancer, two major computer crashes and a cell phone dying... We are practically starting a new life.
 

TripXQ

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Crown Cues

Just a quick note to wish you the best next year. I was aware of your problems and stayed away to give you space in your lives. You did receive one heck of a good Christmas present in having your son and his health return. The other stuff is ground clutter when compared to this.

Happy Holidays and deal with things on your own timescale.
May God Bless you with health and happiness this coming year.
Tom Gedris, Triple Cross Cues:cool:
 

JesPiddlin

Designed by Mother Nature
Silver Member
...The other stuff is ground clutter when compared to this.

Happy Holidays and deal with things on your own timescale.
May God Bless you with health and happiness this coming year.
Tom Gedris, Triple Cross Cues:cool:

So true, and we are so thankful, Tom. God has truly blessed us.

May God bless you and yours, as well.
 

The Renfro

Outsville.com
Silver Member
Great news!! I knew about the tornado but that was nothing compared to the rest... Sounds like a real miracle just in time for Christmas....

Keep us informed and updated as to when you are up and running again and I can guarantee a Masse cue order at least =)
 

JesPiddlin

Designed by Mother Nature
Silver Member
Great news!! I knew about the tornado but that was nothing compared to the rest... Sounds like a real miracle just in time for Christmas....

Keep us informed and updated as to when you are up and running again and I can guarantee a Masse cue order at least =)

Thanks, and you're awesome!
 

jdxprs

Banned
Hi everyone!

For anyone who doesn't know who I am... I am the wife of Crown Cues. I am usually the "voice" of Crown Cues, also. :wink:

We have missed all of you over the past year. A lot has been happening with us that was way beyond our control and we are finally free to fill you in on it.

Late last year, we decided Gene would not work on new cues during 2011, so he could devote the year to catching up on all the orders he had waiting. That WAS our intention. However, life had a different and much scarier turn for us.

Some of you will remember that a couple of years ago, one of our sons was loosely diagnosed with cancer, possibly Hodgkins Lymphoma. But, nothing was really done about it, except to keep a watch over him and wait to see if anything changed. Well, change kept coming, but nothing kept being done about it.

This spring, our son finally got an official diagnosis - He had Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. He called me and gave me the specific diagnosis over the phone, which I immediately looked up on the computer. From the diagnosis and the severity of his symptoms, I was able to determine he was in STAGE FOUR. As scary as this was, we quickly determined that we could not tell him this news and would leave it up to his doctor to tell or not. However, we knew this meant we would have to be available at any moment to watch his kids, while he went through the chemo treatments, rushed to the hospital, etc..

For much of the year, our son spent more time in the hospital than out of it. He was on a first name basis with the emergency room personnel and found a good friend in one of the doctors he met, there. He even found a new church home, thanks to all his visits to the hospital.

Shortly after he began his treatments, our son confronted me with the lack of info on what stage his cancer had developed to. I simply told him that the docs would let him know, if they felt it was important. But, since they didn't tell him and they said it was treatable, he should just do what they said and we'd do our best to be there to watch the kids, or transport him back and forth to the hospital, etc., when he needed us. During all this time, we chose to be quiet about what stage our son was, in case the doctor had continued not telling him. WE DIDN'T DARE tell anyone else, for fear that word would get back to him and give him doubt, which might shake any chance of his survival. We couldn't write it in an e-mail, or speak it over the phone. We just had to sit on the news and help him through it.

However, while we went through this, many of you thought we were abandoning ship. We have often been unable to respond to calls, e-mails, etc.. When the problem wasn't a lack of time, it was the fear we might accidentally tell the purpose for our absence, then it might be shared and our son find the news on a thread in a forum, or being discussed on a stream. We simply could NOT afford to give him any reason to doubt his chances of recovery.

During all this time, we had two major computer crashes that were devastating to us. One hard drive literally BROKE beyond retrieval. Well, they said they could TRY to retrieve the info for $1000, possibly more, but the drive actually broke inside, so it was possible we could pay the money and get nothing. A few months earlier, the recordable cd/dvd drive broke and we had not had time to fix it. We had an external drive, once. But, we quit that, after it almost burn the house down. Since the son was so ill and we spent so much time helping them out, time to get it fixed was just not happening. So, there was no back-up for about a year's worth of files. That's why I said it was devastating to us. It really was.

Updating the Crown Cues website has just not happened, this year. There has been little spare time. When I did have time, I didn't have brains.

During all this, I've had to continue working toward my recovery from my heart attacks and cancer. It seems like it has taken forever, but I'm a real human, again. FINALLY. However, I still exhaust much more quickly than before and when I'm down, I'm down hard for a few days, not just overnight.

Back to our son - A couple of weeks ago, he received the news about his most recent tests... He was completely free of any detectable cancer!! They said he will still have about 6 months of recovery care and they will have to keep a close eye on him, because this round was quite aggressive and they can't take a chance of it returning. they also FINALLY told him he had been stage 4. So, while he recovers from all the chemo and we all try to find some semblance to our prior lives, it is much like a cool down period, so we can ALL recover from the intrusion in our lives, caused by the cancer.

Basically, we THOUGHT we took 2011 off to work on cues, but God gave us the time to help our son stay alive. We are glad we were able to help them out, but we now have to return to our lives and try to rebuild from where we left off.

If you will all bear with us for just another month or two, while we try to catch up on the things in our life that have to be caught up, we'll try to resume the cue business and get back to our AZBilliards family, once again. We have missed you all. To all of you who kept us in prayer during our absence, we thank you! It was evident that God was very present in all our lives. We still have our son and we are SO THANKFUL for that!

Sometime within the next month, or so, we will ask for correspondence from those who have cues on order, so we can all get back on track, together. We hope you will forgive us for seeming a bit distant, but it was for the sake of our son and his life. There is nothing more important than that. We simply could not share the whole story, until now, so it seemed much more shallow than it truly was.

On another good note, I was able to begin designing products, which are finally starting to sell pretty regularly. We are hoping this will be a good income to help us afford the mess of all my medical bills from the past 6 years and the extra expense of having the grandkids so much, this past year. If you are interested in checking out some of the products I've designed, the link is in my signature.

Thank you all from the bottom of our hearts, for being so patient with us through this year.

Oh... To those who are used to getting Christmas cards from us every year, we will NOT be sending them out, this year. It isn't because we don't love you, but we are still in the process of rebuilding our files lost from the computer crashes and dealing with major time issues, too. Please help us spread the word.

was your husband in Vietnam?
 

Scott Lee

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Ye CATS Renee! No wonder we had a tough time getting together last summer! I hope and pray that your son will recover completely, and stay healthy the rest of this life. Very sorry to hear about your beloved pet. You may know that Patti & I experienced this tragedy almost a year ago, when our beloved Chewy passed away many years too soon. It devastated us then, and continues to haunt us still...even though we have a new love named BarkLee! I wish for good things for all your family for the new year, and hope you have a wonderful holiday! See you in PA in March!

Scott Lee
www.poolknowledge.com
 

Blue Hog ridr

World Famous Fisherman.
Silver Member
JP, I am happy that your son has a positive prognosis.
It was nice of you to give your customers a heads up with what has been happening this past year.

Pool cues come and go but family comes first above anything else.

Hope you guys have a Merry Christmas and All the Best in the New Year.
 
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