A Happy New Years Day Filled With Happy Memories Of Fenway South

Happy New Years to you and your family. I hope 2026 is a healthy, prosperous, and interesting year for me personally, so I wish the same to you. For the past few weeks, I have been reorganizing photos, books on my bookshelves, and old emails. Why, because the new year is always a good time to reset your situation, whatever it may be. That is why resolutions are so popular on New Years Day as opposed to say June 10th. Its a new year, a new beginning, I look forward to a new me – you have heard the cliches.

In the spirit of reorganizing, I was looking through my office drawer and came upon a digital camera. Years before cell phones had cameras, folks used digital cameras. And before digital cameras, folks used film cameras. It was so strange to hold it thinking that at one point this camera was like the coolest piece of technology I owed. The camera itself was “battery” dead, so I plugged it in for a day so I could view what was on it. And this morning, I plugged the camera into my laptop to download and review the photos on it. And from there, a walk down memory lane began…

After sifting through about 1000 photos, most taken by my kids when they were much, much younger, I came upon a set of photos that I thought were long gone. About 30 or 40 photos from a trip to Fenway South, the Spring Training home of the Boston Red Sox. Talk about a find. I thought for sure that these photos, these experiences, these moments in time were left to just my memories of that period in time. I was psyched beyond belief to find them and relive the wonder and spectacle and memories of that period in my life.

My father lived in Fort Myers Beach, Florida at the time and I would take my 3 boys to visit him on select school vacations. Living in Rhode Island and dealing with New England winters, it was a joy and pleasure to fly south to Florida to warm up a bit every year. Those were really special memories and the kids and I always had a blast in South Florida.

When you fly into Fort Myers, Florida you cannot help but see signs for Jet Blue Park leaving the airport area. The airport is literally 6 or 7 miles from Jet Blue Park, aka Fenway South. So, during one trip south, the kids and I and my Dad took the drive from Fort Myers Beach over to Jet Blue Park, took in a tour of the stadium, and explored Jet Blue Park top to bottom, literally.

The tour was awesome. We got to walk the entire perimeter of the stadium, go up on the higher seating levels of center field to see the entire complex, even go down on the field near the Green Monster of the South and the dugouts. It was a non-game day and I believe Spring Training might have been over at that point in the early Spring. Still, it was awesome to walk the walk with my boys and my Dad.

Just outside the souvenir shop, there was a Ted Williams statue photo that I am so psyched that I found on this camera. Ted Williams is one of my favorite Americans, let alone baseball players. Here is the statue, which I would have to believe is still down at Fenway South in the same spot.

The Boston Red Sox did such an amazing job with Jet Blue Park. For folks in South Florida, this park is such a treat because of its likenesses to its Boston counterpart. Fenway Park in Boston is a national treasure and Jet Blue Park does an outstanding job of honoring all the unique parts of it.

Wow, this was such an incredible find. I was pretty sure that I preserved these photos somewhere online, maybe on an old social media account. But having found this digital camera, with photos of my kids from various vacations to Washington, D.C., Vermont, and South Florida was such an unexpected treat. And the photos of Fenway South with my kids and Dad brought me the best New Years present a Dad could ever want – reliving wonderful memories with loved ones.