RALEIGH – Saturday was a day of reflection for me.

Actually, Saturday evening was a time for reflection. Most of the day was spent chauffeuring, entertaining, and cleaning up after the Little Conqueror and the Little General. There was dance class, a basketball game, lunch buffet at Rudino’s, a visit to Greenbrier Park, a little soccer in the front yard, a little Army/weaponry playacting in the backyard, and a lengthy series of card-table games that included (but was not limited to) Go Fish, Stratego, Game of the States, and a Marvel Superheroes version of Old Maid (take a guess at the masked super villain, and inspiration for Darth Vader, whom you do not want to end up holding at the end of the game).

So what’s to reflect about from all this? Saturday was also the 15th anniversary of the day that the John Locke Foundation opened its doors in a modest office condo in Raleigh.

Start-up organizations are like children in some respects. They take a great deal of time and energy to nurture. And the course of their development is beyond full control, or even accurate prediction, though naturally it can be shaped in important ways with foresight and commitment.

Plus, there’s money involved.

I was present at that founding 15 years ago, as a young journalist recently returned to North Carolina after a stint in Washington at The New Republic. During college and shortly afterward, I had worked at a couple of Eastern North Carolina newspapers and founded a student magazine, The Carolina Critic, that eventually published campus editions at UNC-Chapel Hill, N.C. State, Wake Forest, UNC-Greensboro, and UNC-Charlotte. Through these experiences, I developed a strong interest in state and local issues, an attachment to opinion journalism (I had started writing a weekly newspaper column in 1987), and a belief that North Carolina’s political debate was oddly and unnecessarily tilted against the founding principles of our state and nation: limited and constitutional government, free markets, and individual liberty.

Fortunately, upon my return to the state, I found that my conclusion were shared and complemented by those of other North Carolina activists, including then-NC Rep. Art Pope of Wake County and former political consultant Marc Rotterman. Pope, who had also served in the Martin administration, had concluded that a new source of public-policy research was needed to improve the debate in the capital city. Rotterman, who had managed congressional and other campaigns, saw the need to bring new ideas and insights into old controversies by hosting prominent speakers, conferences, and debates.

With Pope as founding chairman, Rotterman as founding president, and I as the “content” person, we married these three ideas into a new think tank. JLF began publishing research papers on issues such as the state budget, taxes, housing, and education. It started a newsletter in April 1990 which, a year later, turned into a statewide magazine called Carolina Journal. It published news, analysis, and commentary on state and local issues (and provided op-ed versions of its articles to North Carolina daily and community newspapers). And JLF began its Headliner series of luncheons in Raleigh, soon expanded to other cities, that featured some of the most well-known public officials, policy experts, and media commentators in the country.

These three thrusts – research, journalism, and events/outreach – continue today, albeit with changes in programs and personalities. In fact, you can expect to see even more changes at JLF, and some exciting new faces, in the coming weeks and months. To learn more, you might want to attend JLF’s 15th anniversary bash , which is coming up soon.

For me, a key Saturday-night reflection about all this was that, in effect, I already have one teenager. Two more are on the way. Goodie.

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.