A Tribute to my Dad
Today is his birthday, born in 1920 in South Carolina. He had 6 brothers and a sister. He married my Mom when he got out of the service in WWII. A story she never tired of telling was of her riding behind him on his motorcycle. Just as they rode past a cop, her dress flew up over her head. They raised 5 kids, my two sisters with Type 1 diabetes, on a door-to-door salesman's earnings, and no insurance. He said he couldn't stand being cooped up in an office. My brothers and sisters were instilled with his morals, love of the outdoors, and animals. When we were kids, he would take us on Sunday morning bike rides after church, strung out like ducklings behind him. We were in awe that he could sit backwards on the handlebars and pedal around when we stopped. He was always taking us to parks, and our favorite, Bernheim Forest. Even just stopping at a creek to drop cane fishing poles in the water. One time he brought home crawdads in a jar, and put them in my mom's aquarium. She kept wondering why her guppies were disappearing, while he was walking around chuckling. Only my little brother and I are left now.
He was always the Southern gentleman....soft spoken, courteous, generous, Southern Baptist. I never saw him wearing anything other than dress slacks and a long sleeve dress shirt. He only conceded to the summer heat of working in his large garden by rolling up his sleeves precisely two cuffs. He loved dogs, and used to tell me things like--if you wouldn't drink the water in that bucket, don't expect them to drink it.
He had a stroke in later years that paralyzed the right side of his body. My brother had to disconnect the distributor in his car to keep him from driving. He had been a hard worker his entire life, out-doing people half his age. Inactivity did not set well with him, but he had loved watching nature TV shows, the volume turned way up because he refused to wear his hearing aid. Loved his National Geographic and Farmer's Almanac.
We ended up having to move him and my mom to a retirement home because of his paralysis and newly-discovered colon cancer, and my mom's Alzheimer's. I think leaving their place in the country where they'd lived for more than 30 years finally did him in. He only lived a few months in the home. He had so loved being outdoors, working around his three acres, and in his garden.
Happy Birthday, Daddy, from your kids.
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Lost mine Jan 2012
