Father's Day Tribute

Many memories of my father stem from my childhood. As a little girl, I loved when daddy would ask me if I wanted to go with him in his red pickup. I always did. Being with my father stirred a sense of safety and always made me feel like a princess.


A tall man with dark hair and very handsome, my father was a man who exuded strength and character. Daddy personified the actor, John Wayne, who was the “it” man of the day and was truly a man’s man! When I was growing up he raced an F Racing Runabout boat that required a deck rider to keep the boat from flipping. In 1948 he won the Regional Championship for his boat racing class.


He was also a hunter. Every September he and his hunting buddies flew in a small plane owned by one of the men, to Wyoming or Montana. I remember his telling me after one trip that Wyoming was the least populated state in the Union. He loved that! How could anyone love a state with few people? Now, over a half-century later and living in the densely populated Northeast, I understand. The tranquility of the Grand Tetons and buffalo roaming across the meadows spoke to his soul.


It’s been forty-two years since I’ve had my father to celebrate Father’s Day. In 1970 daddy died from heart disease at the young age of forty-nine. I was a young mother with a husband, an infant daughter and pregnant. I remember feeling I was way too young to lose my father. My mother was only forty-six years of age when she was widowed.


In those twenty-five years of knowing my father he evoked a range of emotions from our family dynamic. Life wasn’t perfect but still, it seems to be every girl’s dream to be the apple of her daddy’s eye. I was no different. I wanted his love, his approval, his affirmation, his support, his wisdom and his arms around me telling me everything would be okay.


I am blessed with many wonderful memories of picnics at the boat races, trips to Sequoia National Park, summers at the beach in Cayucos with the roiling waves of the Pacific Ocean lapping at the shore, trips to Disneyland, riding in the back of daddy’s pickup with my brother, Hugh, and helping daddy pick out yet another new blue bathrobe for mom’s birthday with my sister, Lezlie.


But, the banner day of memories was my wedding when my father walked me down the aisle. I’d never seen him look so proud; so handsome.


Thank you, daddy, for contributing a boatload of memories that fill my heart to this day.