50 years with my father, happy father’s day, daddy

While I was growing up, I always thought my dad looked like Elvis.  Maybe that was what started my strange fascination with ‘the King’.  When I started this blog post, I began to search my photo files to find pictures of me with my dad.  It was a much harder task than I had anticipated.  I guess he was usually the one behind the camera when I was a child. 

My dad was a hard working man.  He grew up in a very different family than I did.  Growing up in the 30s and 40s in the poor, rural south was much different than growing up in the 60s and 70s on military bases.  I thought my life was hard while I was growing up, but when I look back on it today, I can look beyond my father’s faults and see the important things that he taught me:  to love God, to work hard, and to take care of my family.

This was my dad in his much younger days, before I was even a twinkle in his eye.  He was the youngest of five children (he had three brothers and one sister).  He resembles his mother, my ‘granny’, Rosie, who had some American Indian heritage.  I can really see her in this first picture of him as a small child.  It was taken when he was around 5 years old.

My father left home at a very early age and joined the military.  He eventually ended up in the United States Army, where he served for 20 years before retiring. The picture on the right was taken the late 50s (perhaps, while he was in Germany).

He married my mother in the late 50s and my brother was born 16 months later.  I showed up two years after that.

Here is my dad holding me when I was about a month old, while we were living in Texas the first time.  The picture of him in uniform holding me was taken when I was around three while we lived in Illinois.  I could find no more pictures of me with my dad until after I graduated from high school.

Below are photos of me and my dad in the 1980s.  The first, on the left, was taken while we were at New York in 1980 for my older brother’s college graduation.  The middle picture (which is very fuzzy, just like my hair and my dad’s beard!) is at my graduation from college a few years later.  And, finally, on my right is my father walking me down the aisle at my wedding in the late 80s. He has a really great tan in that one because he spent the whole day cutting the lawn at our home.  The outdoor reception was held there and it had rained most of the previous week.  The sun finally showed up on the morning of the wedding and he was able to take care of business:)

And here we are in 2011.  The effects of Alzheimer’s began to ravage my father’s body a few years ago.  Thankfully, his medications have made it so that we can still communicate with each other for a little longer.  More than anything, I am grateful that he knows the Lord and looks forward to a time when his body and mind are again whole.

Happy Father’s Day, Daddy!  I love you.

"Listen to what your father teaches you.  Do not neglect your mother's teaching.  What you learn from them will crown you with grace and clothe you with honor."

Proverbs 1:8-9