Father's Day 2013

My dad passed away 13 years ago this month.  He had wanted to live until the new millennium so was very pleased that he made it past 2000 and all the hoopla surrounding the coming of Y2K.  In March of 2000  he had taken all of us on a cruise to Mexico -- my brother and his wife and their five kids, my sister and myself and my husband and two daughters.  When he called and said that he had had a windfall from a class action lawsuit and the State of Oregon had to pay him back for all the income tax they had taken from his Air Force retirement pay, he wanted to know what I thought about all of us going on a cruise.  Well, I told him, I thought it would be more fun to spend it on doing something all together with him than to spend it after he was gone.  So off we went.  It was a really fun trip and we all had a great time.  It probably wasn't as fun for my brother's family as ours because they had little kids.  Ours were big enough to wander the ship on their own (within reason) as long as they checked in on a regular schedule and we always knew where they were. The photo above is he and his littlest grand-daugther (at the time) on the cruise.  But as usual I digress. 

What a great Dad I had (have - in heaven).  He always took good care of us and provided what we needed.  He was always into learning and would always tell you more than you wanted to know.  If you asked about why it was raining he would go back to evaporation over the oceans and move on from there to condensation in cooler air and the impact of seasons and weather fronts.  Ack! But overall we ended up with a pretty good idea of how things work. 

He was a perfectionist.  Whatever he did he did well.  He would learn and take that learning to heart.  When he built his house (see previous blog post about the sale of said property) he was all worried when the inspector came out to check the footings.  The inspector walked around silently for quite a while, shaking  his head and the longer he went on the more worried Dad got that he had done something wrong.  Finally the man turned to him and said, "These are a work of art!"  That was his style.  If something was worth doing, it was worth doing right!

He was a great story teller.  He would tell us stories of growing up on the farm in Wisconsin.  He described his dad and their relationship.  I don't know that they were particularly close as Grandpa worked long hours but he admired his father for his strong work ethic.  Some of my favorite memories are of Dad talking about his WWII training stories.  He never actually went overseas during WWII as when his unit of Flying Fortress' went to England he stayed in Louisiana with sleeping sickness from which the doctors said he would not recover.

He loved to drive.  And he loved to visit family. We would take long trips across country to visit his family in Wisconsin and mom's family in Oregon.  In spite of moving all over the country and to Europe, he always made sure that we got to see the relatives as close to annually as we could. 

He taught me to drive.  Now that was an experience for him I am sure.  I remember once on this narrow road in Germany when he said with a little more force than usual, "Move over and don't drive so close to the bushes."  Apparently it wasn't a good idea to scrape the side of the car along the brush beside the road. 

You could also count on him.  When the girls joined our family and we were in process of moving to Ohio, he offered to drive us there in the motor home and to tow our car behind.  Unfortunately he got Rheumatoid Arthritis shortly after he retired, so could not do all the construction and fixing up that he had been able to do in the past.  And that was why he never completed the downstairs of his house. 

Thanks Dad for being a great Dad.  Thanks for providing an example to look up to in so many areas.  You had your weaknesses as well, but were always willing to listen to another point of view!  LOVE YOU!!