Reprise: My Dad

I posted this tribute one year ago today. I can't think of anything more to add so I'll reprise.

I love this photograph of my father because it doesn't resemble the man I knew in any way shape or form.

The man I knew smoked only an occasional cigar and drank an occasional sherry or glass of wine, barbecued weekends, loved Chinese food and take out, and dressed like Don Draper every work day of his life because he was an ad man.  

This photo was probably taken when he was in the USAF during WWII.  The hair cut, the shirt, the hard-ass look.  I thought this was Frankenstein the first time I found it in the drawer of his high boy dresser.  I was probably 7 or 8 and it scared me to death.  He had to reassure me it was just a photo taken when he was young and he was definitely not a monster!

Dad, circa mid-1940s





I remember my father is as a loving but stern, old-fashioned man with a very rigid set of principles.  He was born in 1910, another era light years from the Sixties when I was coming of age.  We did not see eye to eye.  Yet, he instilled his faith in God, his work ethics, his frugality and his loyalty in my brother and me.  We are the better for those things.


Me, Dad, Mother at Butchart Gardens British Columbia   Summer 1969  Mother & I wear nosegays of violets from Dad



Dad loved an occasional cigar, a pancake breakfast with bacon on the side, a good walk, his dog(s), nature, God and country. He was never so proud as when his two grandsons were born.  I think they were the light of his old age.
 

D

Dad & Grandsons 2005 (age 95)

He was nutrition and supplement minded before it was fashionable.  He read the Rodale books and followed a predominantly naturopathic road when I was young.  I remember him ingesting Tiger's Milk, fish oil, B supplements, high fibre food, whole grains, raw honey.  He walked that walk.  He lived into his late 90s and was still mobile.

Dad presenting retirement document to a retiring Colonel Vandenburg AFB, 2004

For those of you old enough to remember, "My Dad" sung by Paul Petersen on The Donna Reed Show