Happy Birthday, Dad!

Today would be my father's 86th birthday. He was, overall, a good man; brought up in Oklahoma and Kansas farming fields during the late 1920s and during the Depression and the Dust Bowl, he "escaped" the mid-west by joining the Navy, hoping to become a pilot. He became a qualified air mechanic and an instructor instead, once it was found he had no depth perception, which disqualified him from flying. He was a skinny, gawky kid with freckles and a gleam of red in his brown hair... he loved to read and enjoyed school. When he retired from the Navy, he wanted to become an elementary school teacher. I think he would have been an excellent one, but the realities of trying to go to college full-time, and support a wife and two kids while purchasing a house caused him to give up his dream.

Dad loved children and children loved Dad back. He used to take me out into the woods (scrub oak and pine) behind our house in Florida and point out all types of wildlife - not just the birds and deer, tortoises and rabbits, bear, bobcats, skunks and snakes, but the insects and plants, frogs and toads and types of fish in the creeks and lakes. If you asked him a question, and he didn't know the answer, we would look up the answer together in the encyclopedia or by visiting the library. He thought that all kids should be kids - digging in the dirt, playing with worms and bugs and frogs, loving puppies and kittens and any critter that could be easily kept in a suburban yard. Due to an accident with a grey mare named Nellie, Dad wasn't very appreciative of horses, but he loved mules, burros and donkeys and all other farm animals.

He found that he loved the sea, too, once he joined the Navy and was stationed at Vero Beach and then on the big flat-tops, the aircraft carriers. He had hoped to retire to Chincoteague Island, or one of his best-loved places, Puerto Rico. His carrier was stationed in the Caribbean for almost 18 months, and he came to love the people and the atmosphere of the island. Then he was stationed at Chincoteague NAS, where he met my Mother, and became enthralled with the lives of the watermen, including my Swedish Grandfather who was well-known and always welcome as a net-mender (in New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and Florida). Unfortunately, Dad didn't live until retirement, and so the majority of his dreams were never met. But he was greatly loved.