Happy Birthday, Dad...Ninety-Nine Years

 In one year from now, God willing, I'll be able to write about an important milestone in our family. It'll be the one-hundred year anniversary of my father's birth. Today, we're celebrating the next best thing.

Ninety-nine years.

My father has always been sort of an enigma for me. He passed away when I was eight-years old. I was old enough to understand what was happening, but too young to grasp what that event would mean for the rest of my life. I know my father by his deeds, by the things he accomplished in his short life. Simply put, he did more in the forty-nine years, than I have done (or will possibly ever do...) in my life. He is my hero, a man I've admired more and more with each passing year.

Without crunching the numbers, I believe I've blogged about my father more than any other person, more than my spouse, my kids, my friends. Yet, I know him less than everyone else. 

Tonight, as I think of the man and his life, I wonder what life was like on November 4th, 1924 on the plains of Montana, in a little hamlet of Harlem. During my autumn gig, I get the opportunity to chat with many people. There are a surprisingly large number of patrons from Montana. Whenever I find one, I always ask if they've heard of Harlem, Montana. I've yet to speak with one who has been there. Almost all of them have no idea where it is, or even that it exists. 

Did the town have electricity in 1924? Maybe, but considering the fact that my mother remembers when they installed electricity in their farmhouse in Clawson, Idaho--and she was younger than my father by seven years--my guess is they didn't...probably had no indoor plumbing, either. It's most likely a tough existence living in Harlem, Montana today, let alone a century ago.

I wish I had more time with him. I wish I could have talked about what it was like to be part of a B-17 fighter group over Germany, and was he scared being a tail gunner knowing it was the most vulnerable place to be. I would love to have talked to him about being a deputy sheriff in Idaho, about surviving the Great Depression, about getting a four-year engineering degree in only tree years, and having the knowledge (and courage...) to build his own house.

Ninety-nine years, gone for more years than he was alive.

Happy birthday, Dad.

Ninety Years Ago A Great Man Was Born...Happy Birthday Dad!

Tonight, as I collect my thoughts, a bunch of people are spewing a lot of hot air about this and that, saying what great men and women will do after winning elections and how those that did not win ran great campaigns.

But there is another man I'm thinking about tonight, someone who didn't have to tell people he had integrity, someone who showed by the way he lived his life what kind of a man he was.

The man was my father and he was born ninety years ago today.

Most of what I know about him I've been told. He passed away when I was a child and unfortunately, the number of people who knew him personally is also fading. But I do know this--I cannot recall a single time when someone who knew him had anything bad to say about him. Maybe it's because he was my father and no one wanted to say anything bad about him to me, but I don't think so. 

Here's to my dad who, as a child, lived through the depression and helped raise his younger siblings, who served as a tail-gunner in a B-17 in WWII, who finished a four-year degree in engineering in three years, who took upon himself the responsibility of fatherhood by adopting three children, who designed and built the home that provided shelter to our family for almost forty years and who battled cancer the last year of his life--facing the challenge like he did everything, with honor and bravery.

Happy birthday, dad! How I'd love to tell you in person, but that will just have to wait. Thanks for being a wonderful example to me of what real fatherhood is and should be. I am one lucky son.