My Dad

Daddy

This is the outline that I wrote and spoke at my father's service.

My brothers and I were lucky enough to have one amazing father. We adored our dad and we knew just how much we meant to him. We were right behind my mother……..and his dog.

He was a great Daddy. When we were children he would fashion the most wonderful toys out of whatever he had near, whether it be a thread spool, fishing line and a toy clown, or whether he was in violation of some law by heating plastic trash bags until they floated up, up and away through the neighborhood and having Arlington Police Department flooded with calls of UFO's.

We were the only kids in the neighborhood with full sized airplanes in our garage, and with a father that flew billionaires, rock stars, movie stars and presidents. To us Dad was larger than life, our hero of heroes, our protector, our teacher.

Dad taught us many things. He taught us not to air condition the neighborhood, he taught us that if you left your car in one place too long it would become one of his projects. And he taught us to fear the most dreaded of all beasts, the cockroach. Have you ever seen a 300 pound man run screaming through a house and into the yard because a cockroach dropped from the ceiling onto him? Well it's not something to be forgotten.

He taught us to fight for what we believe in. Most of all he taught us acceptance and that all people were created equal, no man was above another. He respected everyone except those, of course, that somewhere along the way had forgotten that respect had to be earned, for them he had no tolerance.

There were a few other things that dad wouldn't tolerate: the slamming of car doors, and any unknown squeaking noise in a vehicle would mean a stop on the shoulder of the road tearing apart the car, one time only to find the squeaking toy monkey my brother had strategically placed.

Something else that Dad wouldn't tolerate was preaching in any form. My family and I, as well as others, had continually prayed for his salvation. When it looked like it would never happen, my mother died tragically. My father was broken, he had given up.

Suddenly his orderly world no longer made sense. People all over the country were praying for my dad, my very logical, intellectual father. People that he had never met were praying for him, we were praying for him.

The day before he died, my year old grandson fell down the stairs at my house.

The first scans showed bleeding in the brain, a skull fracture, a possible broken leg and a lacerated tongue. My daughter called my dad crying. She didn't know what to do. My dad told God didn't hurt her baby and not to be angry with Him.

He told her to do what she had told him hundreds of times before: pray and have faith in God.

Subsequent scans showed no skull fracture, no bleeding in the brain and no broken leg. Josiah only had a lacerated tongue. I called Dad to tell him the news and the doctors had no explanation for the conflicting scans. My dad simply said "I do." Daddy died that night.

I now feel our prayers have been answered, I will see my hero of heroes, my protector, my teacher, and my daddy again.