Happy Birthday, Dad

My father was born in January in the mid-twenties.  Obviously he came of age during the Depression and as a young man was thrust into the maelstrom of combat in World War Two to become a man practically overnight.

Then he returned from overseas, a husband already, to use the GI Bill to go on to receive his higher education at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota.  Somewhere in my house is a picture of a handsome young man, exuding confidence and grace, standing with snow shovel in hand outside a Quonset hut living unit next to a mountain of shoveled snow, alongside a beautiful young wife looking lovingly at him.

Yale Law school followed, where he had three children, including me.  Three more children followed as he practiced law at a Wall Street law firm and engaged in civic and humanitarian work.  I am most proud of the fact that he used his entire yearly vacation time two years in a row to go to the deep south in the mid-sixties after passage of the Civil Rights Voting Act to help register historically disenfranchised voters, a dangerous and potentially deadly task in those days.

Warrior, husband, father, son, brother, grandad, activist, lawyer, the list could go on and on for this principled man. Taken away way to early at age 61 by cancer, I still miss you and think about you often; I love you dad!