In Memory of My Father: 1920 to 2009

We received the call at 3:33 this morning, Wednesday, February 11th, 2009.

You know, instinctively, that an early morning phone call is no good. It was my eldest brother saying that our other brother had gotten a phone call from the hospital. Our father had just passed away.

My father, Richard, was 88 years old. He had survived a world war, Korea, Vietnam. He was a US Army Air Corps bomber pilot. He trained aviators in the B-25 Mitchell at Mather Air Field, east of Sacramento. He married his sweetheart; they eloped to Reno for marriage. They had three children, including myself -- Baby Boomers from the Greatest Generation. He made full bird Colonel in the United States Air Force. If it had rivets, he could fly it.

His wife, my mother, passed away on May 14th of 2002. She had COPD from smoking. Everyone smoked back then. She had just observed her 80th birthday at the time, and her anniversary of April 24th, 1942 -- their 60th.

Dad was two months shy of his 89th birthday, April 13th of 1920.

I called my father's brother at their Highland Park, Texas home early this morning. I woke up my Aunt Gloria.

Dad once told me: "All I want to do is be older than my father when he died." His father was 80 when he died. He was in the front yard of their Texas home. He had a heart attack and fell dead. You made it, Dad. You beat him.

There is so much to do. So much to do.

Blogging may be sporadic. Or I may redouble my efforts. I can't say.

I'll bet my Dad's flying high above the earth right now, in an open cockpit Consolidated Vultee BT-13, canopy slided back, where the skies are blue, the weather fair, and he's young, strong and free. So free.

BZ