Posted to OGR on 06/20/2010
We at Our Generation Radio wish all dads out there a Happy Father’s Day. We hope you get to spend your day relaxing and doing what you like to do most.
My father came from a large family. He was the eldest of eight. It is impossible to sum him up in one sentence but he was a hard working middle class man who loved and provided for his family. He was a child of the depression, just 18 when the stock market crashed and his father lost the family silver engraving business he spent his life developing. Later, when Dad and Mom married, they moved into a house just around the corner from the one where his mom and siblings still lived. Dad had a great sense of family and was the glue that held his family together after his parents died.
My favorite memories of Dad were from times we went on vacation or on weekend day trips to the lake or the beach. He believed in family time, what we call today “making memories.” We would all pile into the car, each in our pre-assigned places and drive off in search of adventure. Many of our early vacations were spent in a rustic cabin at Goldhead State Park southwest of Jacksonville. I still remember the quiet lazy days playing catch, swimming and boating. As we got older, our vacations ranged farther from home. Being Floridians, of course, all our destinations were in the Sunshine State. Sometimes we would drive over to Pensacola to visit our relatives and sometimes we would drive downstate to the southwest coast, Bradenton Beach, south of Tampa. I remember those trips like they were yesterday. I loved the soft waves lapping on the beaches of the Gulf of Mexico. The point of all this is that Dad worked hard fifty weeks a year so he could work hard going on these vacations. He knew instinctively that they would be happy marks in the fabric of our lives. Thanks for all the love and the memories, Dad.
Copyright 2010 Rick Wrigley
No comments:
Post a Comment