REFLECTIONS ON MY DAD FOR FATHER'S DAY

Today is Father's Day. I am blessed because we are at our home in Florida with Grover, Cris, Landon, Wes, Andrea, Lee & Finn. We are going to have breakfast where we will eat bacon until it comes out of our ears this morning because the three Dads here all love bacon.

We are then going to go to the beach, as we did yesterday, to play in the pure white sand of America's most beautiful beaches and go a little ways out in the warm water of the Gulf holding hands with one of the boys. I wrote "a little ways out" because yesterday when we were at the beach there were sharks about 30 to 40 yards offshore and you have not seen people exit the water as fast as everyone did yesterday when the sharks appeared.

We will build a sand castle while we bake in the torrid and humid 105 degree heat index weather we are having here and when we can't take it any longer, we will drive 3 minutes back to our home and all pile in our pool, perhaps with a break to eat some of the home made ice cream we made yesterday.

It will be a wonderful day to be together and for me, having so many of my family with me will be the best Fathers’ Day present of all. And my thoughts will be about how lucky I am to have this chance today for us to be here in Destin together.

But my thoughts will also be with my Dad, who I lost so many years ago. Over the last year, as I have watched my Mom continue on her erratic and painful journey to life's end, I have found myself thinking more and more about my Dad.

I always say I am a lot like my Mom and there is no doubt that this is true in many, many ways. But yesterday, as I was mixing up the batch of home made ice cream, I thought about how my Dad would always make home made ice cream when we went to see him. I have an ice cream freezer because Grover remembers fondly when he was a little tyke like his boys are now and we would go to see my parents at the motel in Kingman, Arizona, so far away and such a long time ago. One of the first things my Dad would do would be to make home made ice cream and so Grover bought me this ice cream freezer a couple of years ago so I could do that when we are all together and whenever I do it, I have strong feelings that the spirit of my Dad is at my side while I am preparing it.

My Dad loved to garden and even late in his life he would always have a few tomato plants and some other things on his patio. This time of year I go out on the balcony overlooking our back yard in Atlanta every day I am in town and just visit with the tomatoes, lettuce, arugula, peppers, kitchen herbs and other plants I am growing. Just being out there with them invariably makes me think of my Dad.

My Dad was an accountant and so he was good with numbers and he had a ledger (this was way before spreadsheets) for everything. I remember he could tell you what the weather was like every day going back many years and what day he planted his various plants so he could refer to it in the following years.

I also find accounting and numbers in business easy to understand and I am anal about the amount of "ledgers" I keep, even though they are now on a laptop. I have my calendars showing what I did every day since 1977. Yes, that's right, 1977.

If I want to remember the name of a restaurant we've eaten at in Istanbul on two different trips, I can go either to a spreadsheet named "Eats" and find it or I can go to my spreadsheet where I keep a reconciliation of my Amex bill from 1995 and look it up. By the way, it is called S Restaurant and is in the Bebek neighborhood.

And so on this Father's Day Pop (I called him Pop), I realize that although my personality and outlook on life is like Mom, I am who I am because of who both of you and when I think about it, I realize that as I have described above, I am like you in many ways that I never thought of before. And I am proud that I am.

If you were with us today you would be so proud. You so loved Cathy and everything about her and she has not changed a bit. You would look at her as you sat here in Destin and see that she is every bit the wonderful woman today that she was when you were still with us.

Your namesake Grover is now a numbers guy like you with a successful career and you would be so proud of him.

You would look at your granddaughter Andrea and be so happy that she is a great Mom like her Mom and that she has her Mom's values which you so admired in Cathy.

You would be so happy when you would meet our daughter in law Cris and our son in law Lee. We are so blessed to have them in our family. And of course, it would be the three little guys here today that you would enjoy the most-Landon, Wes and Finn. You would watch them running around playing together on the beach and you would just smile at the legacy you left us.

Wes, playing yesterday on the beach

Fearless Landon playing yesterday in the shark infested water

Finn, modeling yesterday at the beach

You would be so happy to learn that Gustavo and his wife Dorte and their twins are doing well in Copenhagen and so glad to know that they have become part of our family also.

In closing, I remember so well back in 1951 when you and Mom took me to the white sand beaches of the Panhandle of Florida. You so loved how beautiful the sand was and talked about it for years afterwards.

So now, 58 years later as we celebrate Father's Day on those same white beaches that you took me to and that you loved so much, I will be celebrating you and all you did to make me who I am today. And I thought that if you have good internet access up there, you would enjoy these photos of the legacy you left us.

Two of my boys with me (it is impossible to get all of them to sit still at one time)


The first photo below was taken a year ago and we just had them developed. Obviously the kids have grown a lot since then. The second photo was taken three weeks ago in Copenhagen (that is Dorte's brother in the top left corner) at the twins baptism.

Happy Father’s Day Pop. I miss you so much.