Today would have been my father’s 97th birthday.
He came up just about six weeks short of reaching it.
He had a lot of birthdays, and he live long enough to wear out our ideas for presents.
For the last 10 years or so, maybe more, we were in a rut.
Our presents were simple.
A box of candy. We usually tried to find a Whitman Sampler, an old favorite.
A bag of Hershey kisses.
He had a sweet tooth.
A UH t-shirt, sometimes a sweatshirt.
And a photo book, maybe from National Geographic.
He enjoyed leafing through photos of distant places.
A bottle of champaign, although that was really to get us through the evening.
He would have a glass, although he wasn’t ever really a drinker.
Tonight, no party.
But we will remember.
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I woke up thinking about your dad and his birthday.
Tom had a huge sweet tooth, too. Dorothy had to hide sweets from him so that he wouldn’t eat all of them before my sister and I returned from elementary school in the afternoon.
Today is my grandpa’s 94th birthday. He was at Johnston Island (civilian contractor) in 1941 and thought the news of the Pearl Harbor attack was just his buddy playing a birthday prank on him. I’ll call Grandpa in a bit (he lives on the mainland) and he probably won’t know who I am but he remembers his time in Hawaii with astonishing clarity.
Thinking of you on this day as I’ve followed your blog and your journey with your father for several years now.
I wanted to go for a boat ride to commemorate his birthday but, it being a weekday and the sun going down so early, it didn’t happen.