Today is Father's Day. I just want to brag about my dad. He served in WWII.
When he was a teenager, he worked in a pharmacy. Some horrible chemicals accidentally got splashed in his eyes. They were saved by someone sticking his head under a faucet and letting the water totally wash out his eyes.
My aunt (his sister) told me later that he and all of his wild friends wanted to fly planes in WWII. Because of crystals in his eyes from the chemicals, he was rejected as a pilot. She told me all of his buddies died in the war, flying planes.
My dad was kind of like Sgt. Bilko. He was in charge of a platoon of men. He would score beer for them, all kinds of fun stuff.
His platoon did clean-up; they would go to sites of battles after the battles were over. Though there was no guns firing at them there, those sites must have been horrible to see. He was on Hawaii, Guam, among other sites.
He came back from the war, met & married my mom and they had me and my older sister. He was 38 when I was born! (I'm 47 now).
He died in 1994, from a heart attack on a fishing trip. I don't think he could have chosen a better way to go! His little memorial pamphlet, on my direction, didn't have a poem or Bible passage but simply said "Gone fishin'". I think he would have liked that. I know my aunt loved it.
I miss him still, especially around the holidays.
Because of a fluke accident when he was a teenager, I was born! Yay!
Thank you to my dad and hundreds of thousands like him, now and in the past. No matter how we feel about an individual war and why we are at war and whether we should be, we should ALWAYS thank our vets and their families for all the sacrifices.
And, hey, you single vets, come back alive. There are kids like me that want to be born!
KuKu
When he was a teenager, he worked in a pharmacy. Some horrible chemicals accidentally got splashed in his eyes. They were saved by someone sticking his head under a faucet and letting the water totally wash out his eyes.
My aunt (his sister) told me later that he and all of his wild friends wanted to fly planes in WWII. Because of crystals in his eyes from the chemicals, he was rejected as a pilot. She told me all of his buddies died in the war, flying planes.
My dad was kind of like Sgt. Bilko. He was in charge of a platoon of men. He would score beer for them, all kinds of fun stuff.
His platoon did clean-up; they would go to sites of battles after the battles were over. Though there was no guns firing at them there, those sites must have been horrible to see. He was on Hawaii, Guam, among other sites.
He came back from the war, met & married my mom and they had me and my older sister. He was 38 when I was born! (I'm 47 now).
He died in 1994, from a heart attack on a fishing trip. I don't think he could have chosen a better way to go! His little memorial pamphlet, on my direction, didn't have a poem or Bible passage but simply said "Gone fishin'". I think he would have liked that. I know my aunt loved it.
I miss him still, especially around the holidays.
Because of a fluke accident when he was a teenager, I was born! Yay!
Thank you to my dad and hundreds of thousands like him, now and in the past. No matter how we feel about an individual war and why we are at war and whether we should be, we should ALWAYS thank our vets and their families for all the sacrifices.
And, hey, you single vets, come back alive. There are kids like me that want to be born!
KuKu
1 comment:
KuKu,
Thanks for posting this moving tribute. Your dad was very remarkable.
Happy Father's Day to all dads.
Kayak Bandit '(*!*)'
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