Today the tears flowed thinking about Dad

I am still mouring Dad dying 6 months ago.  Today the memories are more alive to me about Dad than the 13 years he spent in the nursing home from 1997 to March 2010 when he died. 

Mom came to work and ate lunch with me.  We talked about Dad and I cried and cried.  Dad wasn't perfect, he was a human being with complex thoughts and at times did some pretty foolish things.  But Dad was a loving, kind man, he looked for the good in everyone and he was seldom disappointed in his love for everyone.

When Dad went into the nursing home in Marlette in October 1997, after being severely disabled from brain tumor surgery.  In a way I shut off my emotions about him living there, living half a life there (to me), gone were the times I could just talk to Dad on any number of times we loved to discuss, history, world affairs, reading...

So I put away from myself that Dad was disabled and not as he was before the brain tumor manifested itself.  I would see Dad and love Dad but it was like my father was a beloved child, not the complex, thought-stirring man who guided me in my ways of thought and knowledge.

Dad suffered three times before he died in March.  He suffered the brain tumor which disabled him,  he suffered prostate cancer and endured radiation therapy which made that prostate tumor go away, and then he had pancreatic cancer which took his life in nine months.
I miss Dad more now than I did when he lived 13 years in Marlette.  I am awash with the memories of  dad's part in my life.  Sunday School, Band trips, my sisters' weddings, working 6 years with you...our many talks we had while I was his secretary and supposed to be doing his clerical work and we'd run down history lane discussing Uncle Herbert in World War I, Sir Winston Churchill and his patriotic speeches during the beginning days of World War II, my own interest in Eleanor of Aquitaine...whereever I wanted to go in talking history, Dad was right there with me just as interested.

Above all things, Dad was about love.  Love for mom and us his daughters, and then the grandchilden...Dad expressed love in his smile, his handshakes and his bear-hugs.  "You know I love you?"  Dad always asked me...and I so miss this love today.

A great stir about voting...

My dad always said to me to consider someone else I might not like by "putting myself in their shoes."  Dad was using a saying of Jesus on his Sermon on the Mount  found in the Gospel of Matthew. Matthew's version of the phrase can be found in Matthew 5:41 which states that "If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles." NIV

My dad, from this saying, however evolved from Jesus above, was trying to have me begin to understand that if you walked in someone else's shoes you might not so easily judge, or condemn. I don't always live with this philosophy but I try to see someone else different from me as a unique human being, and if I don't, then I should, I don't want to condemn anyone for being different than me.

I voted early this morning and fucked up my ballot.  So the stupid ballot counter started beeping and as I couldn't exit the building, the door was stuck fast, the oldsters (see I'm judging, sorry!), the people who run the polling stations, got me to come back and vote, yep, sure enough I didn't listen and fucked up the ballot pretty good.  Oh joy.

Making the donuts...

I went in to work today as a sub, dishing out the donuts for three hours.  For some foolish reason, I believed I would be in browsing and the department would be quiet and I could do stuff to while away the time, but no, people needed 40+ cds placed on reserve with their library card, and while I did this the people continued to talk to me.  I learned something in this incident, you can't reserve 40+ things on your library card, the system will only allow 30 items and by the time I discovered this, Mr. Yackety-Yack had moved on to other parts of the library.

I'm in a funk and have been for some time.  Is it all the combination of having cancer two years and going through surgical menopause via hysterectomy, watching my father die, and having friends leave and move away, in addition to the fact that the library millage might not be passed by the voters?  I suspect all of the above.

I subbed today and earned $48.00, and after the subbing I went shopping and spent $55.00.  Total results of today I'm more in the red than I was in the black yesterday being pay day.  I did get some lovely garnet earrings at  Oliver T's in Grand Blanc.  It's all about the jewelry.

A name change...what does it mean?

I just changed the name of this blog.  It started out being a narrative about Colin Firth and my two Siamese cats:  Cinnamin and Clove, but a few months ago, my father, James Warren Brooks died, and this blog changed to reflect the grieving I was going through (and still experience).  Colin Firth became a forgotten entity on this blog.  Sorry handsome bloke!  (Give me some better movies to watch!!)

I hope to start blogging again.  The content could just be on anything.  I'm in a transition since August 2008 when I had a Uterine  Sarcoma and during this transitional period, other transitions insert themselves and I'm in a bloody fix, treading water fractiously, looking for some point of land on the horizon to swim to.

Life, perhaps, is all about transition.  I am pretty much in a stir these days.

nothing much in particular

What a mess I am...I reread these posts on Dad and I start blubbering up all over again.  Didn't I just write earlier that I was having a difficult time remembering memories of Dad.  All I have to do is look at these posts here and the waterworks begin again.  By the way, I'm a terrible writer off-the-cuff.  There are so many mistakes in these posts, missing words, or misspelled words.  But you will never see that I am confused about your, and you're, or they're, there, and their.

Dad never had this problem either, he knew the English language inside and out, remembering everything from his public school days in Elmodel.  It probably helps that he was a teacher for three years also.  Today I took Mom to the airport so she can join my sister Jennifer where she lives. The passing of Dad has permitted Mom to travel and not worry about him back in Marlette, but now she doesn't have him to call every day. 

There's no real blessing in Dad's death, except that he doesn't suffer anymore.

Dad on the subject of worry...

My father was not your average worrier.  In fact, Dad was not afraid of life and didn't do much worrying, his focus was that he would survive daily challenges and let worry worry about itself.  Dad told Mom time and again that they, together would get through the tough time and Mom came to believe Dad's philosophy and she has this outlook too.

Dad did very well not to worry, his mother's family, the Minters were very good at worrying.  As far back as can be traced by genealogy, this branch of Dad's family had emotional concerns, and worry was no stranger to Dad and his family as he grew up.  There was one period in Dad's life when he was depressed, during the time he was attending the University of Georgia in the late 1940s.  I don't know how Dad overcame this period but perhaps his naturally cheerful personality pushed the blues away.  When I was a child and later when I worked with Dad, he was never depressed, always thought carefully about most things, and maintained a positive outlook his entire life.

I think Dad did worry about us, his four daughters.  He did what he could to raise us to be the equal with men, he didn't accept that we wouldn't be responsible for our lives and he showed me and at least 2 other sisters how to change the oil in the our cars, and how to change a flat tire.  Did I want to learn how to change the oil or a flat tire, no way, I desparately wanted to avoid this learning experience, but Dad looked at me so seriously that I was shamed into learning these responsibilities.  Dad was going to take time to show me things and I could tell I'd better go learn, and now I am glad I have this charge in my life and it is something that I can do to be responsible for my car...but I always leaned on Dad...he was always just there at work, or a phone call away and give me advice.

Dad always told me he wasn't worried about me in any situation in my life, he thought I could take care of myself rather well.  I really didn't care for this attitude of Dad's, I'm not self-reliant and rather timid of life, but Dad was not normally concerned about me and didn't worry too much.  Except for two times, once when I was working at Cedar Point in Ohio in  1982 and again in 1990 when I was living in Ann Arbor getting my library degree.

At Cedar Point in the summer of 1982 I can't exactly recall the circumstances, but I was mad at Dad for not understanding how I could joke with the young men at work and not think anything about it.  Dad got so angry with me on the telephone one night on ths  subject, that in return, I yelled at him for not understanding who I was and I hung up on my father!  This telephone incident so upset my father that he stayed up until 3am the next morning writing me a 10+ page letter.  Naturally when I received the letter a few days later I was ashamed for making Dad worry about how I was conducting myself as a young woman and still, I was very angry at Dad for writing the letter, that I read it very fast and put it away for years.  Dad's words were that I might be misleading men I worked with concerning who I was, that I might not be a good girl kind of gist.  Dad was always harranging me growing up, "Why can't you be more ladylike, like my mother,"  and I would usually suffer this observation in silence and sometimes yell back at Dad that my name was Sarah Ruth not Eva Ruth!

The other time Dad was concerned, or worried about me was when in 1990 I lived in Ann Arbor in a house with 5 men.  We each had our own rooms with locks on the door but Dad was very unhappy that I shared a house with 5 men.  I eventually found another place to live and Dad was very satisfied that the number of men in the new house was 1 to 7 women.

Barring unladylike language Dad largely didn't worry about me.  He thought of all his daughters that my sister Jennifer lived most like him, in that she had moved 500 miles away from her family and made her own home in another State, just as he had.  When I got my first library job in Ionia in 1991, and it was 120 miles away from Imlay City, Dad's words of advice to me were  "make the most of the town, Ionia," and make it my own.  I stayed there 4 years and then got the job in Flint only 30 miles away from Imlay City.  Fortunately for me, Dad loved me and my sisters so much, that he wasn't greatly disappointed at my close return home.

Dad and the printed word...

Dad loved to read, and he read almost everything printed and what he read he understood and was able to apply in his daily life.  Dad loved to read outloud to anyone who would let him read to them.  My first memory of Dad reading to me is from the Old Testament in the Bible about Joseph in Egypt with Potifar's wife.  Why I recall this is from illustrated Bible storybook that Dad had had as a child and he read it to us.  He gave me this book after I read it cover to cover when I was in the 6th grade and sadly over time the book fell apart and is no longer a part of my library.

Dad so loved reading that he would read comic books to us children!  When my sister Jennifer and I had to go to bed in Lum at 8:30pm every night, if Dad was home we would beg him to come read to us before we went to sleep and he would read Jennifer's Peanuts' comic books, and Dad was such a talented reader, that I, laying down on the top bunk of the bunkbeds, didn't have to watch Dad turn the pages, as his narrative was so vivid I could picture everything in my head.

It wasn't long after this that Dad stopped reading to me, probably because my head was buried as deep in a book as his own was, but I do recall a time in the summer of 1975 and I had this book of my grandmother, Eva Ruth  Minter Brooks, and I convinced Dad to read it to me.  The book was "Ivanhoe" by Sir Walter Scott and was from my grandmother's time in college when she was getting her teaching certificate at the University of Georgia.  When Dad got home from work, after dinner, I would bring out the book and we would go into the living room and Dad would begin reading from the book.  I was laying down on the couch and every so often Dad would ask me if I was awake and I would answer in the affirmative.  Dad asked this as when he would read to Mom the mesmerising sound of his voice would set Mom asleep.  Not so me, one of my favorite memories of grade school was when my teacher would read out of a book to the class and I would seat there, lost in my head in the narrative of the teachers' voice and the spellbinding tale of the story.  Such it was for me when Dad started reading "Ivanhoe." 

Awesome were the times when Dad took the written word and made it come alive for me.

I still think of Dad but

I'm afraid the vivid memories of him are just a little dull lately.  I don't want to forget one single memory of my father!  If I forget the memories then there's very little to solace me in this mourning period.  I'm still devastated about Dad dying in spite of him being disabled and living in a nursing home for almost 13 years and I didn't see him that frequently over these years, his death is a great loss to me personally.

I worked closely with Dad from October 31, 1983 until December 31, 1989.  I was his secretary, or administrative assistant as Dad wanted me to describe my position while his employee.  Dad had a hard time being my boss as well as being my father at the same time.  Usually he was my father but I was expected to get the work done and when Dad had to play the boss role, it wasn't fun.  Perhaps it was during these six years that I came to know Dad best.  The talks we would have that weren't work-oriented (anything history under the sun, we discussed it all).

Dad tried to mold me after himself as a  life and health insurance agent.  He wanted someone to continue the good work that he did providing a good insurance product to men and women.  But I didn't have the "sales" personality.  Dad wasn't either, but he worked at sales for years and was best as an agent selling life and health insurance products and in the later years investment products for retirement savings and trusts for people to avoid probate costs.

I'm not sorry for decision in my life that took me from being Dad's secretary and into library school.  When Dad told me, "I can't support you, Sarah, all your life!"  It was time for me at 28 to find something else to do.  Dad didn't support me, I was his secretary and did the clerical things necessary to allow him to do more sales.  I "put out the fires," as Dad called office work so that he could be out with his clients.

I just finished a book called "Wild Ride" about the collapse of the Calumet Racing Stables in Kentucky in the 1990s after the death of the Farm's famous racehorse and stud, Alydar.  I used to think that the owners of the farm had done in Alydar for the insurance money, but as the book explains, somehow Alydar smashed his leg kicking the door to his stall in the barn and when it was surgically repaired, he reinjured the leg and had to be euthanized.  The way they bury famous thoroughbred horses like Alydar and the others, Affirmed, Secretariat,  Seattle Slew, is not too kindly to these famous animals who made millions of dollars to their owners.  I'll let this thought finish into nothingness.

Getting back to Calumet Farms, it was started by the Wright family from Chicago in the 1920s who patented the Calumet Baking Soda or Powder company.  When Dad was a young boy he loved horse racing and told my sisterrs and I about the famous Kentucky Derby winner, Whirlaway, in 1941 (I think) and how Whirlaway was from Calumet Farms and Dad said that when Whirlaway ran down the track, his long tail would stream out behind him, like a flag.

Dad and graduations...

Two days ago I was fortunate in being able to attend the graduation from the University of Michigan-Flint for my neice, Amy Lynn Simpson.  She graduated with a bachelors of Arts degree in Psychology and will complete all her course work by Spring 2011.  The day before my other neice, Meghan Joyce McNary graduated from Grand Valley State University near Grand Rapids, Michigan.

My father would be so proud of these two granddaughters of his.  Erin McNary, Dad's oldest grandchild, graduated from Hope College in 2004 and is successfully employed as a teacher in Georgia where she has been there since 2007, before this she taught school in North Carolina and Imlay City, Michigan.

Dad was so enthusiastic for education.  He attained a bachelors of Science from the University of Georgia in Animal Husbandry in 1950 and then his teaching certificate in 1956 from the University of Ohio.  He saw that all for of his daughters, my sisters and I, went to college, it was never an option for us, we were going to school beyond that of public school.  When I worked for Dad in the 1980s he was adamant that somehow he would make sure that his grandchildren would all attend college, and it was only his disability that prevented him from pursuing this goal in 1997.

College isn't for everyone, but everyone should have an option to attend and see if further education will provide advancement in their lives.  This was my father's philosophy and he came from a family that believed in education.  His father, Roy Brooks was president of the Board of Education in Elmodel where Dad grew up, and his mother, Eva Ruth Minter Brooks attended the University of Georgia to get her teaching certification as did her sister Vesta Adel Minter.  Many of my grandmother's Uncles went on to college and became doctors and dentists.  As mentioned above, college was in my future and there was no discussion otherwise about it.

Dad would have loved to be at the Perani Arena on Sunday to watch Amy march in her cap and gown with all the other graduates.  Not only was completion of the degree important to Dad, but also the 'Pomp and Circumstances" that go with the degree.  When I was finishing my graduate degree in Library Studies in 1991 I had a discussion with Dad about missing the graduation ceremony.  Dad soon talked me out of this position.  He said the ceremony is just as important as the degree, it being something you would always recall for the hard work put in obtaining the degree.  Dad didn't believe in shabby celebrations or avoidance of celebrations.  No marriage before a court judge for Dad, but in a church, or other religious setting, so that you would have memories of the event.

Ian Brooks Huffman will graduate from the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee and I feel so fortunate that I will be able to attend this ceremony.  I will carry in my memory the words of Dad and how he would have been so proud of his three grandchildren in this month of May and their graduations from college.

Dad and horses

Yesterday Dad missed watching the Kentucky Derby and he didn't choose a run to win!  I think Dad always loved horses.  There was a horse named John on the farm in Georgia that Dad was strongly attached to when he was growing up.  In fact I think John was near or just a little bit older than Dad, I remember Dad telling us as children how when he was in college or in the Air Force, John had died and this saddened Dad immensely.

Mammy and Pappy appreciated Dad's love for horses.  One time as a birthday gift he received a wonderful leather saddle.  Dad loved to read Western novels as a young boy and in the West, horses were essential to living on the plains, or in being a Cowboy. 

Dad sent Mom a letter from "beyond the grave" and she received it on or about April 20th, 2010.  The letter was written in March or May 1980 and the Lapeer Bank sent it to Mom on the 20th of April as they must have just learned about Dad's death.  In this letter Dad gives Mom advice in the event he predeceases her and there is this telling statement that Dad "wanted to retire in the West," that I, or Mom, had never known about before.

When we rented the Harvey farm in Lum in the 1960s and the Harvey's rented out the pastures to Kenny (I have forgotten his last name, he ran an auto repair shop in Lum), who put his horses in the pastures.  Kenny gave us permission to ride his horses, and there were three that I can recall, a little Shetland Pony, name forgotten, Angel, a mid-size chesnut horse, and Candy, a large chestnut. 

Dad used to go with us into the pasture and throw us up on Angel or the pony.  Dad would take the horse's halter in his hand and he would take off jogging so that Angel would trot and we could get the feel of a horse in motion.

Dad was a patient father who so loved his daughters that he would gladly go out to the pastures with them after a long day of work and run with the horses so we could experience something of what he did as a young boy in Georgia on the farm.

Dad won't see today's 2010 Run for the Roses...

I suspect that my sisters, Beth Anne, Jennifer, and I, were horse-racing crazy as children because of Dad.  When we used to watch the annual running of the Kentucky Derby each year, Dad would recall to us how he used to listen to the race being run on the radio when he was growing up.  He especially recalled two Kentucky Derby Winners, Whirlaway and Citation, both horses running in the 1940s.

Dad loved to gather about the television like we did the first Saturday in May and was as much as an avid fan of picking a winner as Jennifer and myself.  Dad's choices won him the Derby three times:  1979, Spectacular Bid, 1985, Ferdinand, and 1988 with Winning Colors.  When we couldn't all be together in person, we'd be on the telephone calling each other before the race with our choices for the race and then after the race boo-hoo-ing the winner.

We keep the tradition alive of everyone choosing a horse for today's race, but it won't be the same without  Dad there, shouting  "go, go, go" and watching his horse cross the finish line and wear the blanket of roses.

more on my Dad...

Dad separated from Moore & Povenz in 1987 as he wanted to work on his own and not share 25% of his commissions earned with M&P...the arrangement had worked out for both sides for many years, M&P would provide Dad leads from their property casualty business and Dad's income increased dramatically.  By the time when I came to work for Dad in 1983, these leads had mainly ended and Dad believed that he could do better without M&P.

Dad found an office on 10th Street in Port Huron and for two years he sold life and health insurance here, but in the end of 1989 he moved his base of operations to Imlay City and gave me this famous words which I have never forgotten, "Sarah, I can't support you all your life!"  I then found other employment until being accepted to graduate school at the University of Michigan.

Dad had his own office in Imlay City on Third Street and it wasn't long before he knew that he would need clerical work so he hired my sister Beth Anne to become his secretary...she also worked for Dad for six years.

As I mentioned Dad excelled in the insurance industry and he also pursued sales in the investment area, mainly retirement options for people such as IRAs dealing in mutual funds.  Dad once told me that he never wanted to retire and he worked steadily in his business until age 66 when it was discovered that he had a massive brain tumor, a menginoma, which he had surgery in Saginaw, in May 1997 to remove.  The surgery was successful but he suffered two strokes almost immediately following the surgery and these strokes caused him to be disabled, partial blindness and difficulty in walking, unaided.

The last nearly 13 years of Dad's life were spent in the Extended Care Facility attached to the Marlette Hospital in Marlette, Michigan.  Through patience and love, these twilight years of Dad's life happy and sad altogether.  I lost with the disability the chance to talk to Dad on many, many subjects.  Another tragedy of the two strokes was the short term memory loss that Dad suffered from.  I would try to talk to him as we used to on history or other subjects, but he couldn't recall details and struggled to recall things until it frustrated him and he would become angry, so I learned not to try to have our former discussions as it was important not to get Dad upset.  Dad could recall many; logic, science, cold, hard facts...not theoretical or hypothetical things. 

It was discovered in late 2007 that Dad had prostate cancer, but it was successfully treated with radiation there at the Seton Center at the Marlette Hospital.  But in February 2009 Dad began to have some symptons that indicated he was having problems and a medical test revealed that he had a growth on his pancreas, i.e. being pancreatic cancer.  We (Mom, Dad, Susan, Jennifer and I) decided not to do any testing or surgery for this new cancer.  Even doctors concurred with our decision, that testing, surgery, and follow-up therapy wouldn't extend Dad's life nor improve the quality of time he had left.

Dad's health improved greatly and we began to believe that maybe Dad didn't have cancer for a third time.  But he took a bad spell in June, 2009 and the doctors again, through testing, saw that the growth that was on his pancreas had enlarged and Mom and Dad discussed things and we were introduced to United Hospice who would share medical care with the Extended Care Facility at the Marlette Hospital.  The staff at the ECF were awesome and so loving with the care of Dad there for almost 13 years.  The staff at the ECF are among the finest medical staff I've been exposed to with Dad's illness, my sister Beth Anne who also resides at ECF  since 2003 due to a bee sting, my own health, and Mom's.

Dad's health returned to robustness and it was very difficult for me to believe that he was dying.  He remained in very good health until the fall of 2009 when his legs from the knees down began swelling and the staff said this was a sympton of his declining pancreas.  His calves and feet were hugely swollen and hurt him severely.  The staff and the Hospice staff treated his pain with Methadone and Morphine, again the staff was very attentive to Dad's care.

I saw Dad at Thanksgiving and Christmas and he was in good humor.  I didn't get to see him in January of 2010 as the weather was not good to travel.  Dad was doing pretty good on February 5, 2010 when he and Mom celebrated their 55th wedding anniversary and very shortly after this, Dad began to decline.

I was able to visit Dad in Marlette with Mom and Susan sometime after Feb. 5th.  He didn't get out of bed and was mostly sleeping the entire time we were there.  This sleeping was described in the hospice book on the signs of dying, but I never realized how short of time Dad would remain with us.  I went as often as I could, usually on an alternate Friday or Saturday (when I didn't work on this day) and Sunday.  On these visits, again, Dad was in bed and didn't eat or sit up in his wheelchair whatsoever.

He wasn't always asleep.  Many times he would be listening to Mom, Susan and I talk while his eyes were closed.  The last time I was with Dad where he was sleeping and listening was Sunday, 14 March 2010 and he was smiling while he laid down on the bed and responded with his usual good cheer when people came in to talk to him.

This was the last week of Dad's life.  The staff of the ECF moved him from the room where he'd lived for most of the nearly 13 years there to another private room as another resident needed to the room to be close to the staff area as she was falling from bed.  It was upsetting to have Dad moved after so long in one place but I doubt that Dad really noticed the difference. He had a really bad day in the new room on Thursday, 18 March 2010 and Mom called me so upset that he was vomiting bile and this was not a good sign.  I came to see Dad the next day on the 19th and he was sleeping again and I could not understand him hardly at at as he was heavily sedated.  At one point he indicated that he wanted the bed to be raised, in the head area, so I began to push the button on the bed to raise the bed, inch by inch, and as I did so, I would ask Dad, "Is this enough?"

Dad got so mad at my frequent questions that he said quite clearly, "If you ask me one more time..." that I ceased my endless questions and adjusted the bed one more time.  These were the last words Dad said to me.  Mom got a call early Sunday morning on the 21st that Dad was in terminal congestion and she left Imlay City immediately to be by his side, getting there at 2:30am.  Mom called me at 7:30am and said I might want to come and explained that Dad was dying and I was not to rush over and it took me two hours to prepare and I got to Marlette ECF at 10:30am and walked into the room where I saw Mom and my brother-in-law Randy, and then I saw Dad gasping horrifically on the bed and I left the room almost immediately as I couldn't bear to see Dad like this, struggling so hard to die!

The medical staff of the ECF came in to relieve Dad's suffering and put him on a nasal canula and this seemed to ease the breathing.  I think Dad may have known I was there but I am not certain.  I believe he squeezed my hand when I first got there, but afterward, his eyes wouldn't focus on anything and he had many body tremors.   I talked to Dad periodically telling how I loved him and that it was okay for him to give up the struggle and return to Jesus.  Dad continued fighting to breathe until 1:30pm when the nurse came in to give him some pain meds and I watched him breathe slower and slower until just as the nurse was leaving the room I called out, "Dad's not breathing," and the nurse returned immediately and Randy and Mom looked at the clock on the wall, 1:30pm, and Dad had died, no longer suffering, but at peace.

Not about Colin Firth...

I won't be posting about Colin Firth for sometime in the near future, and probably not even on Cinnamin and Clove.

My father, James Warren Brooks, died nearly one month ago and I'm still consumed by the sorrow I am experiencing by his passing.

Dad was born on Sunday, the 11th day of January in the year 1931 in a farmhouse east of the little Georgia town of Elmodel.  He was the second son born to Roy Brooks and his wife, Eva Ruth Minter Brooks.

He spent his formative years on the farm near Elmodel and it was his intention to continue the family tradition of being a farmer, and had not the Korean War intervened during the last year of his time at the University of Georgia, Dad might have become a farmer.  As it was, his brother, Roy Minter Brooks was drafted into the army and stationed in Louisiana and he wrote Dad advising  him to enlist and not be drafted so that Dad could have a choice in what branch of military service for the duration of the war.  Dad chose to enlist in the Air Force.  He was sent to Texas for his basic training and there he entered into Officer Candidate School with the objective of becoming an officer in the United States Air Force.  Because Dad's vision was impaired (meaning he was supposed to wear corrective lenses) he was disqualified from becoming a Air Force pilot and was trained to be a Radar Observer and was trained to fly as RO in fighter jets.  On graduation of the Officer  CandidateSchool where Dad had the highest marks of any candidate in the class, Dad was valedictorian of his graduating class.  His parents and brother went to Texas to see Dad graduate an officer, Second Lieutenant, the first officer in his family in the military since the American Civil War  (Pickens Tucker 1843-1864, was 1st Lt with the 24th SC Infantry--Pickens Tucker was the brother of Dad's great grandfather, Hamilton Butler Tuckcer (1842-1904).

Dad was stationed at an Air Force base in Pensacola, Florida where he received advanced training as a Radar Observer.  After this he was sent to Selfridge Air Force base in Mount Clemens, Michigan as part of the 61st Fighter Interceptor Squadron.  Here he met his future wife, Judith Leola Hackett, on a blind date, and when Judy went home after that first meeting she told people that she had met the man she would marry.

Dad married Mom on Saturday, 5 February 1955.  They moved to Stephensville, Newfoundland, where Dad was stationed with the 61st FIS.  Dad was honorably discharged from the Air Force later that year and he and Mom moved to Columbus Ohio where Dad attended Ohio State University to get his teaching certificate.
Once having the degree, Dad and Mom moved to Celina, Ohio where Dad would teach Agriculture for three years in the local high school.  While in Celina, Dad and Mom welcomed Susan Dorothea Brooks and Beth Anne Brooks to their family.  In 1959 Dad decided on a career change and went in to sales of agricultural goods to various graineries in Michigan and this prompted Mom and Dad to move to Battle Creek,  Michigan in late 1959.  Dad's mother, Ruth Brooks, on hearing that Dad was going into sales, cried "You're not going to become a peddlar, James?"

Dad worked in sales for a variety of companies in Michigan, including Monsanto Foods and Wayne and Feed.  His territory included most of the Thumb of Michigan so he moved Mom, Susan, Beth Anne and myself to Saginaw in late 1961.  Dad and Mom's last daughter,  Jennifer Kathryn Brooks was born in Saginaw.  Because of the territory Dad had to cover in his sales he moved the family to a farm he and Mom rented from the Harvey family in Lum, Michigan in 1965, where we lived until our final move to Imlay City in 1972. 

Dad was good at selling agricultural products but he went through a series of other sales jobs in the mid-1960s.  Finally in 1968 he went to work as a Life and Health Insurance agent for Woodmen Accident & Life Company, working out of an agency in Davison Michigan.  Someone had convinced Dad to take the Life & Health Insurance Exam early in the 1960s and he passed it with flying colors (Dad always excelled in studies of any kind), but he delayed his entry into Life & Health until 1968 and as he told me years later when I was his secretary in the 1980s, this was the career move that changed his life.

Over his career as an Insurance agent, Dad worked for several companies, Woodmen Life above, New England Life Insurance Company, and in 1976 he relocated to an agency in Port Huron, called Moore & Povenz, Inc., where he would sell Life and Health insurance from several companies.  Through Dad's successful career as an agent, he was able to put all his daughters through college and take Mom on several wonderful trips, including Puerto Rico, a cruise to the Bahamas, Hawaii, and England two different times.

At long last Colin Firth, I have found the pic I was looking for...TC the Cat!

Here I am with my very first cat TC (top cat for short), meaning the cat I choose for myself when I was about five years old.  My sister Susan has taken the photo about 1967 and with me are my mother with her face obscured by photo damage and my little sister, Jennifer.  TC was a very intelligent cat, she would wait on the front porch of the farmhouse for me to come home from kindergarten and when I met her on the front porch, she would walk along the railing the wrapped the porch.

TC was not without some idiocies.  She would climb the big box elder tree in the backyard and go straight onto the kitchen roof and not be able to come back down until my father would get her.  If we brought her into the house she would run into the living room and dive straight under the davenport in that room.

She died when I was in the second grade, getting run over by a vehicle on the road in front of the farmhouse in Lum.  Mom told me on the way to swimming lessons on a Saturday morning.  TC was a bright and lovely cat and the only female cat I've really cared for.

...and the Oscar goes to...Jeff Bridges...you were Robbed Colin Firth...the Oscar should have been Yours!

Yes, much to my sad disillusionment, Colin Firth lost in the Best Actor category of the 82nd annual Hollywood Oscar awards ceremony last night to Jeff Bridges.  If this was Jeff Bridges blog then hip-hip-huzzah for Jeff Bridges...this blog is about Colin Firth and my two Siamese cats, Cinnamin and Clove.  Tonight I shall ascertain from said Cinnamin and Clove what are their opinions on this travesty of film adjulation.

You were Robbed Colin Firth,  you were robbed!

Colin Firth redeems himself: he is an outstanding actor!

Just finished "Valmont" starring Annette Bening and Colin Firth, filmed in 1989 about lives of the French aristocracy, based on Les Liaisons dangereuses (Dangerous Liaisons), a novel written by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos in 1782.  Firth did a great job playing the villian, he dies in the end, nothing ends up right, pretty much for everyone.