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.