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.
