It was during the Holocaust, but before "Little Boy" and Hiroshima and the end of WWII when he married my mother, the same year my sister was born. I wouldn't come along for several years.
I remember my daddy like many girls do. He was 100% Mexican man, an American by birth. He had light skin, "cat" eyes, and this amazingly warm smile.
He weighed 175 lbs, and stood, 5'10" tall but to me he was a giant, a superhero, invincible.He had this thick black hair with a wave in front, like Ricky Ricardo, the Cuban conga drummer in the I Love Lucy television show, popular in the 1950s.
I remember my daddy always wore what today would be called suit pants or slacks. I never saw him wear blue jeans from Levi Strauss & Co, not even when he mowed the lawn. He always had on a white cotton button shirt with thin white undershirt, a belt and shoes with shoe laces.
Conservative men in those days wore wingtip oxfords and brogues. Suede shoes, too, like in Elvis’s song, “Blue Suede Shoes.” Johnny Cash, some say, mentioned the idea for the song about those shoes in the fall of 1955. Dad wore brown shoes, too, for work, I guess.It's funny, isn't it? The things we remember. I was a fly on the wall, and the wall had many secrets. That's the way it often is with adults and late-in-life born youngsters. Few, if anyone, notice little eyes and ears recording events and conversations like a secret agent.
My daddy did many things, said many things and taught me many things. Normal, everyday father things, and incredible things, too. It was his words and actions that made him the man all men might be measured by.
Like many great dads — he didn't do it for money or praise or any reward. He didn't do it for himself, either.
Who really thinks about what a dad does for his family, his country, his honor, except maybe on father's day, this one day, maybe more days or not even this day. The sacrifices and mousetraps, the give and takes, the struggles, the time away so the family can have more than less — all unsaid, often unrecognized or appreciated.
Maybe a fly on the wall is the only one who could say who he really is, or was. To my dad, one word: I say, "Thanks."
Thank you for doing the one thing every girl and boy would or should be grateful for. A great dad.