Sunday, June 21, 2009

Happy Father's Day

When I was a kid, I thought my Dad was the coolest person on the planet. And I remember saying to him on more than one occasion, "I wish you were a kid so we could play together."

He did some amazing things in his lifetime. He was an All State high school basketball player. He was scouted by the Red Sox based upon his high school baseball career. He served his country in the United States Navy in World War II. He was the first male in his family to graduate from college. He married a girl from Brooklyn and raised a family in places like Richmond Hill, Elkins Park, King Of Prussia and Basking Ridge.

We used to play catch all the time, until a tear in the rotator cuff in his throwing arm simply made it impossible to make more than a few throws.



Those are his three grandchildren; unfortunately he never got to see them which means they were never able to meet the man I thought was the coolest person on the planet. There isn't a day that's gone by in the last 28+ years that I haven't thought about him. In the faces of those three kids, though, I see him. And while I never got to be a kid with him, I got to play catch with all three of them. And I swear, there are moments when we're doing it that I just KNOW he's right there with us.

Happy Father's Day.