been thinking of my dad a lot lately…

he died nearly thirty years ago… he lived with emphysema from the time I was a teenager…

he did as much as he could, but spent the weekends recovering from the week and trying to build up the energy to make it through the next week…

when I turned sixteen, he and I bought a new car together and I began driving him to and from work every day… which also meant that I got to drive to school each day;-)…

he loved sports and we often attended athletic events at the arena and watched whatever sport might be on tv… 

he was the person who taught me to appreciate each person or team’s efforts and applaud everyone’s performance, whether they were the one you were rooting for or not…

to this day I do the same…

he started me on my love of office supplies… when I was young I would occasionally spend a weekend morning with him at work and organize his desk, lol… 

he spent a good portion of his working life helping people figure out what type of work they would be best at, and he was very good at it…

when my beloved and I were first married, he would go grocery shopping with me and add a roast or some other treat to my bag… at first I felt bad that he did this, until I realized it was something he could still do for us… by that time he couldn’t manage physical things like home repairs any longer… buying us a treat was his way of supporting us…

he was a very special man… my girls were not yet teenagers when he died, much like my grandsons who were so young when my beloved left us… maybe this is why I try to keep memories of George alive so that the boys remember him…

a very rare professionally taken picture of mom and dad…