I didn’t want to let today go by without recognizing that it was my dad’s birthday. Well over his hundredth birthday.
I don’t know what I can tell you about my dad that I haven’t before. How he graduated from high school at 16 and from college four years later—summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, editor of the college newspaper, graduated from law school two years later—law review, received a JD (rare in the those days).
He took a year off to bum around Europe and North Africa. Arrested as a spy in Serbia. Was in Munich on November 9, 1938. Someday I’ll post a picture of the notification from the State Department he received in his American Express box telling him to get the heck out of Europe.
How he couldn’t get a job as a lawyer so wrote editorials for the St. Louis Star, then became an insurance claims adjuster, finally getting hired as an associate with one of the biggest law firms in St. Louis. How he worked there until the firm collapsed in a scandal and then went off on his own.
He was the smartest, hardest-working, kindest, bravest, most loving man I’ve ever known or ever expect to know.
I still miss you, Daddy.
