My hero

Today was my father's birthday.  He would have been 88 years old, although he left this world nearly fifteen years ago.

Probably the most influential person in my entire life, my father was my hero.

The child of the little big man and a southern lady he was barely sixteen when he went to Washington University. He thought he wanted to be a doctor, but the idea of holding the lives of people in his own hands was daunting and he soon became an English major with minors in chemistry and math.

Once proclaimed the most intelligent man the Illinois Superintendent of Education had ever met, to me he was Dad.

Dad, that person who took all the time it needed to set me on the right path in school or life.  Dad, the little boy who wanted to play a violin and was forbidden to do so because he couldn't play baseball and who made sure I played any instrument I wanted. Dad, that man who spoke before hundreds of people all the time, but was basically very shy.

He drove us crazy with his unrelenting zeal for researching things he didn't know.  He drove my mother crazy with the chemicals in the basement that we used to make volcanoes and cleaning fluid and nail polish remover and other less desirable things.

He was a great and beloved teacher whose students and their parents came to his funeral eons after he helped them in a small Midwestern high school.

Sensitive and idealistic, an eternal student and born teacher,  he was the model I wanted to base my own life on and I miss him.