The Best Father's Day Gift You Can Give Your Dad Comes in Three Little Words - "I Love You"

My dad was not a good receiver.

Shortly after he and my mom eloped they had their first fight. Disagreeing over sending out wedding announcements, he argued, "You're just asking for a gift."

The same scene repeated itself years later when I graduated from high school and my mom sent out graduation invitations. Four years later, there was another battle when my mom battled to send out college graduation announcements.

Even when I gave my dad presents for his birthday, Christmas and Father's Day he always said, "you shouldn't have done it." Yet, I could tell from the sparkle in his eye that he was glad I had taken the time to remember him.

With Father's Day only weeks away, snap shots from his life are, again, replaying in my mind. My father was a lawyer, but he didn't make a lot of money. He came from a poor family and drove a trolley car in San Francisco to support his parents during the Great Depression. He cleaned toilets, washed dishes, and delivered newspapers to put himself through school. Graduating from law school in his mid-thirties, he took a job as an attorney at a title insurance company. After years of working at the title company, he moonlighted, practicing law at nights in our country home.

I owe a lot to my dad. It's from him that I get my sense of integrity.
There was the time when he saved a poor farmer thousands of dollars by discovering a loop hole in a will. Grateful, the farmer, who was also our neighbor, tried to pay my dad a considerable reward, but my father refused to take any money.

There was another time when he drove an hour back to a grocery store to give the clerk the 25 cents in change that she had accidentally overpaid him. As a child, sitting in the back seat, I thought, "now here's an honest man."

I also remember when I was a little girl and lost my favorite doll, "Baby". When I accidentally dropped Baby in a department store, he drove thirty miles back, with me bawling, in the front seat, the entire trip. When Baby wasn't there I remember how we drove all over Ft. Worth late at night to find "New Baby".