2013 In Review

Happy New Year!

It's high time to bring this blog up to date, and I thought one way to do that might be to take a brief look back at the year just past and speculate a bit about the year to come. For me personally, 2013 was a year of invasions, abdications, relocations, infections, and explorations.

The year got off to a rough start with a home invasion in mid-January that turned my life upside down for quite a while. Until that time, my principal occupation had been researching my genealogy and family history, but dealing with the invasion and its aftermath largely brought that to a halt. After my family and I got over the initial shock of the event, we decided it was time for me to move to a safer location, and my brother and sister in the Charlotte area quickly set to work finding a new place for me to live. They found the condominium where I now live remarkably quickly, and February and the early part of March were largely devoted to my packing up and preparing to move. During that preparation phase, the world received the stunning news that Pope Benedict XVI had decided to abdicate and step down from the Chair of Peter, a thing not seen in several hundred years. It seemed change was in the air for the whole Catholic Church, not just for me.

I arrived in Charlotte in early March and immediately got to work lining up the medical and social support services I knew I would need: doctors, home nursing care, medical supplies, attendant services, Medicare and Medicaid, Social Security disability benefits, and transportation services. There were, of course, some bureaucratic tangles, but on the whole, the process went remarkably well. One afternoon in March, as I was in the bathroom taking a break from filling out forms and making phone calls, my brother called to tell me that Pope Francis had just been elected.  It seems the whole world, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, is still trying to figure out what to make of this unconventional Pope, the first from the Americas, who seems to be a reformist and a man with a gift for saying and doing the unexpected and surprising thing.

Ironically, just as the Catholic Church and the world at large seemed to embrace this pope who is developing a reputation as a progressive and a reformer, it seemed my own personal practice of the Catholic faith moved in a more conservative and traditional direction. Ever since I had arrived in Charlotte, I'd been seeking a church home; I had visited a couple of parishes in the Charlotte area, but neither of them felt quite right. One of my Facebook friends in Charlotte recommended her parish, which is very tradition-friendly. I've blogged before about how much I've come to love sacred polyphonic music, and when I saw that my friend's parish regularly celebrated the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite (aka the Tridentine Mass or the Traditional Latin Mass), I thought this might be an excellent opportunity to hear some of the music I had come to love in its proper context, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. I started attending the Extraordinary Form masses in June, and to be perfectly honest, found them baffling at first. My fellow Mass-goers, however, explained that the Extraordinary Form does take a bit of getting used to and urged me to keep coming. I have kept coming to the EF Mass, and with each liturgy I attend, the rite becomes a little more familiar and a little more comfortable. I consider it part of my continuing education as a Catholic.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to go to Mass or anywhere else for much of the month of July, as I came down with a nasty infection that kept me sidelined for over a month. Eventually, however, I did get well, and aside from some occasional trouble with sciatica or a pinched nerve, I've been able to avoid any major medical catastrophes since then. May it remain so, at least for a while, for awhile, please God!

In mid-November, I received a letter from the solicitor's (prosecutor's) office back in South Carolina that the police had made an arrest in my home invasion case, and the solicitor was preparing to bring the case to trial. I wrote a detailed letter back describing my recollections of the crime and its effect on me. I also spoke by phone with someone in the solicitor's office who told me that the defendant in this case is facing other outstanding charges, and in all likelihood will "plead out" or plead guilty to a lesser charge in order to avoid doing time for a greater one. The defendant in my case is being charged with armed robbery, and the case is likely to come before a judge sometime in February. I'll post more information as it becomes available. I've heard crime victims on TV news shows talk about the need for "closure," and for the first time in my life I understand what they mean. With the perpetrator of my crime behind bars and preparing to face the justice he deserves, I feel as if I can truly begin to close this chapter in my life and move on to whatever comes next.

December and my first Christmas in Charlotte were quiet and low-key but peaceful and happier than my Christmas celebrations have been for some years now. Like many adults who are getting older, I feel a twinge of nostalgia and melancholy as I recall all those long-ago childhood Christmases with their mix of feverish anticipation, excitement, and delight. I miss my parents, who worked so hard to make Christmas special for my brothers, sisters, and me. As my sister observed, Christmas just doesn't seem quite as much fun without them around. Yet this year, we were able to get almost everyone together (on New Year's Eve, if not Christmas Day) and we were truly happy to be together. For that moment we were all content with the present and unafraid of the future. Whatever hardships may come, I pray we will face them together because we are a family and we love each other. I feel extraordinarily blessed to be here at this time in this place. Deo gratias! Thanks Be to God!

Greetings from Charlotte!

Greetings from the new worldwide, international headquarters of "It's All Straw," beautiful Charlotte, North Carolina!

You may remember from my last post, gentle reader (if I have any readers left), that I was just days away from moving to the Queen City. The great day did indeed arrive, and the move went off largely without a hitch. With the help of brothers, a sister, a sister-in-law, and a horse trailer, I moved into my new new abode, which is positively palatial compared to my old digs. I sat in the living room in astonishment, just watching everyone else bustle in and out with boxes, bags, furniture, and whatnot, and murmuring, "Oh. My. God." every few minutes. It seemed too wonderful to be real. The condominium complex where I live is beautifully maintained, and my new neighbors have been kind and welcoming. There are still days I find myself thinking, "Wow! I get to live here!"

 The rooms are open and airy with large windows to let in plenty of sunlight, which is a real mood booster. I have a sun room, and my sister says she has a case of sun room envy. For the first time in my life, I have a garage! (I don't have a car, but I have a garage). There is some discussion among my brothers as to the possibility of turning this space into some sort of man cave. Stay tuned for further developments.

Navigating the health care and social service bureaucracy took longer than I would have liked, but I now have an attendant/aide to help me for a few hours every weekday with what I call the three H's: Health, Hygiene, and Housekeeping. I don't need as much help as some other people with disabilities I know, but having a helping hand with certain tasks just makes life a whole lot easier. I have a city bus pass and a transit ID, and I'm learning how to use the city's public transit system to get where I want and need to go. Now it's time to develop a daily routine. Little by little I'm beginning to feel at home.

I've visited a couple of different parishes in the greater Charlotte area, looking for a spiritual home. For the first time in my life I have a real choice of parishes to attend. When I made contact with one parish to ask about transportation to Mass, I got a call back from the president of the parish's praesidium of the Legion of Mary. I was very active in the Legion in my old parish in South Carolina, so a chance to chat with a fellow Legionary was a little taste of home. Next week, I think I'd like to visit the local parish that celebrates Mass in the Extraordinary Form (aka the Tridentine Rite or the Traditional Latin Mass). Although I've come to love sacred polyphony and appreciate Gregorian Chant, I've never actually attended a Traditional Latin Mass and would really like to have the experience. The older I get, the friendlier I am becoming to tradition.

Even as I'm sitting here thinking about exploring and recovering the Catholic Church's past, I'm excited about the future. Every day feels like a bit of an adventure with new possibilities. As I told a friend recently, I feel a bit like the country mouse from Aesop's fables, suddenly whisked away from a pokey, pedestrian small town to the big, bustling city with all its delights (and frustrations). Unlike the mouse in the fable, however, I don't think I'll be headed back to the country any time soon. The city is beginning to feel like just the right place for me.

Relocation

After the home invasion I described in the previous post, my family and I were very concerned about my physical safety. I didn't really want to stay in a place where my life could be at risk, and my family certainly didn't want me to be here. What to do?

My brother Allen, God Bless Him, boldly stepped up with a solution. He took out a loan to buy a condo unit in Charlotte, NC that has already been modified to accommodate a person with a disability. His offer to buy the property was immediately accepted, and the pre-move planning and preparations have gone remarkably well and smoothly, to me a sure sign of God's providence at work. Now only a few days remain before The Big Move. My old apartment is littered with bags, boxes, and whatnot. I don't know how we will get it all into the truck and trailer we'll be using, but I guess we'll figure something out. I suspect it will look something like this:

I'm excited, nervous, and a little sad to be leaving the people and the community that I've lived in for nearly a dozen years, but it's plainly time to go. The community where I'm living now has been dying a slow and painful death for years, and by moving to Charlotte, I'll be closer to family and a new resident of one of the fastest growing metropolitan areas in the country with better housing, better medical care, better transportation, better cultural opportunities, and overall better quality of life. Change and striking out into the unknown can be scary, but I'm choosing to look upon this experience as an adventure. As Bilbo Baggins says in The Lord of the Rings, "I'm quite ready for another adventure." See you on the other side!

More About My Dad

2nd Lieutenant William S. Leslie
9 Oct 1943, Age 20
So young!

Friday morning I got a long-awaited letter from the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis in response to my latest requests for my father's World War II service records. My search was partially successful. It confirmed that I had indeed found his wartime serial number (0-668096) and it also confirmed my long-held suspicion that his complete service records, if they were ever held there, were destroyed in a fire in July 1973. However, the letter also stated that, "[w]e used alternate sources to reconstruct some record data lost in the fire," and included two copies of a Certification of Military Service that includes his complete dates of service, including a short period as an enlisted man that I did not know about. I am so very proud.

The date of his enlistment conflicts slightly with some other information that I have (ironically, also supplied by the National Archives and Records Administration which oversees the National Personnel Records Center), so I may have to look into this further to make sure the details are correct. Also, although the caption on the original photo of my Dad identifies him as a 1st Lieutenant as of October 1943, I believe he was actually a 2nd Lieutenant at the time. The accident reports I mentioned in a previous entry bear this out.

I Found My Dad

Caption on the back of the original photo reads:
"1st Lt. William S. Leslie, 20 years old, Oct. 9 1943"
(Scanned image supplied by William F. Leslie)

Note: A slightly different version of this post can be found here.

This past weekend was big for me. I found my Dad.

In the past, I've blogged about wanting to find out more about what my late father did in World War II. This past weekend, I took the first concrete steps toward finding out.

Early Saturday morning I received a long-awaited e-mail from Craig Fuller of the Aviation Archaeological Investigation and Research (AAIR) website that maintains a database of accident reports involving World War II aircraft. The e-mail contained a link to a page where I could download copies of two reports of two accidents involving my father, William Stewart Leslie, during his pilot training in World War II. The serial number of the "Leslie, William S." in these reports matches exactly the serial number on a set of dog tags in my family's possession, so I know this is my Dad. Now that I know for certain his rank and serial number and the group and squadron he was attached to at the time of the accidents, I can use these pieces of information to try and locate more details about his military service.

In the first accident, he was returning to Camp Campbell (now Fort Campbell), Kentucky after a routine cross-country training flight early on the morning of 15 August 1943. He landed about ten feet short of the end of the runway because the sun was in his eyes, and when he landed, the spindle supporting the left landing gear on his Bell P-39F AirCobra broke, causing the landing gear on that side to collapse. The board investigating the accident concluded:

Bell P-39F AirCobra with U. S. Army Air Forces Markings

Although pilot did land a few feet short of hard surfaced runway due to the fact that his visual judgment was hindered because he was landing into the sun at 0830 o'clock, it is not the opinion of the board that this fact would have been a factor in causing the landing gear to fail. It is a known fact that landing gear spindles on P-39 Airplanes are light and delicate. It is believed that spindle had Crystallized and cracked.

In the second accident, he was leaving Camp Campbell for another routine cross country training flight on the afternoon of 25 October 1943 when ice formed in the carburetor of his North American P-51 Mustang, causing a sudden and and complete engine failure. The official report reads:

North American P-51 Mustang

"After about 50 minutes of flying there was a tremendous backfire and engine failed. Pilot made crash landing, wheels up" in a farmer's cornfield near Scottsville, Kentucky.

The board investigating the accident recommended "that pilots be directed to use full carburetor heat when atmospheric conditions indicate that moderate to severe icing conditions exist," and "That WILLIAM S. LESLIE, 2nd Lt. Air Corps, Res., be relieved of all responsibility in this accident."

I'm relieved to know that in both cases, the investigating boards concluded that Dad did not cause or was not directly responsible for the accident.  A pilot is always ultimately responsible for everything that happens on board his aircraft, but apparently in these cases there were mitigating circumstances. A severe enough accident might have caused Dad to wash out of pilot training, which I think might have broken his heart. Dad loved flying.

I admire his persistence, too. One accident is one thing, but after the second one, I would have considered the Quartermaster Corps or the Navy!

New Genealogy Blog!

Mine.

As you might have deduced from my last post, dear readers, the genealogy bug has bitten me hard. I've created a new family history-themed blog "From Aberdeen to Alabama" to chronicle my adventures in pursuit of my Leslie ancestors. The title reflects my working assumption that my family originated in Aberdeenshire in northeastern Scotland, immigrated to the United States, and somehow, over several generations, worked its way to south central Alabama, where my paternal grandfather was born. That mysterious "somehow" is the subject of my search. If you want to see what I find out, come along and read. I'm really hoping that I might eventually draw the attention of distant relatives or other genealogists who are researching the same families I am. I'd appreciate any tips, tricks, or pointers more experienced family history researchers can offer, and put forth my own stumbling efforts in the hope that they may be useful to other noobs and neophytes. Enjoy!

Who Do You Think You Are?

I'm trying to find out.

I've started watching "Who Do You Think You Are?"  NBC's Friday night show in which celebrities discover surprising truths about their genealogies and family histories. This Friday's season finale will feature upscale, down home Southern chef and foodie Paula Deen. On the plus side, the show is sometimes interesting and thought provoking. It's motivated me to begin researching my own family history again, something I have tried to do, off and on, with varying degrees of success, for many years now. On the minus side, I do have several beefs with the show:

First, it's built on a formula. Every episode begins with Big Famous Celebrity who has a lingering question about his or her family history. What really happened to cousin Fred when he disappeared for six months in World War II? Was Great Aunt Ida really a show girl? Was Great Great Great Grandpa Leroy an escaped slave? So, Big Famous Celebrity traipses off across the country (and often around the world) to meet with historians, archivists, librarians, and genealogists who seemingly by magic and on command produce documents that provide another piece to the puzzle. There are twists and turns. There are dead ends. At the end, however, the mystery is solved by a Stunning Revelation that leaves Big Famous Celebrity choked up or teary eyed on camera. A sadder but wiser man or woman, he or she returns home to the bosom of his or her family to reflect on What We Have All Learned From This. Fade to black, roll credits, cue commercial.

Second, it focuses on celebrities. Why are the family histories of rock stars, actors, or pop singers necessarily more interesting than those of truck drivers, nurses, or teachers, for example? I 'm just a newbie genealogist and family historian, but I'll bet nearly everybody has someone interesting in their family tree if they go back far enough. My father flew fighter planes in World War II. His mother, my grandmother, had chronic, crippling arthritis that left her bedridden much of the time, but she still raised two children and helped support her family during the Great Depression by writing poetry, short stories, and advertising jingles in contests and promotions. One of my ancestors signed Scotland's declaration of independence— some 400 years before the American one. I think the show would gain, not lose, emotional impact if it focused on ordinary people rather than on celebrities. What if each week Joe or Josephine Average from Des Moines or Tampa or Buffalo found out that they were related to a scientist or a millionaire or a baseball player? Or that they were related to other ordinary good, decent, compassionate, quietly heroic people? Wouldn't that motivate other people across America to find out more about their families?

Third, it presents a distorted picture of genealogical research. At the beginning of the hour, the celebrity has a problem. At the end of the hour (less, if you deduct time for commercials), the celebrity has a solution. He or she jets around the country and around the world to meet with the experts who have just the information our protagonist needs.. At least once per episode, someone suggests that the celebrity consult Ancestry.com, the show's sponsor, and our hero always finds at least one useful nugget of information there. Again, I'm just a beginner at this, but I do have sense and experience enough to know that it can't be that easy for us mere mortals. I've just started using Ancestry.com and its Family Tree Maker software myself, and they are indeed wonderful tools, but they are not the whole story.

I 'd guess that each episode of this show took months of planning and preparation. Someone would have to research the historical and genealogical problems involved and figure out who had the documents, information, and expertise to solve them. I'm not a pop star with the resources and budget of a production company and a major TV network behind me. I can't fly all around the world to research documents and meet with experts. I expect that in my search there will be dead ends and disappointments. There will be documents I need that aren't at the county courthouse, the state bureau of vital statistics, or digitized in an online database somewhere. If they are, I might have to spend my own money and wait weeks for copies. Yet I'm willing to take those risks because I want to know more about my family. I'll just have to do genealogy the old-fashioned way.

A Mother's Day Cheezburger

Happy Mother's Day to all my readers and all the Moms out there in the blogosphere! This is for you:



Hat tip to bluesfan473 for the LOL.

This is for my Mom:

Cecilia Roberts "Cele" Leslie
1924-2006

Love you and miss you, Mom!

Caps

It's funny how the physical objects around us can get us to thinking.

Now that another college football season is upon us, I splurged on a University of South Carolina baseball cap to show my team loyalty. This is the one I chose:



I've cheered for Carolina teams since I was a boy, long before I did my graduate work there (and far too often been poorly rewarded for my loyalty, but that's another story). Hope springs eternal in the Gamecock fan's breast however. This might just be the year the football team or the basketball team or the baseball team or the women's track and field team or somebody does great things.

When the cap arrived yesterday I wore it with great pride, but it reminded me that I had a similar one for Auburn University, my Dad's alma mater, a cap very much like this one:



Towards the end of his life, I noticed that Dad had taken to wearing a baseball cap whenever he drove to keep the sun out of his eyes. He was wearing a generic baseball cap he'd gotten from somewhere (the USC bookstore if I remember correctly). Two Christmases before he died of cancer, I gave him an Auburn cap. He smiled and thanked me. Later I learned that he wore it whenever he drove until he was no longer able to drive. After Dad's funeral, my brother Allen asked me if I would like to have the cap and I have kept it ever since.

Dad was never a big sports fan. Normally he paid very little attention to Auburn athletics—until perhaps the annual weekend that Auburn played Alabama. When I rediscovered the cap, however, I couldn't stop thinking about him. I found Auburn's fight song on the internet and have been listening to it almost compulsively. I'll keep an eye on how the Auburn Tigers (Clemson Tigers = BAD! Auburn Tigers = GOOD!) do this year, even as I'm cheering on my Gamecocks. And should Auburn triumph over Alabama, you will hear a rousing cry of WAAAAAAR EAGLE!" from this direction.

Miss you, Dad.

Repost: Remembering Dad

NOTE: This item was originally posted in 2006.

Today is Memorial Day, the day Americans pause to remember those who gave their lives in service to their country. Today I would like to remember my Dad, William Stewart Leslie (1923-2005). He did not fall in combat, but he served honorably in World War II and the Korean Conflict. He loved his country and taught me to do the same. He fought the real battle to provide for his wife and six kids, all of whom grew up to become decent, honorable, compassionate men and women because of lessons he taught us. He passed from this life in February 2005 after a long battle with lung cancer.

In World War II he served with the U. S. Ninth Air Force based in England. For the most part, he flew P-51 fighter planes. One of his assignments was to shoot down German V-1 and V-2 rockets launched from Holland. He said the rockets were so slow and crude that often just the "prop wash" or air turbulence from his plane flying past the rocket was enough to send it crashing harmlessly into the sea. He told us stories of the funny things that happened during his wartime service: the time he got his cap blown off because he unwittingly stood in front of a loaded cannon, or the time he was appointed "mess officer" for his unit despite the fact that he had no idea how to run a mess hall. He never talked about the scary things, of which I'm sure there must have been a few. I believe he was shot down once. He didn't like to talk about it. Towards the end of his life he had nightmares from which he woke up screaming. I couldn't help wondering if those came from long-buried frightening moments from his war years.

I asked him once if there was ever a moment when he was afraid for his life, scared that he might die. No, he replied, because when you're 19 years old, you're too dumb to be scared. You are convinced that you're 20 feet tall and bulletproof. The other guy will get shot, not you. When I saw TV news stories about the dedication of the World War II Veterans Memorial, I was overcome with a wave of pride and affection for him and called to tell him so. His response, like so many others of "The Greatest Generation" was typical.

"Shoot," he said, "I didn't really do anything."

Yes, you did. And we are grateful.

During the Korean Conflict he was recalled to active duty from the reserves. Somewhere along the way he mentioned his desire to learn Russian, and the next thing he knew, he was enrolled in a special program in Washington, D. C. to study Russian language, history, culture, and geopolitics. It wasn't top secret, but it was confidential. He was instructed to wear civilian clothes and, if asked, just say that he worked for the Defense Department and leave it at that. I believe the photo you see might come from this period. You'll notice that he's standing or sitting against a neutral background, he's well dressed, and looking directly at the camera with a serious expression. It looks like an ID or passport photo to me, but I can't be sure.

Many of his professors in this special program were White Russians or anti-communists who fled after the revolution of 1917. He was amazed at what they knew and how they knew it. Once, after class, one of his professors approached him furtively, looking both ways before speaking.

"Gaspadin (Mister) Leslie," the man said in Russian, "You are . . . pilot, da?"

"Da," Dad replied. He hadn't told anyone he was a pilot.

"I teach you Russian. You teach me to fly, da?"

"Da."

Dad went to a local airport, rented a small plane, and took his professor up for a flying lesson, but quickly realized he didn't have the specialized vocabulary needed to explain the more technical aspects of flying: artificial horizons, ailerons, rudders, pitch, and yaw, and so forth. His efforts to teach his teacher how to fly ended right there, but I've always thought it was a great story. There was also the time a friend of his passed himself off as a native Russian to impress a bimbo and Dad played along; or the time a drunk driver rammed into the picture window of the trailer Dad had rented while he, Mom, and my sister Susan (an infant at the time) were driving cross country. Dad was full of stories, and he told some of them so many times, we were sick of them. Now that he's gone, I'd give anything to hear him tell them again.

He was not a perfect man (no one is), but he was a good man. I think, like many men who came of age during the Great Depression and World War II, he found it difficult to express his deepest emotions in public. Bragging, being conceited, or having an overly exalted opinion of oneself was the worst sin a man could commit. You were supposed to work hard, do your duty, and not call attention to yourself. People made fun of Bob Dole, also a World War II veteran, for sometimes speaking of himself in the third person ("Bob Dole knows . . .") but I believe the habit came out of that fundamental modesty of his generation. Nowadays, when celebs and ordinary people get on TV talk shows, air their dirty laundry in public, and then get all weepy while the rest of us watch, such circumspection and humility are refreshing.

Sometimes, however, I think Dad went too far in trying to prevent us from becoming conceited. His favorite tactic was to conceal his real feelings behind a joke or a left-handed compliment. It made me think sometimes that nothing I did mattered to him. In college I was nearly a straight A student, but in college I also acquired my first serious girlfriend, and I loved her with a passion that only those in love for the first time can manage. I was worried that my grades were slipping because we were spending so much time together. I needn't have worried. Dad's response? "He had a 4.0, but then he met this girl. Ha, ha, ha." It made my blood boil.

I once asked him angrily why he seemed so allergic to paying me a compliment in public. "Because I don't want you to get the big head," he snapped back. We had some friction over the years, to say the least. If there was any good thing about his long final illness, it was that we each had time to look past the bluster and bravado and hurt feelings and say to each other, "I love you and I am proud of you."

I know that he loved me despite the fact that he sometimes had trouble expressing it. He had many jobs throughout his life, and some were more successful than others: airline pilot, filmmaker, salesman, retail business owner. For most of the time I was growing up, he was the regional sales representative for a company that sold heavy construction equipment. His territory extended from Maryland to Mississippi, and often he would leave on business trips on Monday morning and not return until Friday night. That had to be hard, lonely work, but he did it because he loved us. He never once failed to provide us with anything we needed (and often just things we wanted) even if it meant considerable personal and financial sacrifice for him. My three-week trip to England when I was in college that he paid for is a prime example. Now that I'm living on my own and struggling to pay bills just for myself, I have a glimpse of what he must have struggled with to support and provide for a wife and six children.

He stayed with me faithfully whenever I had to be hospitalized for surgery related to my disability. Once in particular, I went through a kind of withdrawal as I came down off the painkillers and anesthesia. I was terrified, convinced that something awful was about to happen, and didn't want to be left alone. He stayed with me, after visiting hours were over, until I fell asleep. I awoke hours later in complete peace and darkness as all the chemicals had left my body. I called out to him but realized he must have slipped out after I fell asleep. I was so grateful to him! Last year, after his passing, when I was in ICU with that terrible bladder infection, I thought that if I squinted hard enough I could almost see him sitting in the chair at the foot of the bed as he had so faithfully so many times before.

There's a sequence from the movie It's a Wonderful Life that expresses perfectly how I feel about my Dad. Young George Bailey is working for Mr. Gower, the local druggist, as a delivery boy. One day, George notices that Mr. Gower has received a telegram informing him that his son has died of influenza. Mr. Gower, distraught with grief, has accidentally put rat poison into some capsules and sent George out to deliver them, thinking they are medicine for a sick little boy. George, knowing the truth, looks around desperately for help. Suddenly, he sees a billboard reading, "Ask Dad. He knows." George runs off, tells his father what's happened, and waits for Mr. Gower to come to his senses. When George tells Mr. Gower what's happened, the man is incredibly grateful. George's quick thinking has saved a boy's life and Mr. Gower's business.

Dad was always that anchor of stability and wisdom for me in the same way that George Bailey's dad was for him. Even when we were bickering, I knew that if I really got in a jam, I could ask Dad. He knew. He would fix it. He would make it OK. Because he was Dad. I miss him. But I remember what he taught me about hard work and doing your best and keeping your promises. And I know. And it will be OK.

Eternal Rest grant unto him, O Lord, and may perpetual light shine upon him. Amen.

Rest in peace, Dad. I love you.