Father's Day a Few Days Later

I have had the great blessing of knowing great men in my life.  As I grow older it becomes apparent I am always in need of great men.  Sadly my most trusted men have passed on.  My father-in-law, Robert (Bob) Claggett Brown Jr. was a great man to me.  He fought in WW II, Pacific Theater, battled scared, ending up in Hiroshima.  Our relationship grew and over time developed into a close bond.  He was stoic and could be severe, but he became a great encourager, teacher, and mentor to me.  Eventually, I became for him, someone who would sit and listen. Over the years he opened up about his early life, his war experience, and the things that made him who he was.   His early life was spent with his father wrestling out a living sharecropping in upper west Tennessee. His war experiences were shared slowly, a bit here and there.  They were proud memories, often violent and deadly, heroic by any measure.  In the last years of his life, we visited almost every Sunday where I would sit in his living room and listen to him talk.  Toward the end, we mostly sat in silence, he stooped over in his chair holding a pillow with his head in his hands.  He had lived his last days recounting to me his past and now suffered the final story, the pain of ancientness.  He died at 94.  Every Father's Day I spend thinking of him and my dad, another great man I knew.  It would take volumes to recount his greatness.  My Father's Days are always filled with great memories of great fathers this father was blessed enough to know.   

The picture I keep beside my chair.  Bob, in the corner and my
dad as he was dying of cancer with Peaches, the dog Betty and I gave 
him to help in his transition from here to heaven.