I Am Thankful for Daddy
Oh, how I would love to see my Daddy on Sunday and wish him a very Happy Father’s Day.
The book of James teaches us that:
Every good thing given
and every perfect gift is from above,
coming down from the Father of lights,
with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.
James 1:17
Earlier this year, God gave me one of those perfect gifts. It was a dream about my Daddy. In my dream, I kissed my Daddy on the cheek; and when I did, I felt Daddy’s skin on my lips. This wasn’t just anyone’s skin. It felt exactly like the skin on the cheek of my one and only Daddy. The memory has lingered, and I can still feel his face.
After Daddy passed away unexpectedly in 2003 at age 72, I heard a recurring statement at the funeral home: “Your daddy sure did love his kids and grandkids.” Other people didn’t need to tell me that—I knew it much better than they did—but it surely was a great comfort to hear that he had made it clear to them, too.
Daddy’s love for children is obvious in photos of him, even as a teenager. Here he is with his youngest baby sister.
When I was born a year and a half later, he had his own baby to love and teach and ride piggyback.
Here are Daddy and I when I was six years old.
Here we are on my 50th birthday, 19 days before he passed away.
A few days before my 50th birthday, Ray asked me what I wanted to do for my birthday. I said, “Go see Mother and Daddy. Who gets to be with their parents on their 50th birthday?” I am very thankful for that decision. I remember well the first Father’s Day after Daddy passed away and how I broke down in a store when I saw references to Father’s Day.
One of my earliest memories is of Daddy kneeling beside the bed to pray in our little country house with no running water and an outhouse out back. Another early recollection is his holding me in his arms at night in the front yard of that little house and teaching me: “I see the moon. The moon sees me. God bless the moon. God bless me.”
Daddy took Mother and me to church from my earliest months. We went to a little country church beside the cemetery where Daddy’s paternal grandparents and in time several other members of our extended family were buried. I was tiny when I was awarded a Bible for a year of perfect attendance at Sunday school. What a precious gift early church training has been my whole life.
My brother Steve was born while we were still living in the country. The date was October 31, 1956. My loving and attentive Daddy had taken me trick-or-treating at my Great-Great-Aunt Lizzie’s house where she lived with her unmarried children Cousin Dudley and Cousin Ethel. I came home with an apple. Mother wasn’t very happy with Daddy when we got home because she needed to get to the clinic seven miles away in Ashland City pronto! Steve was almost ready to be born!
When Steve was nearly a year old and I was nearing four, we moved to Ashland City to a big old house with one coal-burning iron stove in the living room. That stove heated our side of the house. Elderly Miss Perry lived in a two room apartment on the other side. Winter got a little warmer when Daddy Leland, who owned the house, replaced the iron stove with a free-standing gas heater. This house had a bathroom under the staircase in the central hall. Its iron clawfoot tub is our house now. Steve and I loved sliding down the banister in that hall!
Our house was in the center of town, facing Vine Street. Daddy Leland’s store was behind us on Main Street. When we got old enough, we could see Daddy anytime we wanted. We simply walked across our backyard and the store’s parking lot and into the back of Daddy Leland’s grocery store. There we could find Daddy stocking shelves, working in the back room among the cardboard boxes of groceries, or checking out customers at the cash register. I don’t remember a time when Daddy didn’t welcome me when I came for a visit. As I mentioned recently, he sometimes took me with him across the river to the “dump” to throw away those cardboard boxes. I also liked going with him to deliver groceries, mainly to women I thought of as “little old ladies.”
Daddy at work in what we always called simply “the store.”
Daddy continued taking us to church after we moved to Ashland City, but no longer to the little white country church. In Ashland City, we walked across the street to church. We did that on Sunday mornings, Sunday nights, Wednesday nights, every night of the gospel meeting, and every morning of Vacation Bible School—in other words, “every time the doors were opened.” This picture of Steve and me shows you how close our house was to our church.
I spent many fun times riding my bicycle in the church parking lot and on the sidewalk that circled the church building on three sides. It was there that Daddy first taught me to ride the brand new blue bicycle I had gotten for Christmas. I pedaled while he walked beside me, holding onto the back fender. I remember the day that he let go and I kept pedaling. He had opened a new world of pleasure for me.
Daddy was a fun-loving guy who loved to get in the car and go somewhere—anywhere. During our childhood, Steve and I spent a lot of time in the backseat of first a big, green used Plymouth and later a new Ford Falcon, and finally a new Volkswagen bus. I’m thankful that when the other families were driving station wagons and Oldsmobile 98s, Daddy was driving us in a Volkswagen bus.
We made many Sunday afternoon trips to Nashville’s Centennial Park. How many kids get to grow up playing on the steps of the world’s only life-size replica of the ancient Parthenon?
One year our family joined my Aunt Dot and Uncle Preston’s family for a trip to the Memphis Zoo. I thought getting to feed crackers to a giraffe at eye level and actually touching his tongue was one of the coolest things ever!
I guess our most frequent destination besides visiting family was to the Great Smoky Mountains and Gatlinburg. Daddy loved the very silly Hillbilly Village in tiny Pigeon Forge, which I showed you recently.
It would have been a great place to pick up something like the exotic plastic snake I’m wearing around my neck at Newfound Gap!
I also liked visiting Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, except when the guide turned off the lights to show us what total darkness looks like. That was scary!
Mammoth Cave
Even a trip to get doughnuts was fun when Daddy took us. When I was growing up, our Sunday School started at 10:00 a.m. and church at 11:00. Sometimes Daddy would decide he wanted Krispy Kreme® doughnuts on Sunday morning. Mother would get my brother and me all decked out in our Sunday best early. Then Daddy would drive us to Nashville to the Krispy Kreme®, a trip of 25 miles.
As we sat on stools at the counter, Mother and Daddy enjoyed doughnuts and coffee while Steve and I had doughnuts and milk. Through glass windows, we watched circles of dough travel up and down and up and down in the “riser,” then fall into the grease, where they floated toward the conveyor belt, becoming golden doughnuts, before riding under their glaze shower.
After our treat, Daddy drove us back to Ashland City, getting back in plenty of time for Sunday School.
I’m thankful that when we went to the playground, Daddy hung like a monkey from the swing posts. He played on the swings and monkey bars, too.
I’m thankful that Daddy never lost his love of fun. One time after he retired, Mother was out of town at a club convention, and Daddy was staying with us. When we went to English country dance class one night, he disappeared. He must have had a hankering for coffee—which he loved black and scalding hot—so he must have walked to Taco Bell® which was nearby. All I know is that when he reappeared, he brought a stuffed Taco Bell® chihuahua. I’m glad I had a daddy like that.
I’m also thankful that Daddy turned his heart toward me and I had the privilege of turning my heart toward him.
Give me your heart, my son,
And let your eyes delight in my ways.
Proverbs 23:26