THE REASON FOR THE SEASON

Happy Holidays? … Not Hardly! It’s called Christmas for a reason. And this song says it all …

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HONORING MY DAD

 

My dad served in the U.S. Navy during WW2. Like most of those who served in that war he went voluntarily and did his part. Then like most he came home and immediately went back to work in civilian life and hardly ever mentioned anything to anyone about his time serving his country. It was not until he was quite old when he undertook to write about it thru the prompting of a couple of his grandchildren.

One of his grandsons decided to honor him (and at the same time all others in the family who served in the military … but my dad was the main focus) in a “military dining out” event. The grandson spent a lot of time researching and making contact with certain official departments in order to obtain all of the ribbons and medals my dad had earned. He put together a very nice shadowbox for him. He also made up a video presentation to show. Family and friends were invited to a church where the event was held. It was really neat and an opportunity for many to learn a whole lot about his military service to our country. Everybody including my dad was amazed at all the medals and ribbons he had earned. Most of them he had never received and he never knew anything about them until this military dining out gathering. Here is a picture of him holding the shadowbox during the official presentation. My sister and I are standing alongside of him. The fact that my dad had been in the Navy greatly influenced my decision to “GO NAVY”.

HERE is a link to my dad’s personal story he wrote. (It is a very long read.)

My dad got his first computer at the age of 82 at the urging of a couple of his grandkids. It was a bit challenging, but he learned a lot and among other things got into photos and photo editing. Here are some samples of his photo editing.

This first one is of his wife (my mother) doing a wheelie on her small motorcycle. Obviously this is photo editing as there is no way that machine had the ability to do this.

 

Dad placed her on the Great Wall of China …

And here she is reaching out to pet a lamb. This image was then used as “wallpaper” on his computer monitor.

He took a picture of himself in his white navy uniform and with some photo editing changed it into a current picture of himself in uniform. He jokingly titled it WW3.

  

I also did some photo editing involving him. Here I took a picture I had him pose for wearing an OLD NAVY sweatshirt. He was definitely Old Navy so I had him point to the words.

And then I went to work using this picture to have some fun photo editing. I ended up with this …

My dad lived to be 93. He passed away in 2011. We miss him dearly. He lived with us the last several years of his life. He had to go into a nursing home the last few weeks of his life here on earth. The good news is after praying daily for him for 34 years he got saved about 4 months before he died while he was still living here with us.

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