Here's to you dad. xoxo

I’m taking a break from food related chatter today.  Here’s to an amazing man.

I have been lucky enough to make some new great friends over the past 6 months.  Each of them by now has heard countless stories about my father.  And more than once I have been told that based on how I speak of him, he must have been a very special man.  My response is always the same – a smile, watery eyes, and beaming pride that even in death he is known to strangers as a special man. 

In July 2008 I somehow found the strength to give the eulogy at his funeral – something that I will forever be so proud of – and amazed by.  Trying to sum up your dad in under 3 minutes isn’t as easy thing, but I did the best I could.

For those you that didn’t know him, this will give you some insight.  For those of you that did, it’s a reminder why we loved him (as if we needed one).

July 2008

Everyone here has his or her favorite Kevin memory.  Most of you are like me and have a lifetime full of them.

When I was about 3 we lived in LA.  I used to make friends with the snails that lived in our yard.  They had a house in my plastic fisher price horse, and I used to collect them and talk to them.  When it would rain, they would come out of the grass and sometimes get run over by cars.  I would cry and cry about this – they were my friends after all.  Eventually, my mom and dad had to spray poison in the yard to get rid of them.  Knowing that I would be upset when I saw large amounts of my “friends” dead, my father went out and picked up all the dead snails before I woke up.  He would have done anything to avoid me having to feel pain.  Anything he could do to make my life a little bit easier and happier – he would do.  And it wasn’t just for me – he did the same day in and day out for my mom and everyone else that he loved. 

He even did it for people he didn’t know. In the fall of  ’98 a Swissair flight crashed off the coast of Nova Scotia.  The company put together a group of people to go up and held the families.  My dad was one of them, and they couldn’t have made a better choice.  He made a special connection with a couple that had put their only daughter on that flight to spend a semester studying in Switzerland – something he had done earlier that fall for his own only daughter.  He was always so proud of this work up in Halifax – that he was able to make such a difficult time for these strangers just a little bit easier.

I always admired my dad.  But the last 2 years that admiration has grown into a feeling that I can’t put into words.  His courage and strength was amazing.  He always told me that I was the inspiration for this – and that might have been true.  But my mom was just as much one.  We were always a team, and always said that we’d get through anything together – good or bad.  Luckily for the 3 of us, most of the things that we shared together was good.  

My father was a man that knew that a connection went deeper then a handshake and a smile. He understood priorities and knew where everything fit into the overall context of life, living, friendship and happiness. He had hope, and was always looking for his “ace in the hole”.  We are all better people for having had him in our lives and he was lucky enough to hear us all tell him that. 

I was having trouble coming up with the words that truly captured my dad.  My mom found this quote and it’s just a perfect description of everything that my dad was: 

"The true gentleman is the man whose conduct proceeds from good will and an acute sense of propriety, and whose self control is equal to all emergencies: who does not make the poor man conscious of his poverty, the obscure man of his obscurity, or any man of his inferiority or deformity; who is himself humbled if necessity compels him to humble another; who does not flatter wealth, cringe before power, or boast of his own possessions of achievements; who speaks with frankness but always with sincerity and sympathy; whose deed follows his word; who thinks of the rights and feelings of others, rather then his own; and who appears well in any company, a man with whom honor is sacred and virtue safe.  "