Dad's Birthday (Memories)

This is Dad as a baby, I would guess around a month old...Mom has a picture of me in her album that looks a whole lot like this...with

the same frowning baby face.

Such a sweet little baby face...

Cowboy posing on a horse...he looks very excited.

Proud to be in the Navy, standing in front of the clothesline with all sorts of whites hanging out in the sunshine.  So handsome!

And this is Mom in her nursing school uniform in St. Louis, I think outside City Hospital....very beautiful!

The newly married couple with their mothers....

They look so happy....

Here Mom and Dad are with my oldest brother Chuck and I am in utero here! 

The young professional engineer to be....what a great smile!

This was taken outside our home in Rolla...Dad was in school at the University of Missouri...now there are four kids-Chuck, me, Jane and baby Sarah.

The twins Jenny and Clinton made #7 and 8, they were born in 1969. 

Theses pictures were taken for an article in Dad's workplace newsletter. Our whole family was photographed and the babies were so popular!  Everyone wanted to hold them. The twins were only a few weeks old at the time of this photo. At this time all 10 of us lived in a single wide mobile home in Metropolis, Illinois.  Not sure how our parents did it, because there were so many of us, but we were happy and never hungry, always had a good place to live, and we were loved.

Here we are just the kids when the babies were a little older (maybe 6-8 months)...I remember when this picture was taken because Clinton was a little fussy that day...he was hard to keep happy for the picture!  Look how worried he looks on my lap.  The younger girls had Pixie haircuts, compliments of Mom, and the boys had crew cuts, compliments of Dad.  At 11, I was allowed to grow my hair out.

Here is the whole family in the late 1970s...note the guys in their leisure suits...the three youngest girls wore maxis dresses!  From the left--Cullen, Chuck, Susan, Clinton, Sarah, Dad, Mom, Jenny, Jane, and me.

I have a lot of great memories of Dad.  He has been gone now almost 7 weeks and I still expect to see him or hear his voice on the phone. It is easier as the weeks go by, but today is Dad's birthday so naturally I have been thinking about him and looking at old pictures.

I was able to help Mom go through some things Dad had packed away in the barn...sometimes it seems like I knew very little about my Dad. It was nice to find pictures I had never seen before and just look at the things he had kept and wonder why he kept them.  Going with Mom through some of Dad's things helped me grasp more understanding of who my Dad was....

Anyway, I know he is no longer in pain and he is with his heavenly Father, so that is very comforting to me.