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A Man of Many Words

"Did I tell you the story...?" How many times did our dad use that phrase? It was never, "Did you hear the joke?" or "Let me tell you a joke.", it was always a story. When we were little it was, "Daddy, read me a story." He was a great story teller with wonderful voices for each character and always substituting our names in the story. As far as we knew, the names of The Three Billy Goats Gruff were Sandra, Michael and Jeffrey.

You always knew when he found something especially funny, because his moustache would start twitching. How dad loved a good story. Dad can't tell stories anymore. He's in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's, the same insidious disease that destroyed his mother. We are here to pay tribute to our dad and tell the stories he is no longer able to tell.

Dad's gift was his stories, his words and use of language. He wasn't much of a handyman (that was mom's job), but he wore out a Webster's Unabridged Dictionary looking up the origins of words. As teenagers it drove us crazy when he would ask one of his word questions. Did you know that the word blurb was invented by the same author who wrote "The Purple Cow"? Being teenagers our response was typically, "No, and I don't care." One of dad's most frustrating responses to us was when we asked the question, "How do you spell _______?" and he would tell us to go look it up in the dictionary. "How am I supposed to look it up in the dictionary if I don't know how to spell it!?!"... but we did and we learned. Dad was a great teacher.

Dad was a man of his word, yet his actions spoke louder than his words. He gave thousands of hours in volunteer efforts for The City of Hope and later the Kaiser Permanente blood drive, where he was affectionately dubbed "Dr. Blood". He gave selflessly of his time and himself. He was a good friend, a loving father/grandfather and a devoted husband.

Now Alzheimer's has robbed dad of his words and stories. He can't read the stories to his great-grandkids or look up the etymology of a word or ever again tell another story. It is up to all of us to continue to share his stories. Please join us in paying tribute to our dad and help put an end to the horror called Alzheimer's.

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