Wow, I haven't blogged anything since last October. There was just too much to do in the last five months, I suppose, to have time to compose something that is half way intelligent. That's not to say that this blog will have any semblance of intelligence either. But one may always hope for a good out come. I have spent many hours working on genealogy/family history this winter, staying up way too late each night at the computer prowling through the records on Ancestry.com, et al. I have been able to reconnect with long lost, to me, cousins throughout the U.S. I was not able to attend Roots Tech in Salt Lake City this year because of, ironically, concurrent, important family events.
My father passed away on January 29, at the age of 91. His coaching buddies wanted to get together for a memorial service to remember his life and career.. So very early in the morning on Sunday, the 15th of February, my wife and I flew out to Long Beach, California, Julian Smilowitz, one of my father's former football players who had also become a fellow coach with him, picked us up at the airport, took us to church, fed us lunch and got us to the event center behind the La Mirada City Hall in time to help set up the room for the memorial service. At 3:00 p.m., about sixty former students and coaching buddies arrived at the memorial service. My sister, Jill, and brother, Mark, drove in from San Diego and Riverside, and were among the last to leave. The last of the crowd didn't depart until after six. There was a lot of visiting among old friends, many of whom had not seen each other for years. Monday morning we flew back to Salt Lake City. We were gone for about 30 hours.
We are having another memorial in March at the assisted living facility where my father was living. All my children and grandchildren are driving down with us to San Diego from Utah, and all the rest of the family from Southern California will be there as well. It will be the first time everyone has been together at one place since my mother's memorial service twelve years ago.
I had hoped to inter their ashes in one of the wall niches at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery on Point Loma, but it is full. The last place was claimed in May of 2014. I suppose we could have them at Miramar National Cemetery on the north end of San Diego. But Rosecrans is such a beautiful place overlooking the bay.
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| Senior photo, Withrow High School, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1942 |
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| Army Air Corps, Air Supply Command, China, Burma, and India, 1943-45 |
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| Coach "Goody" |
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| The last photo of my parents together, October 2001. |
