Pac Man

My dad was a creature of habit. He was as predictable as the tide. Sometimes he surprised us, but not often. The structure of his life made for strong memories. It wasn’t just his radio setting on a shelf. It was the radio he listened to every morning while drinking his coffee, reading the paper, and smoking a cigarette. What do we do with it now? My brother and I laughed as we thought about how Dad would have taken this move. There would have been lots of coffee breaks and lots of "thinking" about what we would do next and how best to do it.

He was a letter writer. He wrote letters to everyone – most hand written, but sometimes typed on his old manual typewriter. He never made the switch to a computer. What a blogger he would have made! He would send clippings out of newspapers – anything that he thought was interesting. He would often write a short note on the clipping – sometimes not. Sometimes he sent the whole newspaper and you had to search for what he had found interesting. He was also a packrat – saving lots of those letters and clippings. Most of his collection of clippings and letters had to do with history, family or friends. What do you do with stuff like that? Some of it is pretty awesome stuff. Some of it is silly.

He often made copies of the clippings and made notes on the copies and sent them to everyone he thought would be interested. He copied old photos and wrote out the story explaining the photo. He was the family historian and his collection is priceless. But what do we do with this stuff now? I guess I need to make an album...
Jesse took these photos one of my grandfather’s military papers (the Bernecker papers) and one of things Dad kept for whatever reason – like the letters that I wrote back to him. I don’t know if my brothers wrote letters to Dad, but there were lots of my old letters. I can’t believe he saved letters from a silly little girl.