The Ace of all Aces!

The King of all Kings!

The Leader of all Leaders!

The People’s Choice!

Ace! Ace! Ace! Ace!

I don’t remember how or why it started, but at some point in my youth, my dad decided to compose a chant about himself.  Even more hilarious is that my cousins and I (at this point we were nine girls; honestly, I can’t see a group of boys doing this) would spontaneously cheer these words for him at family functions for no apparent reason.

But I have a feeling my dad was used to getting his way from the beginning.  In this picture that is over 60 years old, his handsomeness is still timeless. Your eyes go directly to him; smack in the middle, staring right at the camera. And although it isn’t politically correct to say, he looks pretty badass with that cigarette hanging out of his mouth surrounded by a bunch of girls. You can hardly blame my mom for falling for him at only 14 years old.

Side note:

My Thea Cassie, who is my dad’s oldest sister, told me this weekend that not only is my dad just 16 years old in this picture (believe me, I questioned this and tried to do the math working backwards from marriage and the Air Force and other milestones, but, I came to the conclusion that A) I think she may be right and B) Don’t argue with your 88-year-old aunt)…but that this was a CHURCH event. Which frankly, is more believable than the age part. So basically, my 16-year-old dad who looks about 25 in this picture is smoking and drinking at a church party. Which sounds about right for him.

Last Tuesday marked 19 years that he has been gone.  Sunday was Father’s Day.  I’ve spent a lot of time this past week thinking about him.  And here’s the thing:  When someone close to you dies, I mean really close to you, your memories aren’t about significant events or holidays.  The things you go back to are the everyday minutiae; the simple details that make a person who they are.

For example:

During family vacations, meals weren’t planned around activities, activities were planned around meals. Before we even finished breakfast Dad would invariably ask, “Okay, gang, where are we going for lunch?” The in-between was inconsequential.

Every Sunday morning on our way to church we were forced to suffer through “Breakfast with Sinatra,” a radio program that started at 8am.  Much to our dismay, it went until noon; meaning often we would catch the tail end of the show on the way HOME from church, too.

He only smoked Kent cigarettes. And boy did he smoke them.

He and one of his friends used to go to the track together all the time and bet on the horses. They invited me to go with them once, and we sat in the fancy seats and got waited on while we watched the races. It wasn’t until later that I found out they only took me so I could claim their big win from the day before and they wouldn’t have to pay the taxes.

He LOVED the soundtrack to The Bodyguard. Much to our annoyance, he would blast Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” on the CD player all the time.

He may have been the funniest man on the planet. It was a major win to get him to laugh at anything other than his own jokes.  And believe me, I tried.  Once, I took wallet-sized copies of my sorority composite picture and put them in random places in his bedroom.  My sister and I were hysterical as we put one in his pajama pocket (oh yes, he wore old-timey men’s pajamas that were a matching set complete with front breast pocket), one on his pillow, one on the bathroom mirror.  Nothing.  Not. One. Single. Word.  He would not give me the satisfaction of a laugh.  In fact, this would have been one of the times where he would have casually taken the picture off of his pillow straight-faced and said, “I got four kids and none of them’s normal.”

He drank scotch on the rocks. And it had to be J&B. Once he requested it at a new local restaurant that had just opened.  They didn’t have it, but the owner remembered and the next time we went in it had been stocked just for him.

He loved catalog shopping. I’d hate to think what would have happened if the internet or Amazon was around before he died. He would buy random stuff all the time: Native American decorative plates, stamp collections, themed chess sets. And his favorite purchase: 2-for-1 twill chinos. They were $6. Because you don’t forget when your dad buys (and wears) six-dollar pants from a catalog.

He was obsessed with celebrity height. You couldn’t get through a television shown without him making some comment about the height of the leading man.  “You know, Sal,” he’d say with disdain, “Mel Gibson is only 5’6”.

I’ll end the way he liked to end things, whether it was a party or a vacation or even the close of a long day, by borrowing his signature words:

Well, gang, that’s a wrap.

Happy Father’s Day, Ace. ❤️❤️❤️ I miss you.