My Tribute

The earliest memory I have of interacting with my Dad was sitting on his lap. I would sit there, and read to him, and he would teach me new words. This was before I turned five.

My dad was a maverick. He always went where God led him.

God gave him a special love for little brown Mexican children, and he went to Mexico. He always loved the little children, and they would gather around him. They knew he loved them. They would hang off the jeep as he drove through the colonia. He would buy them cookies and candy, so impractical for kids who didn't have enough to eat. But they loved it. He taught them songs about Jesus. Some of those kids are are in their upper 40's now, and they still remember the songs that Daddy taught them.

He touched so many lives. I have run across people in the most unlikely places who knew him way back when.

He went for a hunting trip one time in the mountains of Durango, and wound up being invited to preach in a little town, so he went. Later he took flying lessons so he could get there in a much shorter time. Then he took mechanic lessons so that he could put back together the airplane if he had to. He had to many times.

After that first village experience, people from other villages began to invite him to preach in their villages. And so it went. He would ask people to clear a landing strip for him, basically to clear it of rocks. When I flew with him to these remote mountain villages, he would try to point out the landing strips to me, but I never could see them. Somehow he did. And sometimes he would have to fly over the strip to scare away the cows that were standing on it in his way.

Sometimes he banged up the airplane. One time he brought the airplane home in pieces in the back of a big truck, and put it back together in our living room. I remember playing around the airplane pieces.

I remember loving to fly with my daddy. I remember the intense roar of the engine. We didn't have earphones. I loved singing on those trips, 'cause no one could hear me, not even myself. I remember loving to see the mountains under us, and never feeling afraid. I always wondered why some people would throw up in his airplane. The mountain people threw up a lot. He carried them in if they were sick, or for other emergency reasons.

When we flew home, Daddy would fly over our house. Our dog Tina would start to bark and run around in circles. Mom would grab a kitchen towel, run outside, and wave it at him to tell him she saw him. Then she would go pick him up at Bill Brown's ranch, where Bill let him land and keep the plane.

My daddy was a wallbuilder. He was a church planter. He loved people who were small and inconsequential, who didn't have any power or influence. No one can say how much of a difference his life made yet, but eternity will show it.

He was flawed, as all of us are, but he was faithful, and he was fun-loving. After suffering for 15 years with Parkinson's, today he is dancing a jig and flying with Jesus.

I love you, Daddy, and I will miss you, but I'm glad you are where you are now. Thanks for the reading time together. Thanks for showing me how to be committed to a life calling. I'm glad you were my Daddy.