One of my earliest memories (age 3-4?) was of Dad building his glider and working on it in the garage and driveway. The glider port, I think, was not too far across the street at the top of the hill near our house. I vaguely remember what must have been my first glider ride, some from my perspective and some from the story as Dad told it. Dad says it was a beautiful day with plenty of lift which would make for a long flight. I guess he told me if I felt sick to let him know and we would land. According to Dad’s story, I told him I was feeling sick, so he very SLOWLY headed back to the airport since it was such a beautiful day to fly. I guess I had been around my dad and gliders enough to know there was a spoiler on the wing, which if pulled, would make you descend more quickly. When we were not coming down fast enough, I asked Dad about the spoiler, and he reluctantly pulled it and brought us in for a landing after a short flight (on a beautiful day). Like I said, I only remember this event vaguely, but I’m pretty sure I remember saying I was feeling sick to my stomach only because I was scared looking out the window and I wanted to get back on the ground. Sorry Dad!
I remember going to Dad’s optical lab. I *think* there were some days when I was in preschool that I had to go to work with Dad for a short time before getting dropped off or picked up and taken to school. I just remember eating cereal in the morning at his work. When I was 6 years old, we moved to San Diego. Dad was at another lab, and I remember him going in and taking my sister and I with him, it must have been on a Saturday because nobody else was there. As an adult now I know that was probably stressful for Dad trying to work and watch me and my sister to make sure we were not getting into trouble! I remember the lab in San Diego because it made a great “track” to ride my Kick-n-Go scooter. It wasn’t until I was close to 50 years old that I found out that Dad was a pioneer in plastic lenes. He didn’t have anything to do with the creation of them, but he created shortcuts, specialized tools and “fixes” for many manufacturing and production problems. His solutions were good enough to be shared with other labs.
I remember Dad building and flying model airplanes. He was good with the gliders, but there was something about flying powered model planes that jinxed him! I remember being with him one day and watching the plane just fly out of range, never to be seen again. But the model gliders were fun. I remember going with him when he flew them. He tried to let me fly them, but I was too scared of crashing them. I could fly them going away from me when moving the joystick left made it turn left and right turn to the right, but it was too hard when the glider was flying back towards us to remember that the joystick operation was switched.
That is the wing to a model glider that Dad is work on sitting on the front porch in the home in the Turtle Creek housing edition in Broken Arrow, OK. Circa 1978.
There was a time when Dad had 1/5 ownership in a real plane, a green and gold Cessna Cardinal. I was old enough not to be afraid of flying anymore and I remember flying to the EAA fly-in at Oshkosh with him, shooting touch-and-go’s and flying to Grandma Hurt’s. We took my Husky, Mitzi, with us a few times. She didn’t seem to mind flying at all, but I do remember one time Dad made a sharp turn and pulled a very low G and it was enough that Mitzi could feel it. She suddenly sat up and looked around like “What is happening?”
We lived in Iowa when Dad had part ownership in the plane. When we lived in town, we had a pretty good-sized back yard and Dad would take me out to throw the football or hit the softball. I remember being “afraid” of the football when we first started throwing it (6th grade). I thought it was going to hurt when I caught it, so I was kind of a panzy! One day a neighbor and his son were over, and we were all in the back yard playing catch with the football. Dad threw a long pass to me and although I believed it would hurt when I caught it, I wasn’t about to look like a wimp in front of other people, so I caught it. I discovered it didn’t hurt and it was actually fun to run plays and catch the ball. I remember Dad commenting on my “improvement” that day and throwing the football in the back yard became a “thing” for us after that.
I also played church league softball in high school, so Dad would hit fly balls to me to help me improve my game. We did that both in town and when we moved out to the country. We had a big front yard out there and we spent quite a few evenings with Dad hitting the ball and me fielding them.
I LOVED it when we moved to the country. We had 10 acres of land, horses and lots of fun things to do. Mom & Dad taught me how to ride. I remember I would go with Dad to take the horses out of the pasture to the front yard to eat some good grass. We would let them graze for 30 minutes or so and then take them back to the pasture. During one of these times, I jumped on a horse bareback. I learned how to keep my balance riding back and forth to and from the barn and that began my love of bareback riding. Dad and I also spent time building and repairing fences and doing “country work” together. I don’t think my work ethic was the best as a teen, but Dad always worked hard and didn’t let me slide. I learned how to work hard from him.
Dad on his horse, Ladybug. Circa 1986.
Me on our Arabian horse, Penny. I was using my bareback saddle in this picture. Circa 1986.
Another one of Dad’s model hobbies…remote control cars. And, of course, it was a sprint car. Circa 1986
This is the tractor Dad bought (literally) the weekend after I left for college. It took me 3 hours to mow the property. When I left and Dad had to mow, he bought this tractor. Mowing time went from 3 hours to 1 hour!
It was while we lived in Iowa that I noticed my dad’s devotion to reading the Bible. Every day, without fail, I saw him sit in his chair, pray and read the Bible. I am not sure how many years he had been doing this before I noticed, but I remember getting up early for jazz band practice and seeing Dad open the bifold doors of the piano room where he had been praying and reading his Bible. When we moved to the country, I would be up early to detassel corn or go work for the county and I saw Dad in the den reading his Bible and praying. Every house we moved to after that Dad had his chair with his Bible beside it where he would read every morning. He never lectured me, “You should read the Bible every day”, but it was his example that led me to reading the Bible through in a year for the first time when I was in college. After that I was hooked for myself, and I know it was my dad’s faithful example that planted the life-long love for God’s Word in my heart.
Dad had opened his own optical shop in Iowa. God blessed my dad’s business enough to allow me to attend a private college. During this time, Dad created and patented the Aqusizer, a hand-held tool for measuring the circumference of a lens. If I understand correctly, the money from this patent (and the eventual selling of it) was what enabled my parents to pay for my private college education. Yet another blessing of God on our family and an example of Dad’s unique gifting as an optician.
I found this image of the Acqusizer doing an image search in 2022. It was on a flash card from some (now very outdated) optical/optician test. I am not positive, but those *may* be my dad’s hands and an original picture he took for selling it.
I have 50+ years of memories with my Dad for which I am very thankful. The two legacies he has passed on to me are my love for God’s Word and an ability “figure it out and fix it”. I remember my dad fixing all manner of things growing up. I don’t think anybody taught Dad how to do all that stuff, it just needed to be done, so Dad took it apart to figure out what was wrong or broken, and he fixed it. Appliances, cars, bicycles, electrical, plumbing, my toys, etc (and he did it all before Google and YouTube!). I don’t remember Dad showing me, “Here’s how you fix this or do that” because he just fixed things as they came up, but over that past 10 years I find myself calling Dad to tell him what I figured out or fixed. I learned it from him. It’s not going to fix itself, there’s nobody else to do it…so figure it out and fix it! It’s amazing how much you can accomplish with that attitude…and I owe it to my Dad’s example.
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MISC PICS
This is one of my favorite pictures of Dad. I think this was his 40th birthday party. Mom invited a bunch of their friends over for a party and she made several different kinds of pie for Dad that year.
This is the only picture I have of “the bike”. In a previous life this bike was a banana seat, cruiser type handlebars type bike. For Christmas (circa 1976), Dad (who could build anything) put knobby tires on it, motocross handlebars, the racing number on the front, a cool black seat, a clip-on “gas tank”, a dirt bike chain guard and he painted it black. I had the BEST bike, and this was my all-time favorite Christmas gift! This picture was taken after the bike was a couple years old.
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