I’ll piggyback on Katie’s sharing of my dad.

I’ll piggyback on Katie’s sharing of my dad.

It’s always hard to put any of this in words.  My dad was a great person, and I’ll be happy to be any fraction of what he has meant to people.  From wearing shorts and a T shirt in freezing Chicago springs to make sure he knew how cold I felt when I was playing soccer in a similar outfit to making sure that he spent the time shooting 100 two-foot shots with me on the driveway, my dad always put us before him.  We were recounting today how he put up our basketball hoop in a literal tornado warning because he wanted us to have a basketball hoop that was the proper height and didn’t want to ruin that for us.  I’m not huge on words, as some of you may know, but I’m really going to miss him.  He is always talked about me having a big heart, but his capacity to care about people was unrivaled.  We may have given him grief about his gregariousness nature, but it made everything feel special and important.  I think that’s one of the traits that will always live on about him, and if that’s on anybody’s tombstone, I’d say you’ve left your mark on this world.  He will certainly be missed, but that aspect will live on in anybody he has met.  He will be dearly missed.