Hi, Boat!

I believe people reach a certain age and simply stop aging, mentally, at least. This is my Dad, and if you use my theory, he's right around 22. The youngest of three boys, my Dad, born in 1929, hit his stride in his early 20's and never looked back. He has an eternally young soul, and I truly believe that's what keeps him going.

He grew up on the Main Line outside of Philadelphia and has never left. He's now gotten to the age where people (including me) actually use him as a resource and ask what he recalls about days gone by; since his memory is as sharp as a tack, he happily complies and has more stories than you could ever imagine.

Although he grew up in an old Main Line family and is listed in the social registry, he's never been pretentious and, as much as decorum allowed, avoided the social spotlight pretty much his whole life. That being said, when you get him into a room full of people, he's the life of the party! On top of that, Dad is one of those rare people who can make you feel like you're the only person in the room who matters and that he'd rather be talking to no one else.

Quite an athlete in his day, Dad played minor league baseball and was drafted by the Philadelphia Athletics in the early 1950's. Although he never made a career of the game, my sister and I were out in the backyard swinging a bat with him from the time we could run around the homemade bases! He once told me I had a "mean hook," and I took that into every softball game I ever played well into adulthood!

Dad has an uncanny ability to remember sports statistics, especially baseball stats, and Chris and he have bantered long and hard over the lifetime records of Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Yogi Berra, Mark McGwire and many others. Although Chris is very knowledgeable about his sports, Dad's got a few years on him and a long memory, so when these conversations come up, my money tends to be on Dad!

Dad met Mom at his cousin Eddie's wedding in the summer of 1959. He had been a bachelor throughout most of his 20's, but that all ended on the dance floor that summer; they were married a year later and spent 48 years together. Courting Mom in NYC where she had a job with NBC at Rock Center, Dad would take the train up from Philadelphia to meet her after work, and they would go to a little French restaurant nearby. Afterwards, they would take long strolls around the city. You can imagine, to a young girl's ears, how romantic it all sounded, and Dad still tells the story like it was yesterday - he even remembers the weekly specials at the French place!

I could go on and on about Dad, and no doubt will post many more blips about him down the road, but for now the most important thing for me about Dad is that he's here. He's here when I just want to pick up the phone and hear his voice and talk sports and listen to his stories. He's here, steady and stable, while we're flying around the globe, not sure where we'll land or what the future will bring. He's here, sitting across the table, vitally interested in what we've been doing and where we've been or telling me family stories, connecting me to my past in a way nobody else can.

Dad's always had nicknames for me, and one of them is "Loveboat" or "Boat" for short. Although he's been calling me that for as long as I can remember, there's no way I could ever have known, way back when I was just a little girl throwing a Frisbee around with him on the front lawn, that I would rely upon that so much today. He still sounds so happy when I call, picking up the phone, hearing my voice on the other end, and exclaiming with as much excitement as when he came home after a long day and we were playing in the yard, "Hi, Boat!"