Happy Father's Day...

Quote for the Day:

"Fatherhood is pretending the present you love most is soap-on-a-rope."  

~Bill Cosby

Today is Father's Day in the United States...a day when we celebrate our fathers and what they have meant to us.

My parents were married in 1939 on my dad's 21st birthday.  This picture was taken about a year later.

He was the youngest of 7 children, born into a Mennonite family that lived in Texas at the time of his birth.  In the home the parents spoke German, so he was raised learning both German and English.  Growing up in Texas there were a lot of Hispanics, so he also learned Spanish and could hold his own in a conversation using any of the three languages.

He had to quit school after the 7th grade to go to work during the Great Depression to help support his mom and sisters.  He didn't let this "lack of education" hinder him, though. 

He served in World War II in the US Army as a medic and cook in both the Pacific and the European theaters.  Though he left the Mennonite church and became Baptist when he married my mom, because of his Mennonite upbringing, he entered the Army as a Conscientious Objector and only held jobs where he didn't have to carry a gun.

He went on to own two different businesses of his own...first a truck-driving business in the 1950's-60's and then a water-well drilling business in the late 1960's-mid 70's.

In 1973 he sold his well-drilling business and went to Ethiopia for a year as a missionary to drill water wells during a severe drought/famine there to get water for the Ethiopian people.  

His "hobbies" in the evening were reading encyclopedias or the Bible.  He seemed to have such a thirst to always be learning.   He loved music, especially the old gospel hymns and blue grass music.  In the last few years before he died, my parents had a small travel trailer and would travel to blue grass music festivals with some friends who played. 

He died in 1978 after moving to California to help a well-drilling company open a new branch in Lancaster.  He was 59.

Happy Father's Day, Dad.  You are missed!

I also want to give a shout out to my dear husband, Andy!  Happy Father's Day, Andrew...you're a great father and grandfather.  I love you!

Andrew and Sera...

Andrew Paul, Sr., the II, and the III.  :)

Loretta