Tomorrow is Father’s Day, the fourth since my sweetie, Scott, died, and I will celebrate with Sarah as we have every year (Erin is in Oregon; Adam, Traci and Molly are with their dad Mike–refer to last week’s org chart if needed.) But it isn’t any of those amazing fathers, or Corey’s dad or Beau’s dad or Beau (back to the chart!) for that matter, who is an incredible dad to my grands, that I want to talk about.. No, today I want to honor my own dad –Jim Ubben, or Daddy, as I and my sibs called him until he passed away in 2010.

Note: This post is longer than my usual, but I wanted to write this for my kids and grands as well as my sibs. I was the oldest and I have more pictures.

Daddy was born in Pekin, Illinois, into an aristocratic family of 5 kids. My grandfather wore a smoking jacket and owned a mine where the carts were pulled by huge draft horses (yes, with furry feet–I think it’s inherited.) Young Jim played ice hockey on the city pond and had the long scar on this knee to prove it. He also played the cornet in the school band. One summer he and a couple of friends sawed the top off a Model T or A, whichever, and drove it to California. Crazy kids.

He went to the University of Illinois where he got a degree as a metallurgical engineer. And then came the war. He was deferred because of his job building the war machine, literally. But you didn’t see many healthy young men on the street, and he didn’t like the guilt of not serving, and so he enlisted in the navy and was stationed in Florida, repairing radios.

Meanwhile my mother, Sue Boyd, had gone from her home in Georgia to Florida with her parents to help her newly widowed older sister with raising three tiny children. At night she would go to the USO where she handed out cookies and danced with the troops. Dancing was required in order to have a cookie apparently and so mother found herself in the arms of my father, who was shy and quiet and gentlemanly. He walked Mom home and promptly got a talking to from my grandfather who was none to pleased that his youngest child (of 8) had taken up with a Yankee.

They were married in Georgia a hot minute after the war was over, eventually settling in Dallas, which was probably a decent landing place for the Yankee and the Georgia peach. Time passed (5 years exactly) and I was born, then Ted. We moved into a tiny house on the Garland side of Garland Road. A few years later Daddy bought a plot in a new development on the other side of Garland Road and built a house with 3 bedrooms. Carol came along and Daddy bought a bigger plot of land in the Lake Highlands area and built a house with four bedrooms. That was 1959. Leigh Ann came along in 1960. Daddy was tired of moving, so he just built a room onto the house for Carol.

Fast forward through graduations and college, marriages and divorces and grandchildren and health scares and work and travel around the world and retirement and eating out. Until in 2003 we noticed he was losing words and by 2008 he was homebound, then bedridden, then gone in early 2010. It was a long, sad loss for us all.

Daddy was a gentle soul, smart, creative, hard-working, with a great sense of humor and an even greater sense of dignity. He never yelled, never cursed, and never went without shoes. He did chase Ted around the house with a brush once, but Ted was quick.

He had an analytical brain that loved Bible study, especially Daniel and Revelation. But the creative side of that same brain created and built beautiful furniture, much of which is in my house.

He loved the water and we had a motor boat where we learned to ski when we were young. And we had a sailboat where he and I would race on White Rock Lake, winning several regattas and never capsizing. He was very proud of the fact that we (with Ted) had sailed in a series of three races in the Houston Bay, had lost a halyard (the wire that holds up the mainsail) in one race, and had still come in third overall. I am proud of that, too.

Daddy was a creature of habit and possessed an orderly mind which meant our household was (or the most part) calm, functional and predictable. That’s not a bad thing and I appreciate learning that from him. I also love that he loved his grandchildren and welcomed my crazy clan into the fold. He was the example for me of how people should behave.

Happy Father’s Day, Daddy. I love you.