This is a time that I have been dreading, even though I knew it would come.  There’s so much I could tell you.  Where do I start?

When I was growing up, there was a lot I didn’t know about my Dad. I knew he was in the Army, but I didn’t know he had been shot in the leg by the enemy while flying a plane, and refused to put in for a Purple Heart.  He didn’t want anyone to think he was looking for an easy way out.

I knew Dad went to college, but I never knew he graduated from Syracuse with a perfect 4.0 grade average, or that he went to law school at Harvard.

I knew Dad was a lawyer, but I never knew any of that stuff that Harry Martin said.  [My wife had just read a letter from Harry Martin, Dad's law partner and long-time friend.]  I never knew ANY of that.

He was just . . . Dad.

He was a guy who never told me how to live.  He SHOWED me by example.

He showed me how to have integrity.  He told me once that the secret of his success in his law practice was that he always told the truth and he always kept his word.  He never compromised on his principles, even if it cost him something, because it was the right thing to do.

He showed me how to be a husband.  He and my Mom had the longest-running romance that I have ever seen.  And I don’t mean marriage, I mean romance.  They were high school sweethearts, who became soul mates.  He had no interest in sitting in bars with his buddies after work – he couldn’t wait to get home.  He had no interest in seeing the sights on business trips – it wasn’t any fun unless my Mom was with him.

When Mom became terminally ill, he was the most hard-working, devoted nurse in the world – not because he had to be, but because it was the right thing to do.

He showed me how to be a father.  There were nights and weekends when he had to work, but every time I needed him, or something important was happening, he was there.  I knew that he loved me, because he told me that every day that he ever spoke with me, up to and including the very last day.  When I found the girl I wanted to marry, he accepted her into the family immediately.  In fact, when he introduced her to people, he would say, “She’s my daughter-in-law, but she’s really my daughter.”  He never tried to get me to follow in his footsteps and be a lawyer – he told me, “If you’ll be happy, I don’t care if you want to be a garbage man.  Just be a good one.”  When my brother died at age 38, leaving a wife and three children, he made sure that my brother’s family would have the money and the help they needed to go on – not because he had to, but because it was the right thing to do.

He showed me how to get along with people.  He had a lot of clout in our town, but he didn’t really like to use it.  He was a humble man who never thought he was better than anyone else.  He was equally comfortable in the finest dining rooms in town, or at a Burger King.  If you ever met my Dad, you knew that he had a quality that we never could find a name for.  We used to just say he had IT.  Everybody always felt so good just because he was around.  He loved meeting people and finding out all about them.  If you were a man, you had a new friend.  If you were a woman, you were in love.  I could tell you some stories – here’s just one.  He and Mom were visiting us when we lived in Goldsboro, in the eastern part of the state.

We wanted him to get the true North Carolina experience, so we took him to Wilbur’s Barbecue.  There was a line out the door that night, so we had to wait.  I was chatting with my family, when I noticed that Dad had disappeared.  I finally found him behind the restaurant in the cookhouse.  He was in a deep conversation with the guy who was in charge of cooking the pigs, finding out all about how it was done and how this guy had spent years perfecting the cooking process and just the right wood for the coals.  By the time I finally dragged him away, the two of them were best buddies.

He loved to make others feel good and feel special.  When he was visiting us, my kids’ friends would all find reasons to come over, because they wanted to be around him.  My kids were crazy about him.  My 3-year old grandson would have hot chocolate at the table with him, and demand that everyone else leave the room, because that was HIS time with Grandpa.  Even in the last week of Dad’s life, he was cracking jokes with the Hospice nurses who came to the house.  It wouldn’t surprise me if Dad walked into heaven with his arm around the Angel of Death’s shoulders, trying to cheer him up about coming for him.

I miss Dad to a degree that I can’t really express.  But there’s an old saying that goes, “Don’t be sad because it’s over.  Be glad because it happened.”  I loved the times we had together and the adventures that we shared.  And all of the things that we wanted to say to each other were said.  I could go on for hours.  But I’ll end with the words of the late basketball coach Jim Valvano:  “My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person: He believed in me."

D. Vance Elderkin
In loving memory of Vernon Howard Elderkin, Jr.
(1918-2007)

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