In his youth, Dad was six feet, eight inches tall. In this teeny picture, he’s dwarfed by one of his nemeses: star thistle.
Dad was an exceptionally active and self-reliant guy. Even in his sixties when his left leg started to get weak he didn’t slow down, though little by little a limp crept into his gait. Over the years, as he kept losing strength and then balance, he still managed to keep doing the things he loved. And what he loved most was wandering around the woods and caves and hollows of his beloved West Virginia farm.
When he was 78, Dad got the official diagnosis of Lou Gehrig’s Disease. Only then did finally lose the desire to fight his deteriorating physical condition.
He never complained — only apologized. His family and friends tried desperately to think of diversions for him. Since he liked playing on his computer and was exceptionally creative, I thought he might have fun piecing together a Web site about his farm. I bought him a domain name and built him a starter site.
I never got to find out if he liked the idea. ALS moves so quickly that within one month he went from being able to roll around in a wheelchair to being unable to lift his head. He couldn’t even see his hills out the window any more. Three months after that, he was dead.
But this silly little site I built him still exists, as does my lifelong love of the farm.
