Growing up, I had the wacky notion that everyone had a father like I did. It really wasn’t until college that I realized that not only was that not true, but just how much of a sacrifice it was for my father to be who he was for my mom, siblings and me, when he never had who he had become.

The youngest boy of ten children from a single mother, having worked since age seven when he started picking cotton, navigating his way through the ups and downs of life, love, family matters, losing his hearing, mentoring boys and men, retiring from a 30+ year career, offering financial support and helping take care of relatives in is latter years and every thing else in between, my daddy did it all without the presence of his own biological father to guide him.

To this day I share an often turbulent mix of overwhelming love, awe and sadness for him, as…