My father was a quiet and gentle man, always soft spoken. I adored him for as long as I can remember. I loved the way he treated people with such respect and kindness.
On Sundays we usually took the bus into Manhattan, where we would do interesting things like ride The Circle Line. He would point out every landmark and tell us the history behind it. He loved to take us on the subway to Nathan's in Coney Island. Once there, he would give me and my sister each a five dollar bill and then he would settle into a booth for the afternoon with his newspapers.
In 1968 we went to see the movie Oliver, a Charles Dickens' classic tale of a young orphaned boy. On the walk home from the theater that afternoon he told us how he was raised in an orphanage in New York after both of his parents died. Never one to complain, he told us the nuns were wonderful to him and loved him like a mother would. As he got older he was placed in a few foster homes before he joined the Army.
When we were teenagers he still took us out each weekend and he would ask us to invite specific friends to join us and he would pay for them. We often went to Yankee Stadium to watch the baseball game and he bought us tickets in the least expensive seats. To keep the cost down he waited for us in the car where he read his newspapers and then took a nap.
He was always happy and appreciated everything he had. He felt blessed. He adored his two little girls and later his two granddaughters. He gave so much, yet he had so little. He thought he was the richest man in the world.
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