Daddy was a teaser and a whistler. He claimed I was the one of his daughters who was easiest to tease. As a young girl I never failed to entertain him when he would distract me so he could snatch my dessert. That's one of those anecdotes he was still telling when he was 88! I "hated" his teasing and was sometimes annoyed by his whistling which was often intentionally off-key . . . . Alas, my Deanna knows that now I am a teaser and a whistler—though I prefer to whistle in tune. Daddy was both meticulous with language and one who liked to play on words. He passed those things along to me, and I will always credit my love of language to my dad's mastery of it. I may not have (thankfully!) followed his lead in whistling out of tune, but I do find myself playfully mispronouncing words at times, as he was prone to do. I reminded myself of him when Melanie and I visited his house in December, and I said "May-retta," as Daddy used to. It made me smile. One of my earliest memories of my dad is the hours and hours (as I recall) that he and I played the card game of Concentration. I loved that game, and in my mind's eye we were pretty evenly matched :-) I also loved being on the boat with my dad. In the summer we spent a lot of time on Lake of the Woods. He would put Mother and us girls on an island while he went out on the boat and fished. Sometimes I would stay on the boat with him. I got really good at putting minnows on the hooks and loved to take the fish off the hooks . . . but he never taught me to fish. When I was grown I asked him why he never taught me to fish, and he said he guessed he was too busy doing it himself. I find it interesting that apparently I didn't ask him to teach me. I was just happy being on the boat with my Daddy. I suppose if Daddy had had sons, he would have taught them to fish. But one of the things I appreciated about my dad was that I never heard him complain about his house full of females. He loved having daughters, and his affection for his girls was evident. He didn't always know how to deal with us, of course. The single memory of my growing up that most endears him to me is him sitting on my bed beside me when I was upset. I wasn't very communicative about what was wrong, and he didn't know what to say, but he would just sit with me. I have always treasured that precious memory of my dad's sensitivity to my hurt. Over the years it meant so much to me to know that about him.