“A gentleman – and a gentle man.

“A gentle man. He never drank a beer and never touched a cigarette, in his entire life. He was proud of that. He rarely swore and I remember only a few times when I was a child that he lost his temper.

“And a gentleman. He would awake in the middle of the night to provide medicine for a sick child—compare that with today’s health care—and though he grumbled a bit, he would get up from supper many, many evenings to fill prescriptions when a clerk in the drug store attached to our home would ring a bell.”

I wrote—and said—the above about my father.