My father, Russell John Larson, was born on January 31, 1910.

He passed away on November 18, 1955.

Dad had a great number of friends. He was an enthusiastic sports fan with baseball being his most favorite topic. I was told my Dad always knew the latest stats for any member of any current baseball player. As his memory was very keen, so was his sense of humor. He was always the life of the party when he was alive.

He had a serious side to him too. He came from a broken family of five brothers that grew up in a small western Iowa town called Spencer. I've been there and it still is small in my opinion. I do not know when or why he came to Chicago to live. I know very little about his extended family and upbringing. In many ways, Dad is an enigma to me.

Dad met my mother, Frances, in 1935 on a bridge near the North Western Train Station in downtown Chicago. I've also been to the approximate location on that bridge where my parents met decades ago. They married in 1936. Dad and Mom both worked during the Depression Years and into the early part of World War II.

Right after Pearl Harbor was attacked, my Dad like most men, went to join the service to fight for our country. It was at that time during the physical exam he discovered he had extremely high blood pressure and could not join the service because of that condition. His health would slowly deteriorate over the next fourteen years with periods of extended sickness and hospital stays as blood vessels burst in his body.

I was my parents third child and I don't recall ever being in want or need of anything. I was a happy child and loved the family times together. Although my father was not feeling his best during his last year of life, he was always there to spend time with my brothers and me.

I have very few recollections of Dad. I was only five at the time he died, so most of my memories are fragments of a few seconds duration at best. I watched my father as he suffered a stroke from its onset early that morning on November 18th until he slipped into a coma an hour or so later as he was placed into the ambulance. He died later that night, never regaining consciousness.

My mother, brothers, and myself never fully recovered from the loss of Dad. Our lives were permanently altered at least 90 degrees from the prior path that day long ago. I can't help but think that everything would have been different in all our lives had he lived and had his medical condition been treatable to the extent that he could have led a normal life.

Any child that loses a parent at a young age has a part of their personal and emotional development frozen in time -- forever. Other maturing chronological events take place for sure in those individuals, but some parts, deep inner regions, never recover. Those scars make their appearances in varied and difficult ways throughout our lives.

I miss my father every day of my life. I have sensed his Spirit many times and many of his personality traits are a part of me. His blood runs with mine at every heartbeat.

The day I cross over to the Spirit world, I will see Dad again. I don't pretend to know what the Spirit world is like, but it is not a place I am afraid to enter when my time comes.

Thanks Dad, for being my father.