If he had lived, Roy W. Smith, my father, would have been 92 years old on the forth of this month. He died in 2005, so was “only” 86 years old at the time of his death. He was quite a guy, and a man of many talents. Parenthood was not at the top of his list, but he actually did pretty well, especially considering the example that HE had.
I am going to go into some things late in this post that some might find distasteful, but that is the reality. They do NOT involve anything like “family secrets”, so no lurid stories about child abuse of anything like that. Dad was a human being, with virtues and vices, just like the rest of us. But any kind of child abuse, verbally, physically, or sexually was never known by me. Let us put a close to anything like that.