Dad's Birthday

Dad and I, Thanksgiving 2009

My heart is heavy today, and I would like to share some thoughts with you about a wonderful man who had a profound, positive impact on my life. This post will be personal in nature.  If you don't like mushy reflections, you had better stay clear of this one.

Today would have  been my father, Harry Hughes', 76th birthday.  As a young boy, and then as a young man, husband, and father, he was my hero.  Please don't misunderstand me. I know he wasn't perfect and that he didn't have superpowers; but he was my dad.  He loved my mother, my sisters and me unconditionally.  He was kind, generous, and always willing to help.

He was born September 11, 1937 on the family farm just outside of Waynetown, Indiana which had been in the family for generations.  It absolutely broke his heart when his sister and he sold it in 2009 due to his poor health.  Dad's mother loved and doted on him and his sister, but I have learned that his father was a bit of a tough cookie--not one to readily show his emotional side.  I never knew my paternal grandmother.  She died six months before I was born of cervical cancer.  My grandfather died when I was fifteen years old.

Harry Hughes, autumn 1954

My dad loved sports, but basketball was his absolute favorite.  He played high school basketball for the Alamo Warriors, a small rural high school in west-central Indiana.  He graduated in 1955, and loved to talk about how the small town Milan High School Indians won the Indiana State Basketball Tournament in 1954.  Milan was the smallest school to ever win the title, and he always shared that Alamo was smaller than Milan. The picture to the left was taken in the autumn of 1954 at the beginning of his senior year's basketball season.  It's hard to believe that skinny kid grew into a 6''3" 230 lb. man.

Retirement picture from JC Penney

After graduation from Alamo High School, dad matriculated as a freshman at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana in September of 1955.  He met my mother on campus in 1956.  They would eventually marry on June 4, 1961.  Dad graduated from Purdue in May 1959 with a B.S. in Agricultural Economics.  He then spent 6 months on active duty in the US Army and 5.5 years in the US Army Reserve. In January of 1960 he went to work for the JC Penney Company in store management.  He would work for them until his retirement in January of 1998.  If he had a vice, and I'm not sure that he did, it was a near fanaticism for the Purdue Boilermakers.

My two sisters and I all played sports throughout elementary school, junior high, and high school.   We also played in the band and were involved in lots of school and church activities.  I cannot remember one time when I looked out into the crowd, home or away, and didn't see his encouraging face staring directly at me.  Don't get me wrong, I am sure that there were times when he simply could not make it to a function or a game, but he was at such a huge percentage of them that I have forgotten the ones he couldn't make it to.

Dad loved his family with a passion--I will never forget the day that I was shipping out to spend a year in South Korea during my time in the US Army.  Mom and dad drove me to the airport in St. Louis to see me off.  I will always remember that day because tears streamed down his cheeks and he held me tightly in a protective hug, only reluctantly, at the urging of my mother, letting me go...

He delighted in his children and LOVED being a grandpa. He never had the opportunity to meet his youngest grandchild, my younger sister's daughter Arwen, and I fear my son Isaiah and nephew Hugh's memories of him will fade over time...

Dad with my daughter Rebecca, Feb. 1999. 

Holding my son Isaiah, Dec. 2006.

Dad with Rebecca, Thanksgiving 2010  He was very sick.

My father; no...my dad, died on January 30, 2011 after a prolonged battle with a rare bile duct disease that had turned into full blown cirrhosis of the liver.  It robbed him of his dignity and broke his body...but it could never break his spirit or his love for his family.


I miss him daily and tears still occasionally stream down my cheeks when there is something in particular on my heart that I want to share with him.  I always valued his wisdom and delighted in his huge, loud, laugh.

I suppose that I still grieve my dad's death--but my grief is not rooted in despair.  Rather, it is a grief for the brokenness of humanity.  We live in a world so completely broken by the power of sin that death, sickness, hunger, war, etc...are commonplace and we simply seem to accept them as the norm. But this is not what God intended when he created the heavens and the earth.

I am thankful that my dad's soul is at rest in the presence of the Lord Jesus. I am utterly confident that he is there because he readily confessed Jesus as Lord, and I trust in the promises of the Lord.  But I yearn for the day when Jesus returns to earth bodily/physically.  All of creation will be made new and there will be a bodily resurrection of the dead.  Those found to be in Christ Jesus will live for all eternity in the new Jerusalem; that is, the restored creation. I am eager to hug my father tight on that day and simply say, "Thank you for everything dad.  I love you, and have missed you..."

 I am eager for that day.  I am hungry for that day.  Come, Lord Jesus, Come.

Here is a link to his obituary if you are interested in reading it: http://www.hannibal.net/article/20110131/NEWS/301319819/?Start=1.