Happy Father’s Day

This Sunday is Father’s Day, as we all know, and many of you across the country (and world) will be celebrating their dads this weekend with parties, celebrations, picnics or whatever tradition your family has for the big day that salutes dads.

Normally in honor of Father’s Day, I write a salute to great fathers or father-daughter teams on TV, but this year I felt the need to salute my own dad, who – sadly – my family lost to a sudden, unexpected illness back in 1994.

My dad, James Ronald Gradwell, was born on April 11, 1935 in a little town called Vandergrift, located about 40 miles (or so) northeast of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. He was the oldest son in his family, growing up with a younger brother and two younger sisters.

Before my dad was a pre-teen his family moved to my hometown of Apollo, which is located on the opposite side of the Kiskiminetas River from Vandergrift. He graduated from Apollo High School in 1953 and then went off to Germany to spend two years in the Army. While my dad didn’t see any combat or even have to walk guard anywhere strapped with weapons, he did gain valuable experience that would affect the rest of his adult life.

My dad worked for the on-base post office and once he returned home, he got a job at the Apollo Post Office, working first as a janitor. I’m not really sure how long that lasted, but my dad eventually got promoted, becoming a rural delivery man. That simply means that my dad packed up one of those big mail bags that you see all mailmen and women carting around and had his own delivery route.

He toiled away at that job for a very long time before getting promoted to an “inside” job within the local post office in my hometown, working as a window clerk. He was basically the person who waited on all the customers at the main counter. Eventually, he became head clerk and while a lot of people in my hometown area thought my dad was the postmaster for the Apollo branch, he was just the head clerk.

A few years before his retirement, computers were just starting to become an integral part of life for all businesses; but “those machines” (as he not so lovingly called computers) were not very popular with my dad. But, he took the classes to learn how work on a computer in order to do his job, but he was, as you can imagine, happy when he retired so he wouldn’t have to work on them again.

My dad retired in 1990 and, regretfully, only had four years to enjoy his retirement before his untimely death; but he made the most of those four years doing what he loved: spending time with his family (especially his three grandchildren) and putting more time into remodeling our family home – something he had been doing since 1959 when my parents moved into our modest little house in Apollo.

There isn’t a day that goes by since we lost my dad that I don’t think about him and miss him incredibly, but I am proud to be his daughter and value the time I got to have with him. To all the dads out there, cherish your kids and be good to them; and most of all Happy Father’s Day!!