Community Corner
Happy Father’s Day From Brenda Haynes-Wallace
"Thank you for being you...unapologetically tough, but always strong and loving!"
In celebration of Father's Day on Sunday June 17, we asked Patch readers to write a letter to their father and let us deliver it. This is Brenda Haynes-Wallace's letter to her dad:
Good morning Dad,
I love you. I thank you. From the bottom of my heart and the depths of my soul, thank you.
Thank you for: basketball knowledge and March madness fun, baseball knowledge and Saturday afternoon Cubs games, subscribing to Reader’s Digest when my imagination carried me through the stories and allowed me to build my vocabulary, vanilla tobacco-in-the-pipe back porch talks, the August car trips south, picking me up out of the red ant hill, talking me through Maurice’s funeral while holding Momma’s hand the whole time, teaching me how to drive big cars, not chopping my head off for leaving your car in the middle of the street with the driver door open and walking the rest of the way home (you were teaching me how to turn correctly, while using colorful language and my little feelings were hurt), my first car trip with just you and me, being vulnerable enough to tell me why and how you left MS at the young age of 17, the pick-ups and drop-offs during my college days in the cab of your truck, being tough on my boyfriends, being a human GPS, making sure your cars were maintained properly so everyone could drive them at anytime (you so believed in cars being road ready), paying the mechanic whenever the cars needed servicing even though we drove them all week while you worked, never freaking out over car accidents, being grateful we were alive, always saying machines can be replaced but humans could not, for believing in me and giving me the best career advice (which has sustained me to this day 31-plus years later), hours-long talks after I got married, replacing the furnace, repairing the roof and being you...unapologetically tough, but always strong and loving!
Not all superheros wear capes! Happy Father’s Day, my hero! Count your blessings...name them one by one!
—Brenda Haynes-Wallace
See all Father's Day letters here.
Image Credit: Brenda Haynes-Wallace
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