This is the short version of my Dad's story.

There once was a boy named Jeff. He was born poor in Alabama in 1928. He didn’t know he was poor because everyone was poor. On Christmas he got socks. His older sister saved all year and bought him a rifle. One day he killed a rabbit. His mom killed chickens in the back yard and his dad drank bootleg whiskey. He played baseball, basketball and football and played them well. He learned how to type. At sixteen he graduated from high school and left home to join the Marines and fight in World War II. He was too young to become a Marine so he became a Merchant Marine and with a rifle he road banana boats up and down the Panama Canal where the spiders were bigger than your out-stretched hand and would climb onto your face when you slept. For two years he did this and was lonely and scared. He became a Marine. He was the only one who could type so he became the company clerk. He sailed on many war ships in the Pacific. While there he boxed and beat many men bigger than he. Because of this an officer approached him at the end of the war and asked if he knew how to play football. This officer’s father was the athletic director at the University of Maryland and was looking for a few good men. When he got there the coaches thought he was too skinny and would never make the team. As a freshman he played as an outside linebacker, center on the offensive line, and long-snapper. They went undefeated and won the Gator Bowl. He was awarded a scholarship and had the GI bill. He worked summers building the Chapel and the Stadium. He joined a fraternity and befriended the first rich person he had ever known. His name was John and he took him home on holiday to his family’s cattle ranch and introduced him to a world he had never known existed. They went to Ocean City and had fun at the beach. He did well in school, won another bowl game and fell in love with the most beautiful girl on campus. Her name was Penny. His junior year they won the Orange Bowl and she fell in love with him. He wrote most of her papers and she took him to meet her parents at the Kenwood Country Club. Her dad was a lawyer and lobbyist and was not easily impressed. In the summer they got married at the Chapel he helped build and had a reception at her sorority house. It was very hot. His coach was really mad. His senior year they won the Sugar Bowl for the 1951 National Championship. He went home to Alabama and they had a parade. He got a job during the day and went to the George Washington Law School at night and Penny was a teacher. Jeff and Penny had a baby girl and named her Carol. Jeff got his JD and they moved to Connecticut. He road the commuter train into the big city and worked for the Lumberman Association. They had another baby daughter and named her Karen. At three years old, Carol got spinal meningitis and almost died. She lost her hearing to the fever. They moved to Cleveland and Jeff became the Executive Director of the American Metal Stamping Association. They had two sons and named them Jay and Andy. It was the happiest years of Jeff’s life. At eight years old, Karen got leukemia. She suffered greatly and was so very brave. We moved to Maryland and Jeff became a lawyer and a lobbyist. Jeff and Penny had dinners at the White House. We had a big house in Potomac and a beach house in Ocean City. We bought a boat and named it the Happy Happy. Late that first year, at sixteen years old, Karen died. I was ten. My mom and dad and sister and brother were so very sad.