Jackie Uthe

My Memories of My Father Dad grew up in a cold water flat but dated the prom queen. He traded in his 56 corvet for a station wagon and never looked back Jumping from his shoulders into Hannon Lake, knowing with absolute certainty that he would never let me float away. Riding the chains that carried the milk cartons through the dairy where he spent 31 years laboring. Being proud that my father was a union steward, and learning from him that it is the workers who move this nation. Dad never missed and election, never missed a vote. Playing tiger. Daddy was always the tiger, and being captured meant being wrapped in his arms, hugged tightly, and nuzzled with the scratch of his beard stubble against my cheek. Listening to him recall, with such pride, sitting alongside his black and brown platoon of soldiers in the colored-only section of a Georgia movie theater. When Atlanta burned on the screen during Gone with the Wind, Dad stood up among his brothers in arms and applauded. He would laugh remembering the threats hurled at them. There was courage in that actions, and dignity in his defiance. My father was a patriot. Learning from him never to make fun of someone with an accent, because, as he would say, they spoke one more language than he did. He was a student of history and understood that they probably came from lands he would never visit but had always dreamed about. Nearly losing him to a drunk driver, yet watching him forgive me when I sank his Lincoln Continental up to the hub caps in the Beaver Park skating rink. He laughed, because nobody had gotten hurt. He wispered, it was something he might have done. Watching him volunteer at my mother\’s Catholic church wearing a T-shirt that proudly proclaimed, \

To Jack and Mary’s family..I knew Mary as she volunteered at Milestones Adult Center years ago. I was the Activity Coord. She shared her readings, art, wit, humor and Grace to our Seniors, they loved her. She talked of Jack to me she loved him so much. Peace they are together again. Sympathy to you on Jacks passing.