Cheers, Dad!

Brain cancer is...

 ...celebrating Munzy.

Twenty years ago today, Hilton B. (Munzy) Munns died from pancreatic cancer.

Dear Dad,
Here are some things we'd like you to know today.

• Darrell often appreciates how much fun you had with number patterns. (9/9/99 for an exit date?  You would have liked that.)
• In the same vein, Darrell continues your legacy of  keeping track of license plates.  He wants you to know that he's on the 8L's now.
• Your three girls want you to know that we each, in different places of the country, raised a glass to you today. You'd like that.  What you might like less is that we "texted" each other about it. (Dang Internet!)
• You would like that we texted on cell phones that are smarter than that calculator you bought--the one that dimmed the lights when you plugged it in.  Our phones connect to the Internet, and they fit into our back pockets.  Remember the size of the first cell phones you bought us?
• We'd like you to know that we still all root for the Packers.  (Good season opener against Chicago, by the way.)
• The Rams came back to LA, Dad, and it isn't hard to love them as a back-up team, given your loyalty.
• Your girls hope you'd be proud of the choices we've made and the efforts we've taken to do good things with our lives.  And that we keep trying.  
• Dad, I want you to know that Darrell got cancer too. Brain cancer.  We know you'd cry with us, and that you'd be as impressed as the rest of us by the courage and humor with which Darrell faces the future.  I'm sorry I didn't tell you earlier.
• We want you to know that there are so many times we wish you could see what your grandchildren are doing.  So many adventures of so many kinds:  football and softball games, track meets, Valedictorian speeches, karate matches, singing and dancing events, bachelor's degrees, law school applications, MDs, graduate school degrees, marriages... So many adventures. 
• But we also want you to know that your grandchildren remember you.  And you taking them to get doughnuts for breakfast.  And how strangers were merely friends you hadn't met yet.
• And, despite the adventures that continued in your absence, we want to know that the good you brought to the world with your generosity and humor continues to ripple forward into each day, spread by all of the people in your circles of family and friends everywhere here and on other continents.  And we want you to know that the world is better...because of you.

Cheers, Dad!