I’ve started this project maybe 100 times over the last 20 years. But I always quit because it got too emotional for me to work on.  Here’s the deal: I never knew my father.  In 1974, he fell sick with acute lymphoblastic leukemia and passed away in the space of two weeks, leaving my mom, Arlene, a widow at twenty-six, with two kids under the age of three. He was thirty-one years old.

The only things that clued me in to who he was were stories from family members, and letters that he wrote to my mom while he was stationed in basic training and overseas during the Vietnam War.

When I was a teenager, I noticed there were no pictures of me as a toddler. When I questioned my mom she simply said, “I didn’t feel like taking any pictures after your father died.”

 So, yeah, I’ve had questions.