I remember vividly, the night my mother called my Aunt Alice, who was a retired Major in the Army Nursing Corps.

The only phone in the house back then, was right in the middle of our ranch home, outside my bedroom door. I woke up to the sound of my mother's frantic voice speaking loudly in the living room.

"Alice, Jack isn't feeling well. He's holding his chest and telling me he's having difficulty breathing. What's wrong with him? Is he having a heart attack?"

With that statement, I jumped out of bed and ran into my parent's room to check on my dad. I was fourteen at the time and my dad was the world to me. I saw him sitting up in bed with his pillow against the wall.

I remember asking him, "Dad, are you okay?"

He appeared to be in distress, but smiled when he saw me.

He tried to comfort me, saying, "I'll be okay. You know how mom gets, go back to bed, son. Everything's fine."

Everything didn't look fine. He had no color in his face and he looked like he was going to pass out. I got him some water, but he didn't try to drink it. My mom came back in the room and told me that Aunt Alice was coming to take them to the hospital to have him looked at.

I woke my sister up and my Aunt Dot, my mom's sister who lived with us, and we watched as Aunt Alice arrived and helped my dad to the car. He turned back to us and gave us his usual 'everything's okay' wink, and slowly made his way to the car.

My Aunt Dot, sister, and I waited for them to come back. Fourteen hours later, Aunt Alice dropped my mother off at the house. She told us that my dad had a heart attack, and they were going to keep him in the hospital for a few days for him to recover.
He was put in Intensive Care and no one but my mother and Aunt Alice could see him. My sister and I were frantic. We were worried. Intensive Care sounded ominous. Visiting hours were very limited even for our mom.

The next day, mom got a call to come to the hospital immediately. Dad had another heart attack. He recovered again from it, but over the next 12 days, he suffered another 10 heart attacks, until the last one destroyed his heart. What really made it worse was that Heart Surgeons from New York Hospital were scheduled to arrive at 7 a.m. that day to evaluate him as a candidate for open heart surgery. This was back in 1970 and a very risky procedure then.

He never came home from the hospital, and we never had the chance to hug or kiss him again. Losing him changed our lives forever. Our mom couldn't be consoled, my sister cried all the time, and I being the youngest, was in shock for a long time.

It was not the best way to begin high school, without my best friend and role model. But, it forced me to grow up rather quickly and to want to become the kind of man my father was; honest, loving, kind, and fair.

I think with all I've been through in my lifetime, I have become the kind of man my father was. I've let all those experiences make me understand what's important in life and what isn't.
The thing that makes me the saddest is that he never got to meet my beautiful wife, or his two fantastic granddaughters, walk his own daughter down the aisle, or meet her two children. But, with pride and a sense of duty to our dad, I filled in for him walking my sister down the aisle.