Family First - A Father's Legacy

My story begins in January 1980, as I tell our seven children, ages 30, 28, 26, 24, 21, 17 and 11, that my intention is for them to know more about their father. During the course of the year, I wrote about my childhood, service in the navy, how I met their mother, and my mis-adventures while trying to make a difference for the better. I had the pages that I had written copied and stapled, and I gave each of them what I had written as a Christmas present. I did the same in 1990 and again in 2000. Collectively, it is now a thirty-year account of family life in the twentieth century.

I was born on December 18, 1926, in Anaheim, California. From 1933 to 1944 I lived near or in Las Vegas, Nevada. In 1944, I dropped out of high school and joined the navy. I became a radioman on a destroyer in the South Pacific. My dad informed me that I was losing my Catholic religion and insisted I go to a Catholic college. I did, at St. Vincent College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, from September 1946 to May 1950. I married Mary Grace Wells, from Baltimore, Maryland, in September 1949. Since then, we had the seven children, I had many jobs, I was a senator for the state of Colorado, and I am miraculously still alive.