Sure, I like to brag about the USMC and I like to brag about dad as pilot for VLMB 611 and VMFA 312. But that is the least of my favorite memories of dad. I can’t get a picture of my most favorite memory, because everything about it has been destroyed. It was at the Communion Rail at Saint Mary’s Cathedral in Saint Cloud, MN. That beautiful Communion Rail with all its granite and bronze and linins is all gone. Here’s part of a previous post:
My favorite memory of dad was back in the Summer of 1962, when I was just 2 1/2 years old, ten years after the picture above was taken. I’d walk up in the Communion line next to him with the rest of the family behind us. The first time I had made brave to follow him the rest of the family threw a fit saying that I should be carried, but I insisted I could make the long trek from the back of the Cathedral up to the front, and dad backed me up. The Cathedral had a gorgeous altar rail with the linens flipped over the top. I was always impressed by the linens getting flipped over the top, just as I was with kneeling there beside my dad, reaching up as high as I could to put my hands under the linens like he was doing. I was pretty small. I was filled with such wonder and awe and reverence as the priest and altar boy with paten would make it over to us. They would start on the Epistle side. We were always on the Gospel side. Everything worked together to instill reverence.
It was good be on my knees with dad before the Lord Jesus. Very good. That’s not just reminiscence with commentary of someone older. No. I was thinking that thought as a tiny little kid. And I can still remember thinking it from my diminutive height, especially so small on my knees. I remember how cold the granite altar rail was below the linens – even in summer. Here I am, thought I, with my dad, before God. I was totally enthralled. For the repose of his soul, please: Hail Mary…
ARISE! LET US BE GOING! 
What a good son are you, Father.