Ten minutes to write. Less time to read.

Ten years ago today my stepfather, Ollie, died in his sleep while my Mother was taking houseguests to the airport. It was early in the morning and she left him in bed, with a kiss no doubt, whispering that she would be back soon to fix his breakfast. When she returned from the seventy-mile round trip to and from the Little Rock Airport, he was gone.

It wasn’t necessarily unexpected, since Ollie was eighty-six, a full ten years older than my Mother. He had been in decline for some time, and Mother seemed to know this too. Yet, when the moment happened and she returned from the airport to discover it, the loss was overwhelming.

Ollie adored my Mother. When other people walked out on her, he walked in. She could do no wrong his eyes, which is a rather myopic view. But it worked for them. Where she was aggressive, he was passive. Not in a negative sense, but rather in a manner of waiting until she needed support. Then he was always there. He was quiet, yet intelligent. Hard working, yet relaxed. A man of few words, yet every word counted.

After he died, I found photos of Ollie taken when he was a soldier during World War II. He was thirty-five at the time of induction and probably found military life less to his liking that working in the shoe pattern factory from which he’d retire fifty years down the road. Yet, these photos show the same stoicism, the same gentleness, and the same resolve that I came to know when he married my Mother.

I think it’s fitting he left this earth on the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, not because of his military heroics but because he reminded me that true heroics often mean simply being there, time after time after time. And he was.