by Cheryl Barnette

Created on: November 23, 2009

My daddy. He was 72 years old when he left us, but I will forever feel his aura all about me for the rest of my days. He looked as if he were in his early 60's before cancer snatched the life from him. A little greying at the temples, a sprinkling of some grey here and there, but other than that, he remained mostly the dark-haired warrior of his Cherokee nationality.

My Daddy taught me the love of good books, treating each book as if it were a sacred thing. He didn't believe in marking up the pages, or if a page had been torn, it was as if one of his masterpieces was defiled. But at the same time, if a book was well-broken in, with the spine quite shabby and loose, it only meant that it was well-read, and appreciated for its contents. He stayed awake well into the dawn of the next morning, gobbling up his thickest novels to come each time. I have this image in my mind stamped and etched forever of him. This is an image of him taking a nap (although he always said he wasn't) with a book balancing on his belly, the belly becoming a bookmark of his making. The book would go up and down with each breath as he "didn't take his little naps" in between chapters and scenes.

When he wasn't reading his novels, he was reading schematics and chemical engineering volumes. He was a chemist and with the aid of other co-inventors, patented the battery for the pacemaker, and in the process, helping to save thousands of people, one of those being on of his older sisters, Vivian. So impressive were his credentials, he was nominated for the Black Achievement Award in 1987, winning the award along with me, his daughter. So modest was he, that he very rarely talked of his inventions, which were numerous.

He would invent these academic contests for his children, enticing us to get good grades, to leave no room for tardiness and absenteeism. When he was younger, he always resolved to be the best he could be, he never missed a day of school, and it was not the hype or rigamarole that a lot of well-meaning parents dish out to their children when trying to bestow some directionless guilt on them, and then exaggerating on how they walked 1,000 miles to and from school in 5 feet of snow daily. My Daddy really did live it. There's a story he told many times of how he walked the many, many miles through a snow storm, only to be greeted by the janitor and told that school was closed due to inclement weather. The kindness of the handyman warming his frozen toes in the broiler room added to this perpetual family folktale and this holiday season, his stories will be sorely missed.

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