This poem is about my dad who passed away in 2018. It was first published in my Echoes of Dawn at Dusk second book of poems in 2020.

Like his parents before him, he had a hard life from the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War that saw his father self-exiled leaving behind a wife and four very young children to fend for themselves. Through hard work and self-reliance he overcame adversity in three continents during his life, without a single complaint or assistance from anyone other than my mom. He lived under fascist dictators all of his life prior to immigrating to the U.S. in his late thirties with my mom and me. Serious illness, runaway inflation that caused his two businesses to fail, persecution in his native Spain for being the son of a non-fascist-sympathizer, and a roller coaster of success and failure never held him down. He persevered the old fashioned way: by pulling himself up by his bootstraps and working hard even as society crumbled around him. His word was his bond, just like his father and mother before him, and his ethical compass never wavered from true North. The world never needed more men like him more than it does now (and women like my mom cut from similar precious cloth). I will never see or be their equal.