Happy Birthday Dad!

Today would have been my father’s 80th birthday. A lifelong Hamiltonian, his only prolonged time spent elsewhere was a military stint in Germany during the Korean Conflict. But his father was from Reading and his mother was from the Westside. My grandfather moved the family from Reading to Hamilton in the ‘20’s to work at the Mosler Safe Company which relocated from the Cincinnati riverfront in 1891 to what would become East Hamilton.

I have many Cincinnati memories of my father. He was the parent that took us to the Cincinnati Zoo and the old Natural History Museum. He graduated from Xavier so we went to a lot Xavier basketball games at the Cincinnati Gardens. I don’t remember much before the Pete Gillen era. I also have fuzzy memories of going to look at Christmas lights and a train display in Price Hill . . . or maybe Fairview. I can’t remember where exactly. I just remember a big hill with a lot of steps and the train was on the front porch.