The song you hear is ?Once Upon A Dream.? It is so fitting to use when I think of what it was like to grow up the way I did. I look at the world around me today and I realize more and more every day of my life how incredibly lucky I was to be born to two of the most loving people God ever put on this earth.

It?s funny that when you?re a child and your life is as perfect as life can be, you don?t realize what you have. It?s just normal to you because it is all you?ve ever known. I was blessed with two parents that were probably the complete opposites of each other. The only thing they had in common was they came from large families that lived through the depression and learned how to do an honest day?s work for a living. Oh, they did have one other thing in common. They loved my sister and me (and later their grandchildren) with a love that was unconditional and eternal. Years after their deaths, it is that love that still sustains me when all else seems hopeless.

It is a remarkable feeling to never have had to wonder in my life whether I was ?wanted?; to know without a shadow of a doubt that my parents loved me until the moment they drew their last breaths. Was I a perfect child? Not even close! Did I hurt my parents and maybe even shame them at times? Without a doubt. Were they proud of me? Most of the time, but not always! Were they perfect? No, they weren?t but I wouldn?t change one thing about either of them. I take that back. I would change the fact that they were both heavy cigarette smokers. If not for that, I may still have them with me today.

I will not be able to do them justice in this small space, but I want to try to share my parents with you. I want you to know who they were, where they came from, and what they gave me. I am the sum total of many traits and beliefs I got from each of them. Some not quite as good as others, but together, they have made me the woman I am today and they continue to guide me every day of my life. My dad, Tommy, was the middle child in a family of nine children. He had two older sisters, two older brothers, and four younger brothers. My grandfather had a second-hand furniture business that the boys helped run. My dad quit school to work and help his family but you would have never known it to talk to him. He was very smart and his math skills were outstanding.

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, my dad?s best friend told him he knew where they both could get good jobs. It was working for the friend?s uncle in his bakery in Fredericksburg, Virginia. So my dad packed his belongings and left Newark, Ohio to go to Virginia. I?m not sure of the time frame involved, but it was at that bakery in Fredericksburg that he saw a young woman that he knew he had to meet. That woman was my mother. They dated until the war broke out and my dad had to go serve his country. He asked my mom to marry him and she told him she would after he came home.

My dad, five of his six brothers, and one brother-in-law went overseas and fought for the duration of the war. Luckily he was not injured physically, although his hearing was never the same from the bomb that went off right next to him, blowing his best friend to bits. The war affected him deeply, although he didn?t talk about it a lot. Once when I was in junior high and had to do a report on WWII, I asked him about it. He began to just spill out story after story about when he was overseas. Some of the stories I can remember today as clearly as when he told me. They were horrible!

Dad was very patriotic. Once, when I was young and running around with a girl who was a Jehovah Witness, I wanted to be like her. When they told us at a school assembly to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance I refused to stand, copying her. My dad found out I had done that and he was so upset with me. It was a sad upset though, telling me about the countless number of men he had seen die for that flag. As a teen of the late 1960s and early 1970s, I wore an upside down flag sewn on the butt of my jeans until he saw it and gave me that same sad look. I took it off and never did anything like that again. As I got older, I too became very patriotic and to this day I get tears in my eyes when I watch a sports event and hear our National Anthem.

My dad was a quiet man. It was funny that the guys I dated were petrified of my dad. They thought he had to be the meanest man in the world because he would barely speak to them, just looking at them silently. Nothing could have been farther from the truth. He was so gentle, so kind. He loved children and animals. I am sure my love of animals came directly from him.

Dad was the healthiest person I had ever known. He had a heart attack in late 1976 and only stayed in the hospital for a week and in two weeks was back at work in a factory, working 16 hours on his second day back! I always believed he would live to be a very old man, surely outliving my mom by 20 years at least.

That was not to be. At the age of 60, he developed a terrible nagging cough. Mom begged him to go to the doctor, but he put it off. Finally, I called and made an appointment for him and then just told him he had an appointment, so he might as well go!

I will never forget that day in October of 1978 when he came home from the doctor. I asked him what they said and he told me to wait until mom came home from work and he?d tell us both at the same time to avoid having to tell it twice. It seemed like forever before she got home. Then, in just his normal voice, he said, ?There's a spot in my right lung. I have to go to the hospital for tests.? He looked at my mom and said, ?That means cancer, right? Well, if it?s my time, I?m ready to die.? That was the last time he ever spoke of cancer or of dying.

By the end of October, he had had two surgeries. He had his entire right lung removed and he started radiation treatments that he insisted on driving to himself. He never got better and it broke my heart to watch him waste away. By early June, he was down to below 90 pounds. He never stopped talking about when he was going to be well enough to go back to work. He went back into the hospital on June 6th and never came back out.

Mom had been going to the hospital every morning to feed him breakfast. She was getting ready that Monday morning, when the phone rang and I answered it. It was the hospital. They asked who was speaking and when I told them, I was told quite bluntly, ?Your father, Hal Marriott, passed away approximately 10 minutes ago. You?ll need to come to the hospital to sign the papers for the release of his body.? A piece of me died at that moment. I had been Daddy?s Girl for 27 years. I couldn?t imagine him being gone. It was one of the hardest things I have ever had to go in my life when I had to look at my mom and tell her that my dad, the man she had been married to for 34 years, was dead.

My greatest regret is that dad didn?t live to see his only granddaughter, my daughter, Gina. He would have adored her and I know she would have been Granddaddy?s Girl. I am so much my father?s daughter. Everyone says I have his personality and his quirks, too! I?m proud of everyone of them! He was and still is my idol?every little girl?s dream daddy. I was so blessed.