If there is one story that you read here, I would like for it to be at least this one. I was unable to publically express my feelings about my father the other day, so I will try my best here.

My father was a warrior and a god to me. Every little aspect of his life and his self always had some way of fascinating and inspiring me. He is the reason I have a passion for computers, video games, rock music, and so much more.

As a kid he always pushed me to see how much or how quickly I could learn and pick things up. I remember when I was 5 or 6, my family stayed at my grandmother’s house for the weekend. One of those days we were playing gin rummy, or rummy 500. After we had finished playing cards the topic of what I was learning in school came up, specifically math. I was asked by my aunt and my dad if I had learned about multiplication yet. I had said no, so they chose to show me how it worked with the playing cards as visuals. After about a half hour, I was already able to do my times tables up to maybe 12x12. I had mastered something that is normally taught to 8 and 9 year olds over the course of weeks, in less than an hour. I had already adopted my father’s sense of learning, mastering material, and technical thinking. From that day forward I had a huge lead ahead of my fellow classmates when it came to math and science. An educational advantage by the age of 6, I don’t know how to emphasize how amazing that is.

Around the same age, shortly after we moved to Wenonah, he was sorting through boxes and ran into something he wanted to hand down to me, his Atari and collection of games. He showed me how to connect it to the TV, how to maintain the hardware, and of course how to play and use the controllers. I became a wiz with it that same day. I don’t remember the first video game I ever played, but I definitely remember the system, the Atari 2600. From that day forward, video games were one of my life’s passions. I still have the console and games intact in an old Checkpoint box in my room.

I don’t think it was much long later that I started to become exposed to my dad’s work life. Eventually we had a large gray/white desktop in our rec room, or at least I finally realized it. Of course already loving TV and video games, this seemed like a perfect hybrid of both. I needed to learn how to use it, what it could do, and of course how to play with it. I was beyond fascinated how he knew how to use it so well, memorizing all the dos/command prompt command lines, making complete copies of video games from a relative’s house onto a floppy and taking it home, and organizing dozens upon dozens of floppies and discs that to me seemed like was all the information in the world and was super important. From then on I always had a passion for working with computers in one way or another. He even taught me how to build computers. A little over a year ago I had bought him a pack of Guinness and asked if he wanted to have a father son moment and help put together the parts I had ordered and delivered. He laughed and said sure.

It seemed like as a kid, whenever we went to some family gathering, everyone kept telling me the same thing. “You look so much like your dad at his age.” Every time I answered the phone everyone mistook me for him. It was frustrating and flattering. I was becoming the mold of my father is nearly aspect. I had his interests, his thirst for knowledge, passion for technology, his physical appearance, and later on even his voice.

Throughout high school he kept enforcing that he wanted me to get the best grades possible and to not worry about getting a job. He felt that working too young might push around priorities and would reflect on my education and future opportunities. He had told me that he used to pump gas and had other little jobs that he didn’t want to ever see me do, and that working interfered with him completing college and earning a degree. So fast forwarding a number of years, I had graduated high school in the top 10 percent of my class, earned a number of high paying grants for college, earned my associates degree while being the top in my field, and also graduated from Rutgers with a bachelor of science degree in computer science with honors and being the top in my field once again. I wanted to make my dad proud and I certainly did with stars. I had recently learned that he loved bragging about his college graduate son. “He’s not the roadie, he’s the musician.”