My dad, Speed Jenner, was born in 1923, 101 years ago.  It is election day, and Dad spent many years as an election judge in our tiny community in Southern Illinois.  He was a great American.  He set the ‘bar’ high.  Both my mom and dad raised me to follow my own heart, but I find I am their living legacy, …every day.

I thought about Dad this morning on my way to vote.  He loved this country.  He was a WWII hero.  And he spent his entire life trying to leave the world a better place than when he found it.  He was very good at it.

Dad loved living.  After Mom died in 2012, Dad set a goal of outlive his longest lived sibling, Aunt Evelyn.  We had this discussion in 2014.  So, I made this chart of his other 8 siblings and their spouses ages in days.  At the time, he was about 60 days behind Aunt Evelyn who died at the ripe old age of 33,438 days.  (That is nearly 92 years).  Rather than go to tenths and hundredths of a year, it seemed easy to measure their ages in days.

Dad was the youngest of 9 children.  By 2014, he was the only name on this list that was still living.  He died in March 2019, 5 weeks shy of his 96th birthday, or 35,020 days old.

Dad was a genealogist for fun, and chronicled the families in our community and helped maintain cemeteries.  During his retirement years, he raised tens of thousands of dollars from the sale of the cemetery histories he wrote for local cemeteries to fund their upkeep.

Even after his body was failing and he could no longer walk, I watched him continue to build community and smooth out long memories of hurt feelings.

As I carve my own path, I strive to emulate my great American father, Speed Jenner.  A shout out to all the election judges making it all work today.