Dear Dad ...

It's hard to fathom how 25 years have gone by without Leonard H. Gaba on this planet. A quarter of a century! More than half my life! How is that even possible? I still have difficulty grasping that notion.

Shortly after your death, I was given a plethora of advice by family, friends, neighbors, strangers, and coworkers, on how to deal with the concept of "moving on." Many were valid. Some were over-the-top weird. Most I've probably just flat-out forgotten by now. But one of the strongest, and most memorable, came from the lips of Tommy McIntyre, the veteran investigative reporter whom I had the luxury of working with during my years at news radio WWJ-AM in Detroit during the late 1980s. It was in the two weeks between you succumbing to cancer and me heading off to Central Michigan University for my final semester that Tommy took me aside and discussed the loss of his own father, and how it impacted him."Every day, there will be something to remind you of your father. Something you see, or hear, or even smell. And this will be a good thing," Tommy said. "He will always be with you."

Twenty-five years later, and Tommy McIntyre's commentary was so on-target, it's uncanny. There have been moments in movies, song lyrics, even occasional TV commercials, that usually come out of nowhere, and reek of Leonard Gaba in a good way.It's funny ... I still remember your voice. That deep, hearty voice with the jovial laugh. Of course, given that numerous others who knew you swear my voice matches yours, I suppose that’s not too hard to forget. But I also have the cassette of you talking with Grandma and Bubbie at our old kitchen table (October 3, 1986) as part of an assignment Charles had for school, about their lives in Poland and coming to America (their stories, not the Eddie Murphy movie) in the early 1900s. I have since burned it to a 79-minute-long CD (per Miriam's and mom's suggestion) and sent off copies to all the immediate family members. Vocally, as far as I know, it’s the only memento of that sort we have left of you, which is why it is so vitally important to make sure all of the immediate family have a copy; all of the Super-8 movies you filmed of family at holidays, vacations, etc. no longer exist.

I have a ton of what might be called "regrets" from the past 25 years (Ok, strike that - from the last 49+ years), but I'm not going to rehash all of them here. Suffice to say, I know what most of them are, and you know what all of them are, and I'm not here to open up Paul Gaba's "Infinite World Of Misery Closet" for the entire universe to tear down and comment upon. Nor am I going to post my many accomplishments here; again, I know what most of them are, and you definitely know what they are, and I've neither the ego nor the need for self-glory to toss them around like a cyberspace football.

But one thing of which I am very proud - and which I have no problem proclaiming as long and loud as possible - is to be your son. I admit, I wasn't very good at this back in the day. For someone who has been accused (guilty as charged!) of talking too loud, too fast, too long, and sometimes too much, when it came to talking with you, often times nary a sound could be heard from my lips. Whenever I screwed up (a daily activity, or so it seemed at the time), I would "clam up" and not respond when you asked me questions about what and why I had done whatever moronic teenage transgression I had committed (usually dealing with grades and/or homework). I never opened up to you (or, in fairness, to mom). Never said what was on my mind. And when you died, I don't believe I had resolved any of this with you. I never got the chance to tell you in person how much you meant to me, that you were the world to me, that I idolized you, and that I can only hope on my best day to be half the man and member of the human race as you were.

(Sidebar: I just bawled my eyes out while writing that last sentence.)

So here we are, 25 years later. I think of you, and your amazing family, and believe in my heart of hearts we've done you more proud - individually and collectively - than one could have ever thought possible. And I think of the Candy Geer illustrated poem Six White Horses your parents gave me when I was eight days old ... and the conclusion to that poem:

He's in the ground, he cannot be,
he should be right here holding me.
But Mommy says I must be good,
so I'll stand as Daddy would.

Well ... I guess I have now ... so to speak.
Love, Paul

The Fine Five - August 12, 2013
(1) My last day of freedom before teachers return to the workplace officially. (I say "officially" because I've spent much of the past four weeks in the classroom painting, unpacking, rearranging, decorating, etc.) As I mentioned to art teacher Bobbie Brubaker today, it's somewhat obvious from the way my room appears that i'm not a professional painter. Not yet, at least.
(2) Did get my work computer reformatted to Windows 7, which means I'm kinda-sorta up-to-date in terms of the files and software I need. Yay modernistic technology!
(3) The summer reading assignment for my incoming English 3 juniors was The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I really should probably grab a copy and start ... oh, I don't know ... reading it myself one of these days.
(4) My film appreciation class twisted my arm really hard last spring to watch the movie edition of The Hunger Games ... which had so many plot holes and illogical moments, I could have driven my now-defunct 1997 Toyota RAV 4 through it without a scratch. (And remember, the RAV 4's engine came to a sputtering demise in mid-June after nearly 16 years; so hypothetically, a vehicle that is incapable of being driven could have been driven through the plotline easily. Ponder that reality for a second or two ...)
(5) Twenty-five years ago last night was the last time I ever got plastered to the wall. I mentioned this a few days ago here; I was visiting Tim Olson and his family in Harbor Springs for a few days, and that night (it was a Thursday), we walked aimlessly around the Nub's Nob community and just got ourselves hammered beyond belief. I have a fuzzy memory of what exactly we consumed, and I'm pretty sure that fuzzy memory would be unreliable as a source if asked to testify under oath. (For the record, it's one of only a handful of times I ever got to that point in my life, and it will likely never happen again.) Six the next morning, the phone rang, with my mom on the other end, and within an hour I'd showered, Tim had made me breakfast, and I was on the road for a 7-hour-long drive back to Detroit ...