Blog 403 – 09.13.2016

One of the finest and most enjoyable roles I have been allowed to play in this life is the role of Daddy. I will forever love and be grateful to Sandra Kanold Heyen for giving me my daughter Emily and for sharing her two sons, David and Ben with me, and also to Linda Lee Stokes for giving me my son Jonathan.

I first dreamed of being a dad when I was nineteen years old and spending almost an entire year in the Republic of South Vietnam. At that time I was married to my first pretty wife Barbara Ann Barefield. We had snuck off to get married secretly just six days before I left for Vietnam. We were both so young and it was over before I got back and despite the request I made of her in over three hundred letters from Vietnam to “Pray for our baby” there was no baby born to our brief union. Barbara did later get to have a son and a daughter with her second husband.

Three years later at Gulf Coast Bible College in Houston, Texas I met a beautiful young girl, Linda Gail Walton, from Laurel, Mississippi. About eight months later we were married and were together for about three and a half years. No babies.

After another three years I married again. Sweet Sandra already had two handsome young sons, David and Ben. Together we made our precious little angel, Emily. I loved David and Ben and will always think of them as my sons but the bond between a daddy and his little girl is about as close to heaven as any relationship gets. Sandra and I too divorced after about seven years of marriage.

I married the lovely Linda Lee Stokes a couple of years after that and together we made Jonathan and watched him grow into a handsome intelligent young man. As I said in the beginning of this piece I will always love Sandra and Linda for allowing me the great and wonderful privilege of being a dad. My daughter Emily left this world four years ago and my first son, David, last Spring. It is a horrendous thing to have your children die before you do. Every parent hopes their children will survive them. Too often that is not the case. David and Emily taught me far more than I taught them as have Ben and Jonathan.

I have loved and continue to love a lot of people in this life. Many of them including my parents, my first wife Barbara, David, and Emily have already played their scenes, taken their final bows, and exited the stage. One of may favorite songs, No Matter What, says:

“No matter what they tell you
No matter what they do
No matter what they teach you
What you believe is true…
I know I’ll love forever
I know no matter what.”

A little angel named Emily taught me to love like that as have all the people I have loved and continue to love in my life. If you are reading this you also are one of the many loves of…

Your friend and fellow traveler,.
David White