Fathers

Mark Carroll Espy, Sr.

Headland, Alabama

“If you don’t know your father,” Odysseus was answering in that low, calm, but fiercely firm voice of his that always seemed to carry as far as it had to, “how can you know yourself?  I am Odysseus, son of Laertes.  My father is a king, but also a man of the soil.  When I saw him last, the old man was down on his knees in the dirt, planting a tree where an old giant of a tree had finally been cut down - by his hand - after being struck by lightning.  If I do not know my father, and his father before him, and what these men were worth, what they lived for and were willing to die for, how can I know myself?”   - source

Some of my favorite videos of my dad

my sister Leslie and brother Miles are in this video

All the kids are in this one, and almost all the cousins.  My mother is in the green dress.  My grandfather Major (second from right) is holding me.  My dad appears in the video; he's wearing a navy blue suit.

My sister put out these flowers yesterday and took this image.