Ninety on November 6

LTC (ret) Robert E. Campbell
November 6, 1926-October 11, 2010

Dad would have been ninety today.  Born in 1926, he paid close attention to dates and events.  His memory of them was uncanny.  He could tell you instantly when he joined the military (on D-Day), when he saw MacArthur in the Philippines, when he was in charge of logistics for the San Francisco visits of Nikita Khrushchev and Charles de Gaulle, when we landed in Europe in 1961 (the day the Berlin Wall went up), when he lost fellow soldiers in Vietnam, when he and business partner were the copy shop for a kid named Bill Gates and his start-up company Micro-Soft, and countless other dates and events that spanned his interesting and important life of service.

He kept a set of pocket-sized datebooks, in which he made a daily entry, so he could also recite important days and events in the life of our family . . . our comings and goings, celebrations, and important events.  The photo here was taken ten years ago today, on his 80th birthday, when his family dedicated a bench to him at the Veterans Memorial Park in Albuquerque.

Today, the anniversary of his 90th birthday, would have been a red letter day in his datebook.  For we who love him, it still is.  Happy birthday, Daddy!