My dad and I were very big Notre Dame football fans and went to one game a year always picking a new location that we had never been to before. This year he wanted me to take my nephew who my mom and dad have raised since he was six months old and is now twenty-two. My nephew and I chose the Army-Notre Dame game in South Bend, what could be better than my favorite team playing my home town from West Point. My dad was so excited for the two of us and took my nephew shopping for some warm clothes for the trip just before he died. After my dads memorial my nephew and I really didn't want to go on the trip, it just didn't feel special anymore so we gave it a few days to think about it. We knew that dad would have wanted us to go, he really was excited for us, so we boarded the plane from Washington to South Bend feeling very empty inside. We went to the pep rally on Friday night and got the best surprise of all and it became clear why we went to the game after all, the Golden Knights were there and would be jumping into the stadium on Saturday and in a crazy way it made us feel so close to dad at that moment. My nephew and I waited to talk to the Knights after the pep rally and met a very nice soldier, SFC Vessels. I want to point out that she is a very nice woman and treated me very well, I think I may have been a little excited at the time and she handled it very professionally. We rushed back to the hotel after the pep rally and called my mom to tell her about meeting the Knights, she couldn't believe it, she was so excited for us and it made her week. The Knights performance was awesome by the way, they all hit the center of the field if I recall, something I used to give my dad shit for when his missed at the Army games at West Point.

I know people say this a lot but I really had the best dad in the world, I could tell him anything and he would just listen so calmly without losing his temper, and he had the greatest job in the world with the Golden Knights and coaching at the Point. I was at the drop zone everyday of my life while we lived at West Point, something my friends would be so jealous of because their dads had boring jobs teaching or paper pushing. When I would get out of school my dad would be parked out front in a truck from the motor pool waiting for me with a Hershey bar with almonds and a cold coke. He would include me in everything with the team from measuring the cadets boot at landing to the center of the disk to eating box lunches with the cadets and packing up all the equipment. I could honestly go on and on about how great he was, I just love my dad so damn much and will miss him forever.