Happy Birthday, Dad!

Today, October 27, 2012, is my dad's 92nd birthday. If you see him around town in Montpelier today, tell him "Happy Birthday!"

He is the third of three generations of men named William Reinka to be born in the month of October and he shared his birthday with his grandfather, someone I knew as "Old Grandpa" in my childhood, someone who emigrated as a very young boy from Germany to the United States. Born nearly eleven months after his parents married in January, 1920 (against the wishes of my great-grandmother), he was forever Billy Boy to his grandparents, who lived across the driveway most of his young life.

At Positive Pie for a family lunch

My dad -- what images arise in my mind when I think about him! He was a bomber pilot in the Pacific Theater when I was born (in fact he did not "meet" me until I was 13 months old!). He taught me to ice skate and he took me with him to baseball games he played long after his fledgling "pro" career was over. I remember vividly the night he won the Batting Championship in 1954, a trophy that was presented under the lights at Pulaski Park in Wyandotte, Michigan, where I grew up. It must have been about the same time I attended his college graduation. He earned two degrees going to night school while he supported my mom and three kids, finishing his MBA not long before I got my BA.


Meanwhile, he could always be counted on to produce pumpkins or whatever else was needed by the Girl Scout Troop or my school class. He served on the St. Stephen's vestry and taught Sunday School. He was an active Mason and later a leader in the Red Cross Blood Drives and Rotary. He was devoted to Gordie Howe and the Detroit Red Wings, as well as the Tigers and Lions before he had the chance to get religion and switch his loyalties to the Boston Red Sox.

Mom and Dad in 2006 when Mom got an award for Community Service

Almost always in tandem with his high school sweetheart, Irene, my dad has always offered an enviable record of service to whatever community he lived in. They worked in a homeless shelter and raised money for church outreach programs. They set up the coffee after the 8:00 a.m. service at St. Lawrence in Libertyville, IL for years. They are still hospice volunteers.


And what a sense of humor and creativity! My dad has the gift of creating an alternate reality right before your eyes that you willingly walk into and enjoy. When we were young, my brother and sister and I would be "interviewed" by a Man-on-the-Street reporter using an empty milk bottle for a microphone. Even today he sits at the counter in my sister's kitchen and starts a conversation you can imagine someone in a diner might start if you were seated on adjacent stools.  One Christmas when we all enjoyed the family tradition of a Christmas Eve talent show, he performed the "Give 'Em the Old Razzle Dazzle" song and dance number from the show "Chicago" to the delight and amazement of all of us. My poem reading paled into "easily forgotten" by comparison.

Can you tell that I think a lot of my dad? I could go on and on. I could snort with laughter, just like he does, remembering euchre games, the way he calmly explained to my baby daughter the rules of hockey, how much he loves the Three Stooges and "Some Like 'Em Hot."

Standing next to a B-24, the plane he flew on 44 missions in the Pacific in 1944-1945.

Mainly I just want to say Happy Birthday, Dad, from far away, but with all the love I can send through cyberspace. See you before long!