Descriptive Essay About My Father

I remember my father as a man who worked hard, cared for his family and taught many lessons without intending to do so. He was well respected in our neighborhood. People gravitated toward him. Most of the time he was a good natured man who told entertaining stories of his youth and growing up during the 1930’s in the segregated south, or stories about his Army service in Italy and North Africa during World War II. He was not to be disrespected nor his kids subjected to unfairness or threat of harm. That would set him off. He could unleash a venom laced tirade filled with threats of violence though I have never seen him lay a hand on anyone.
My father was from Jasper County Mississippi, the closest town was Bay Springs. Though he talked about it frequently he never took the family there during vacations, a visit I now believe would not have been a vacation for him. I believe he had no desire to show his children that life. He was as far away from agriculture and sweat and the tension associated with that life. Though it may have been different in reality, in our minds the southern United States was not a place where black people wanted to vacation. Images of southern racial

While in high school, I joined junior ROTC. The professional nature of the instructors, the discipline, the uniforms and the deep seated military traditions all appealed to me. I had decided almost immediately that I would be enlisting in the Army after high school. I told no one initially, as I was supposed to go to college. I was attending Renaissance High School, a public, yet select college preparatory school and without question the premier high school in the city. Renaissance students all graduated and nearly all attended college. Enlisting was an easy sell to my father, less so with my mother, who I assured I would eventually attend college and the Army would