From Germany with Love

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My father and I did a lot of talking about his dad, Henry V. Beck, while we were in Berlin. We wanted to see where he was at this extraordinary time of his life as an army man stationed overseas. I have some of these old photographs – we always love to compare how much my brother looks like him – and a very real and moving poem he wrote while so very far from the ones he loved. These artifacts sat for decades in an old army trunk in his closet and are now some of my most beloved possessions of this thoughtful and very elegant family man.

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Artifacts of my Papa

While in Texas visiting with my Dad I went and sat at my Papa’s desk. Although he is no longer with us it doesn’t change how much we love him. My Dad kept some of the things left by my Grandfather in their place as he had them. A little stamp collection, random keys, a well of ink, old accounting papers, banking bags, business cards, the notch in the wood where his chair hit the desk time and again, a traveling type writer and rubber stamps hanging as they were. When you open one of the drawers the smell of his old pipe billows out and you feel he is still there. As a little girl I used to come in his office and sit in his lap while he worked behind this desk, I’d give anything to be able to do that again.