Seven things about my father:

1. He was so outraged by the blatant racism in the Navy during WWW II when he was stationed on a South Sea island that he (white) forged papers and got himself transferred into the "colored" stevedore unit that got all the shittiest jobs.

2. He paid my mother's grad school tuition with winnings from a lottery ticket and a horse race, then supported her while she was in school with his Navy salary supplemented by crap game winnings.

3. He was fluent in Mandarin.

4. Long after he became president of an engineering firm, he continued to do volunteer plumbing and carpentry for his causes. He built a free medical clinic in his city.

5. He created ornamental metalwork. A poker palace commissioned a sculpture of a dragon from him, and it is now officially "public art" in the city where it lives.

6. One of his biggest regrets was that he didn't study classical ballet. He did, however, take tap dance lessons at age 60.

7. I miss him.