The goal of the Ice Breaker speech was to speak to the group about myself and this is what I said...
Dance With My Father
"Several years ago, Luther Vandross recorded a song entitled; "Dance with My Father.” I know that I am supposed to speak about myself, but I could not begin to speak about myself without speaking about my dad… You see, my dad saved my life…
I would like to tell you how… When I was 18 years old, I was unemployed, and I was not in college and had no direction for my life… Without going into the gory details of one particular evening, my dad came home from his job and there I was at home… my girl friend was upstairs.
Dad came home, loaded me and my girl friend into his car drove my girl friend home, (The funny part is that I had my own car) and took me to a hotel… Dad took me to a room on the second floor; he advised me that he had paid for two nights. He handed me two one hundred dollar bills, shook my hand and said, “Good luck son.” And he left me in that room. (My dad was the inventor of tough love…)
After the door closed, I started to cry… I happened to look up and see myself in the mirror and at that moment I stopped crying… And made two decisions; first, I would never cry again and that I would never be broke… I am now 54 years old and I can honestly tell you that I was wrong on both accounts.
The next day I went out, got myself a job and found myself a place to live… About a year later my girl friend and I got married; I went to school at night and earned my Associates Degree…
I am proud to say that my wife and I will celebrate our (can’t tell you which) wedding anniversary next year…
We have a beautiful 26 year old daughter who is a graduate of Indiana State University; our son is 23 and a senior at Marian University in Indianapolis IN… We have a beautiful granddaughter, “Sanyia Elyse”… and now I know why people used to say we ought to have our grand-kids first…
I enjoyed a 30 year career in the mortgage business and all that time was seniority with the same company.
My mother and brother live in Detroit Michigan with most of our family and both have been a blessing to me…
My dad developed “Early Onset Alzheimer’s Disease” and he passed at the early age of 66 years old… While Alzheimer’s is a devastating disease, it does sometime have its lighter side… dad was already in a nursing home because he had began to lose his memory and was wandering around… we would often pick him up from the nursing home on the weekends and take him home… on one such trip (even though he no longer remembered our names) we happened to pass by that hotel. Dad got a “gleam” in his eye as he pointed to the hotel, then he smiled and pointed to me as if to say, well done son, well done… My dad passed away in 2002 from complications of Alzheimer’s disease…
We miss dad very much and have many memories, but I will never forget the night that he saved my life, and I only wish that I could; “Dance with My Father Again…”"
