To You … With Love

Michelle and Melissa were better known in their household as George and Sam.

These were the names that he called them when he came into the house, from work, from golf, from wherever and whatever had kept him away from his girls. Teasing them with the boy's names that they will still answer to when called.

A great Dad with an eagle eye on their education as he watched their grades and achievements from kindergarten to college. Missy didn't get her two majors with Suma Cum Laude by accident; the work began in the heart of the Father who had full intentions of preparing them to have a good life. Michelle was little but mighty, like her Father she came with a fire inside and he loved telling of her "deeds and misdeeds" especially when she blacked the eye of a girl a foot taller than she was and he loved saying "Go Get em George!" There were days of grounding for Missy, Michelle was always grounded. She had the urgency to be twice her size. So did John.

His childhood was decorated with a few hickory switches here and there. He was a straight-A student and taught himself to play a 12-string guitar, allowing his music to be heard. He was always his older sister's "charge to keep" and his younger sister's hero. Together when they were teenagers they sang their songs. It was the sounds of "My Sweet Lady", "Where have all the Flowers gone?" and "A Hundred Miles," that drifted through the rafters of the Richardson's home.

Not long ago, through the technology of today I found the name of Dr. Jane Bystraka, who is now Head of Archeology at the University of Arizona. At a fish fry when she was doing work in Calhoun County, around a campfire by the river, John shared the journey of these students from Northwestern University as they made music in the dark.

He loved the Beatles, Jackson Brown and ran the streets of a throbbing world.

For his Mom and Dad, he was more than he ever knew. He was our Son, who drove too fast, played too loose at times, loved hard and eternally, and thank God the last words I heard my him say were "I love you, Mom." Perhaps, in a land where we have never walked, he has found the answer to "Where All the Flowers Have Gone."

In Loving memory of my Son, John William Richardson (1953-2012)

Rev. Avis Richardson (retired)