I'm doing this for a few reasons. First is that his life is not as well documented as my Mom's, who had the fortune of hosting Enid Marone for a few weeks, during which time Enid made a booklet detailing a fair amount of Elaine's life. Further, when Bill died in 2003, it would be nearly 20 years later before Elaine also died, during which time she joined us in many family adventures, and we had the opportunity to learn more about her than we otherwise would have. Second is that as time marches on, my memories of my father will, understandably, become faint, and even lost. So I wanted to capture some of these at this time.

To begin with, Bill Braden was a good man. That short sentence captures a lot.

He was a good husband to his wife, Elaine. He took care of her, was a good provider in all respects, and he did all the traditional husband chores of a married household. He also helped Mom always with the dishes and probably very, very often with other household chores, such as cleaning and laundry.

He was a good father. I do not recall him raising his voice to me, but I sure could tell when he was serious. He never laid a hand on Ellen or me. Dad, along with Mom, got me enrolled in Little League Baseball and came to my games. The also got me to and from Boy Scouts each week and got me to at least one Boy Scout camp. In high school they supported me in tennis and wrestling, though I don"t recall them being at a match. Dad did play tennis with me, and he was pretty good. Dad got me enrolled at Purdue University to study Civil Engineering. I do not recall having any part in that decision, but - in retrospect - it was a good one. I was pretty immature as a freshman in college, and my grades reflected this. I deserved a pretty severe tongue lashing from my parents, and even some words describing what would happen to me, if they did not improve. But this didn't happen, and I wonder why; but it is too late now to ask.

He was a good soldier. He was drafted in WWII. He graduated from Officer Candidate School (OCS) - many didn't. He served as an Ordnance Officer in France and Belgium - running amminition dumps and having liberated Russian soldiiers working for him until they could safely return home at war's end. He returned from WWII to work at Western Maryland Dairy as a Comptroller. He was recalled for the Korean War; and he remained on active duty until retiring as a lieutenant colonel - never having been non-selected in any promotion process. (In other words, every time he was "up" for promotion he was promoted.)

I don't recall much in the way of family vacations. I know that one summer we stayed with some relatives at a beach house at Rehoboth Beach, and we spent a number of very enjoyable vacation weeks at Ocean City, Maryland. Plus, there was always the Independence Day Weekend Picnic at the home of Elaine's sister, Virginia, and her husband, Herman. During this time, I stayed at their house and played with my cousins, Steve, Neil, and Barry. One of the annual events at the picnic was the horseshoe contest, and Dad had to have been in the champion class. Seriously! He could throw a horseshoe flat, and with a one-and-a-half-turn to place it directly on the stake. Consistently.

Dad did help me with driving lessons, and he was probably influential in me purchasing my first car, a 1953 Chevy, for $350. In 1967 he was also very influential in getting me a direct commission as a lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers, US Army; and for the next 29 years I traveled around the world with Bonnie and our growing family.

During this time, Bill and Elaine had many annual visits to Florida, where they rented accommodations in a retirement community that was just about 100% military. Later, in the late 80s and early 90s, they also visited Bonnie and me at least twice during the times when I was stationed in Tampa.

When Dad retired from the military, it was not long before he sought employment and a home in the Baltimore area. This lead to employment at Mercy Hospital in Baltimore, and a home in the Fairwinds on the Severn community in Severna Park. That story is documented here.

As we get older, we tend to have small memory lapses. We call them "Senior Moments." When Dad had one of these, he had an expression he would use. I don't recall the exact words (maybe my Senior Moment), but they had something to do with the Golden Years, not being so Golden (as in when you realize you forget something you once knew).

Unfortunately, for some people, Senior Moments evolve into dementia, and even Alzheimer's.

Somewhere in the time period 1992 to 1993, when Bonnie and I were living at Fort Eustis and could get up to see Mom and Dad more regularly, I began to hear stories from Mom. One involved a golf buddy of my father, who had called Mom and said that she needed to remove all golf balls from Dad's bag and replace them with just one brand. Evidently Dad was having problems remembering what ball he was playing. And on another occasion, Dad went out to play golf, and instead of returning in the normal timeframe of 1PM to 2PM, he returned around 5PM like nothing happened. Dad had traveled the road from his home in Fairwinds to the Fort Meade Golf Course hundreds of times, so where who knows where he had been? Evidently just driving around. A bit scary.

Memory issues grew, and Mom got to the point where she was not sure she could care for him. So in 2002 they sold her house in Fairwinds and moved to a community in Florida called River Hills, where they lived just 10 minutes from Jay and Bonnie. They had a nice home, but, in retrospect, this was a very well-meaning move that turned out to be very wrong. (I am sad as I write this.) Dad never understood where he was and kept asking about Fairwinds. Elaine was encouraged to join a seniors group to keep her active, but she was not interested. Bonnie and I tried our best to get them engaged, but it simply did not work with Dad. And Dad had a medical problem: he kept having to urinate. This could have been caused by an enlarged prostate, or by him not fully emptying his bladder when he did urinate, or by him not recognizing that a faint urge to urinate did not require immediate action. Regardless, a urologist was contacted in early September 2003, and performed an operation on Dad designed to give him some relief from the situation. The operation went fine, but during the recovery Bill coded. The hospital emergency team revived him, but he never really recovered. After about two weeks in the hospital, he was deemed fit to move to palliative care in a nearby nursing home, but he died the first night there.

Bill's remains were turned over to a nearby funeral home that arranged for a very small service there in his memory. His remains were cremated and taken to the Maryland Veterans Cemetery in Crownsville, MD, where a very nice military ceremony was held with eulogies, and - following the ceremoy - with a luncheon for friends and relatives and in nearby restaurant.

Now Elaine Braden is buried there with him.

• I believe Dad told me he played trumpet in the school band.
• Dad must have taken music lessons at some point. If there was a piano available, he could sit down and play a quick tune. He did not have many of these "tunes" in his repertoire, but it was still impressive.
• More about piano. Dad said he played a certain six notes on the piano, and sang them to his younger brother, Bobby, just to torment him. The song was: Bob - by - is - a - ba - by. Dad said it got so that all he would have to hit was the first note to make Bobby furious.
• Dad told me that he was the long snapper on his high school football team. A long snapper is a person who plays center, and can hike the ball all the way back to the punter or field goal kicker.
• Dad and his brother Bob attended the Robert Morris School of Business in Business, and they probably both studied accountancy. They traveled to and from Pittsburgh on a train pass, because their father, John D. Braden, was an engineer on that train line. Bill's schooling was likely the factor that got him into Officer Candidate School shortly after being drafted.
• Dad had a couple of songs he liked to sing. One of them was Show Me the Way to Go Home. Here are the lyrics:
  Show me the way to go home
  I'm tired and I wanna go to bed
  I had a little drink about an hour ago
  And it's gone straight to my head

  So wherever I may roam; on land or sea or foam
  You can always hear me singing this song
  Show me the way to go home.

• Dad's idea of a good time at the beach was to sit in a beach chair under an umbrella. We teased him about that, but he didn't seem to mind one bit.
  
• When Mom and Dad purchased their home in Severna Park, it had an unfinished basement. Dad finished one side into a very nice Family Room. The unfinished side had the washer and dryer and a number of storage cabinets. It also had a Ping Pong table, and we spent many hours playing that game. Dad was pretty good.
  
• Dad and I would take some clubs and some golf balls and have chipping contests in the backyard of the Serverna Park home. Good times.
  
• One summer Dad and I worked to build a shed around the pool equipment of the Fairwinds on the Severn pool. Good bonding, but we spent some community bucks on the project. I later noted we could have bought a prefabricated wooden shed and just set it over top the equipment, but then Dad and I would have not have had that time together.
  
• Dad was a real cleaner upper. He and Mom had some copper-bottom Revere Ware pots and pans that they hung on a wall in the kitchen near the stove. I would think most people would store these type pans in a cupboard and polish the pan bottoms only occasionally. Wrong. Dad would clear the dishes and go to work with the washing (sometimes when we were still eating). And he ALWAYS polished the copper pots and pans. This was only topped by my Dad at Christmas. He had a thing about wrapping paper laying around the living room, so he was there with his big plastic trash bags, modeling a "clean-as-you-go" philosophy. And, yes, sometimes we were still in the process of opening gifts. Dad was sooo good at cleaning up.
  
• Dad and Mom had a motor boat and a sail boat at various times, and Dad and I would take a boat out together to enjoy the river.
  
• Dad and I would play catch. We would play a game where if you dropped a catchable ball, you got 1 point. Three points and you lose. Dad said, "If you can touch the ball you can catch it." I've played that same game with Robert.