Post by linda walls

Dad's Gift Picking up any type of reading matter in rural Wayside, New Jersey in the 1940s-‘50s was a challenge. No little bookshops or libraries cropped up alongside the cornfields, dairy or chicken farms. And the local grammar school’s only lending library consisted of a small bookcase stocked by a thoughtful third-grade teacher.  Fortunately for my siblings and I, our home held rotating stacks of newspapers, magazines and books, including the classics, fairy tales, comics and Little Golden Books ready to be read and reread. Our parents were avid readers, especially Dad.  I once handed him a chunky paperback—its title long forgotten—that I’d discovered on the side of the road on my way home from the bus stop. Not often the easiest person to please, he seemed nonetheless delighted with the find, or perhaps that I’d thought of him at all and had noticed his passion. The next day he told me 150 pages were missing from the center of the book. “But you know, even without those pages, it was one of the best books I’ve ever read.” Don’t know if that was true but I believed him at the time, was convinced I’d given him the best present a daughter could give a father.  Reflecting on that day some fifty-plus years after his death I’m well aware of his greatest gift to me. After retiring from a long journalism career as a reporter, features writer, copy editor and columnist, author was added to my resume. I’ve published two books. The most recent, “Spring Lake’s Divine Connections: A Family, A Park And A Collaboration” follows the trails of innovators from Ireland, South Jersey, Philadelphia and New York intent on flipping Jersey Shore farmland into a luxury Victorian resort during the Gilded Age.    My first, “Saving Girls…And The World: The Enduring Aspirations of Maude Miner Hadden,” recounts a young woman’s efforts to stop New York City courts from pardoning sexual predators while punishing their victims, more than 100 years ago. She also clashed with the US Army over the same issue before switching gears to create world peace organizations still operating today. Both nonfiction narratives are available on Amazon.   Thanks, Dad.