I have many memories of my dad, Peter J. Garden. He had many special qualities: he was loving, compassionate, funny, and extremely intelligent. Dad loved his sports, all sports—that’s where I got my love for them. We watched football every Sunday during football season. We had a variety of company to go along with it. My mom would cook a delicious dinner for us all too. This is a memory I will always treasure. There are memories of family parties with my Dad singing and joking with family and friends, taking my brothers and me to the Harlem Globetrotters basketball games, he took me to the Ice Follies and would also go to my boyfriend’s basketball games when I was in high school. He was an all-around great dad. My memories stopped in August of 1997, when my Dad passed away at the age of sixty-six. But the ones I do have will always be there.
The things my Dad did, to me, were above and beyond at times. Like, when he had the boys in the neighborhood give him all their football helmets and he drew the symbols of their favorite football team on the helmets. Then on the weekends, we would all gather up at the land next to my Grandma Nellie’s house and play football. But not just any football, the field was chalked up with the yard lines and the numbers of those lines. My Dad was the only adult playing with them too.
When I got old enough, he would let me play. That is why I have bad knees. But when I was becoming a young lady, he told me I couldn’t play tackle football with the boys anymore—only tag. Between you and me, I still played tackle football. He taught the boys how to score the football games when we watched them on Sundays. I remember seeing all his scorebooks one time in the cabinet. It had the plays they ran, how many yards they got on each play etc... I was in awe of him. He was great with statistics. You could ask him anything about sports and he knew it. When my father was younger, he was a lightweight boxer. One Christmas he bought us boxing gloves and he taught us all how to box. We would have little matches every once in a while. I still know how to box somewhat now.
