Happy Birthday, Big JD!

I will never forget how you rushed through dinner, on the ship sailing from France to the U.S., so that you could rescue me from the crib in the cabin. Or how you bought me an electric blanket for Christmas (pictured in the previously posted photo of Mary and the skates), or how you sent Bill money from Vietnam to buy Mom a green winter coat for Christmas, or how you spent your own money to put an a/c window unit in her bedroom window, or how you bought us a clock for the den wall, or how you (or so you told me, at the time) called off your (1st!) engagement because your fiance said I couldn't be in the wedding, or how you sent roses to me after we had an argument when I was a little girl, or how you jumped out, at the top of the stairs, in your underwear, in front of my friends, and yelled, in a Gomer Pyle voice, "Surprise, Surprise, Surprise," humiliating me and causing me to carry a stigma all the way through school, which I'm sure is the reason I was a social pariah, or how you sound when you sing "Frankie and Johnnie" and "Once I had a dog and his name was Blue", or how you drove a cool metallic blue Corvette that you couldn't afford, or how you searched the dark woods of 64th St., with a searchlight, trying to find your wayward younger sister (by they way, ask Katherine to tell you her story about 64th Street. She's the one you shoulda searched for!) or how you let me use your stereo and headphones so I could sing The Supremes, at the top of my lungs when no one was home (oh, you didn't know about that?), or how you immediately bonded with Terry and made him feel part of the family, or how you are rising to the occasion with brotherly love, how well you can tell a story, or how you had to drive to NC to find Bobby McFarland to tell him his brother, your best friend, had died in Vietnam, when you were only about 20 years old... and on and on and on. Happy Birthday, Buzz.