My first and still number one hero is my father, James George
Baily. I love him to pieces with all my heart even though he’s gone where I
can’t hug him anymore. I still talk to him and think of him daily. He was an
Englishman, born and raised in the Cockney east end of London, and evacuated to
the countryside during WW II.
During the German blitz of London, my dad, in his true spirited
fashion, made the most of his new situation in a country manor, enjoying
picking fresh fruit and running around on the grass. At only age 10, he made
sure to take care of his little brother, Vicky, who was about 6 or 7; while
they were evacuated and away from any parental supervision, my dad worked as a
paper boy and a choir boy to give his brother pocket money for the bakery and
sweet shop.
This
is the East end of London where my dad and his four brothers and four sisters grew
up. There were only four of them during the war, and this little fellow, with
his sisters, is about the same age as my father was.
Attribution:
By Sue Wallace at en.wikipedia (Transferred from en.wikipedia) [CC-BY-SA-2.0
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], from Wikimedia Commons
Here’s
a more central part of London during the German blitz.
Attribution:
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it is a work
prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of
that person’s official duties under the terms of Title 17, Chapter 1, Section
105 of the US Code
Drawn from rainy London to sunny southern California, my father
ended up living most of his adult life there, playing tennis, still enjoying
fresh fruit, skiing in the Sierra Nevada mountains, and being a wonderful
father to my sister and me. He is a hard act to follow, but I think all of my
fictional heroes have some of my father’s finer qualities, as well as his more
adventurous traits in them. And as he was always a gentleman, I make sure that
my heroes treat women well.
