There is a particular kind of understanding that only arrives with time. As children, we watch our fathers without really seeing them. It is only later, sometimes much later, that the picture resolves, and we begin to recognize how much of who we are was shaped by who they were.
That recognition is the reason for this collection of letters. We asked three members of the Hillside family to reflect on their fathers, each of whom has passed, and to put into words the thing that mattered most. Not an inheritance in the legal sense, but rather habit of character; a phrase that turned out to be true; a way of treating people that quietly became their own.
What emerged were dedications to three very different men, and yet the same thread runs through all three letters: the discovery, in adulthood, that a father's influence does not end. It simply changes form, and continues.
We share these letters in time for Father's Day, in the hope that they prompt a memory, a phone call, or a quiet moment of gratitude of your own.
One: A Letter from Alexandra De La Garza, Internal Development and Engagement Manager at Hillside Memorial Park
Dear Dad,
If people had to describe me in a few words, they would probably land on stubborn and funny. I do not mind either one, because both of them are yours. You were funny in a way that could make a whole room chuckle, and you were stubborn in the way a person is when they hold convictions about what they believe.
What I think of first, when I think of you, is your moral compass. You taught us to have a strong sense of who we are, and to act on what we knew was right regardless of who agreed with us. Instead of doing this through speeches, you did it by living that way, every day, in plain sight.
You spent your whole career in human resources. Strangely, our shared work has become one of the closest connections I have to you. When I was younger and something at work felt unfair, I would bring it to you, and you would remain neutral and help me see the situation clearly. When I was weighing a complex situation, you helped me step back and use my principles to do what I knew was right. I think about that more than almost anything else you taught me.
You also taught me to work hard and to be able to stand on my own. Over and over again you told me and my sister how important it was that we never had to rely on anyone else to take care of us. You helped us understand that being able to provide for ourselves was its own kind of security that made our relationships stronger. You made sure we went to school, that we created purposeful careers, and that we always looked out for each other. I understand now how much foresight that took.
There is one phrase I will always hear in your voice: “You have to pay attention.” I didn’t understand it then, but now I think it might apply to everything after all. Where I put my attention has turned out to be one of the most important choices I make. You knew that long before I did.
The last years with you were hard. It is so strange to be with someone in the room and already miss them. You had been my steady place, my one constant, and watching that change asked something of me I was not ready for. But I want to say the honest thing too, which is that the long goodbye gave me time I didn’t know I needed. Our relationship deepened and so did our conversations. I got to tell you plainly how grateful I was for everything you did, because everything you did was for us. I got to ask questions I could not ask before and received answers that brought profound and unexpected peace.
Besides your words, my favorite parts of you that remain are the small, ordinary moments I recorded on my phone: playing board games, watching tv, things no one would think to film. I am so grateful I did. When I miss you, I can go back and watch, and you are still there, still laughing.
I try to do the right thing. I try to live in a way that would make you proud. When something absurd happens at work, I still catch myself thinking, what would Dad do, and most of the time it makes me laugh, because you were so wonderfully no-nonsense that I can picture exactly the look on your face.
Thank you for all of it, Dad.
With all of my love,
Alex
Two: A Letter from Lori Larcara, Director of Marketing and Community Engagement at Hillside Memorial Park
Dear Dad,
Even today, I see you at your healthiest, out in your garden in La Jolla. You loved being in the earth so much that Becky would only let you back in the house through the garage, so you could change in the laundry room before you tracked the whole day inside. It always made me smile. Here was this man with an engineer's mind: precise, black and white about everything, and the garden was where all of that softened. I think the dirt grounded you. I think it brought you back to where you came from, the kid from upstate New York, the first in his family to go to college.
You were a force of nature. You put yourself through school, you graduated with honors, you started your own company, you held patents. And the story I love most is how you chose engineering in the first place. You walked into the counseling office not knowing what to study, and you asked which major was the hardest. While most people ask for the easy road, you asked for the hard one on purpose.
But the thing people did not always get to see was your tenderness. You had an enormous affection for children and (maybe even a bigger one) for dogs. To me you were formidable; to them you were just “Poppy.” I still laugh about the night at the dinner table when you kept slipping food to the dog, and your wife said, no more. So you waited a beat… and did it again, and then looked at her with the rueful face of a naughty kid who knows he’s been caught. It was a sight to see this driven man, an inventor, just quietly doing what he wanted to do in the sweetest possible way.
The kindness ran deeper than I understood as a child. It was only in your last years, partly because of the work I do, that I learned about the organizations and charities you supported. Over the years, you gave to so many Jewish organizations and causes for children. You never said a word. I understand now why it was so important to you to give my children the gift of a Jewish education. It shaped them into people who see the world with real kindness and who stand up for those who do not have a voice. Seeing you on the bima with my daughter at her bat mitzvah, and with my son at his bar mitzvah, I knew you were the one who opened that door for them.
You did that for me too of course, in a different way. You were tough, but fair, and never cold. You challenged me to work for things so that I could understand what it meant to earn pride in an accomplishment; building me up to give me independence and trust my own judgment. Whenever I’m in doubt, I still remember the Mark Twain you quoted at me: that most of what people worry about never happens, so make a good decision, do your best, and do not waste your life in worry.
The work I do at Hillside gave me something I will always be grateful for. It gave me the language and the courage to have real conversations with you at the end, to ask about your childhood, to talk to you as an adult and not only as your daughter.
I do not think about you in the past tense, Dad. When I lost my sweet Snoopy in December, the last thing I told her was to look for Poppy, that you would have treats waiting. I know she found you, because I find you in my heart, in my mind, and all over my life constantly.
I love you,
Lori
Three: A Letter from Bob Silver, Family Service Counselor at Hillside Memorial Park
Dear Dad,
To this day, I think you’re probably the only person I know who used the pocket protector on his dress shirt. Sometimes, when think about you, I can still see the tiny plastic rainbow of pens peaking over the edge of your shirt, tucked in next to a little comb.
During the day you pulled them out to grade the tests of students in your physics and math classes: a Chicago school teacher who served his community and went to his bowling league after school. The smell of aerosol shoe disinfectant and machine oils still brings you back.
I didn’t pick up your bowling, but I did inherit your dry sense of humor. My kids tell me I have the exact same one, the same corny jokes you used to make. Telling the waiter to give everyone's check to one of us. Pointing at every little creek we drove over and announcing it was the mighty Mississippi until none of us believed you anymore. Now I smile when I make those same jokes to my kids.
You were also always in our corner, sometimes defiantly so. In the early seventies, we couldn’t wear jeans to school. When my sisters wore them anyway and the principal called you in for a meeting, you showed up in a full jean jacket and jeans. You were a rebel in your own quiet way, and supportive of all five of us, no matter which direction each of us chose.
The thing I understand far better now than I did then is how you valued your friends. Most of it I did not even learn until after you were gone. One after another, your friends came to me and told me how you had shown up for them, lent them money, put food in their fridge when they had none, handed over your own vehicle when they needed it. You were the person the whole neighborhood knew they could come to. You never advertised any of it. I have friends now that I have had for fifty years. You taught me not to take the people around you for granted, that what matters to them has to matter to you.
I have been helping families in their hardest moments for twenty-five years. Nine of them have been at Hillside. The way I think about you has changed. I often remind families that we are supposed to be the ones to say goodbye to our parents. I am grateful that my two brothers and two sisters and I all got to say goodbye to both you and Mom. After we lost you, something happened in our family. My brothers and sisters and I became closer and more communicative, because we understood that a big part of our life was gone. They started sharing stories I had never heard, things from before I was old enough to remember. That is how you keep a person with you. The little stories, the phone calls, the old photographs passed around. It is the advice I give families now, especially when there is one parent still here. Stay close. Keep each other company. The quiet time is the hardest time.
It has been twenty-six years, Dad. You are still with me every day, in the jokes, in the handshake with a stranger, in the way I show up for my friends.

Thank you for all of it.
Love,
Bob
