Thanks for visiting this, it really means a lot for you to get to know this story you're about to read.
This is Rick writing to you, and right now (like right now, right now), we're in the process of relocating my father from Cocoa, Florida to our home here in San Antonio, Texas.
I'll be flying over there to pack up what we can.
Not a lot will be coming with us.
After that I'll be driving him, his 2 doggos, and the moving van across multiple state lines to get him safely here so he can live with us.
It's gonna be difficult. It's gonna be long. And it's (already) expensive.
But, the truth is, right now, my father has nowhere else to go.
I have to do what I can to help. There's really no other option as far as I'm concerned.
To fully understand the situation that is currently unfolding, I'll have to into some backstory.
I'll start at the beginning. . .
--
While I was still in utero (no longer a glint in my father's eye but now a kumquat in my mother's belly), my father, Rockie, worked as a foreman of a concrete company.
Before I was born, an accident happened that seriously injured and permanently disabled him.
He fell from a concrete truck, tried to grab hold of a rope but missed, and instantly broke multiple vertebrae in his lower back.
The weird thing was, he never felt it.
Because he had just lost all feeling below that injured section of spine, instantly and permanently.
"You'll never work again," they said.
"You'll never fully recover," they told him.
"You'll never walk again," they warned.
But Rockie wasn't (and still isn't) the kind of guy to roll over and let his life be taken like that.
Many months, surgeries, and you-can'ts later, wrapped up tightly in a full body cast, my dad stood and walked.
--
Real quick: Have you ever had your foot fall asleep?
I'm sure you have. the tingling and the numbness combined with a pins and needles type feeling?
Ever tried to walk on a sleeping leg?
Pretty hard, right?
That's what it's like for my dad. Every day, even now.
--
Anyways,
Wasn't long after that, I was born.
And then not long after THAT, my mother filed for a divorce.
To be honest, I don't have any memories of my father and mother being together.
They we're still together a few years after I was born, but not long.
So, LONG story short:
My mother got full custody and my dad ended up with visitation.
Tuesday night / Wednesday till 6:30pm and every other weekend.
That and a phone call once a week on Thursdays at 6:30pm.
I lived by that schedule.
I lived for that schedule.
Growing up, it was everything to me. I always knew when I'd see my dad.
And he held up his end by never once missing a day.
--
Now, I've heard that there are deadbeats dads out there, and I gotta say that I am beyond grateful that my father was never one.
You see, his whole philosophy of raising me was this:
"You're not gonna do what I tell you to; you're gonna do what I do."
He lead by example.
So when, as a young tyke, I innocently and excitedly told my dad and my daycare lady that I could "always find my daddy. He's on the couch!"
(Mind you that he heard me speak this sentence while he was still in his full body cast, barely walking with a cane)
It struck a nerve in my fathers heart and soul.
He wanted nothing more than to lead by example.
How did he fix this image I had?
He went out and took a career choice questionnaire, trying to find out what kind of work he'd be suited for.
The results were either a park ranger or a mechanic. . . .
So he opened up shop as a diesel mechanic in White Plains, Maryland.
He chose to work on the biggest engines on the road, requiring the biggest tools and biggest shop.
He did it still in a body cast.
He did it to set an example for his growing son.
--
That shop was where the boy became a man.
It was like a playground to me as I was growing up.
I'd run around and explore all over.
I found a family of kittens and climbed giant rock piles.
I'd play in the dirt and puddles with my toys.
I'd help my dad by getting him tools or finishing up odd jobs that needed to be done.
It still takes up a large portion of my childhood memories.
When I was off school for the summer, I couldn't wait to spend my Wednesdays and every other weekend at the shop.
We'd stay late tinkering with things and eventually getting a rusted old go-kart to go 60+mph with just a little 5-horsepower engine.
And when it was time to pick me up from daycare or school or my mom's house, my dad just closed up shop and got me.
Because HE was in charge of his business.
This meant so much to me.
I learned so much at the shop. I never stopped learning.
It was a major source of joy and growth for us both.
--
Fast-forward a bit to 2007 and I'm in my early teens.
It's summertime.
July.
I'm living full-time with my dad now.
And we're at the shop.
My cousin, Joey, who was around my age was visiting and we were both hanging out on a laptop.
Doing whatever was on the internet in 2007.
(a lot of wikipedia) (I'm still a dork like that)
My dad was just outside the shop, working underneath a greyhound bus that was lifted off the ground by a single jack.
Now, I don't know what your experience is with passenger buses, but some of them have this feature called "kneeling."
This is where the bus will pull up to a bus stop and lower itself to be level to the curb, thus making it easier for people to walk onto the bus.
This is accomplished through use of an adjustable airbag suspension system that inflates and deflates.
Before going under it, my dad actually warned me about this and told me he was a bit worried because the airbags could release on their own.
So Joey and I are in the shop doing whatever we were doing, I don't remember. And my dad is underneath on the bus, rolled on his side to get some tools, when BAM!
Joey and I heard a loud thud and a weak grunt.
We ran out to see what happened.
I remember seeing my dad's legs flailing from under the bus. . .
He was crushed sideways and literally holding the bus up with his body.
Joey panicked.
"Oh God! What are we gonna do? What are we gonna do?"
He ran back and forth in a frenzy.
"Go get anyone," I told him. And he ran off.
I went straight to the back of the bus where the jack had previously been holding it up.
I reset the jack and got the bus up and off of him and pulled him to safety, leaving him laying on the ground, not knowing what damage had been done in the accident. . . .
It was blue skies, sunny, and my dad was dying.
I don't know how long this all took.
I don't know how heavy he was or how hard it was to pull him out.
I don't know how I even set the jack and got the bus back up.
But he was out from under it.
--
Having been suffering from his spine injury since 1990, he was already on regular pain medicine.
This allowed him to get up, but barely.
We walked him over to the sink where I washed his hands for him.
He told me he couldn't feel or move them.
Later we found out that he had fractured a few vertebrae behind his chest that allowed him to move his arms.
He had also broken every rib and punctured a lung.
Every single rib. . . .
And they never really healed correctly.
You see, when you break a single rib, you have the surrounding ribs to hold it in place so it can heal correctly.
When they are all cracked like this, however, they just sort of heal any way they can.
Talk about pain and difficulty.
This accident marked the end of the shop and the beginning of a new chapter of life.
--
2009, and I'm about to officially graduate high school.
It was my dad, his new wife Katie, and I at that point.
We'd fallen on some hard times.
Without the shop, things had taken a turn downhill financially.
I remember answering the door one day for someone who had a large cardboard box.
"This is from the baptist church, down the street," they said, handing me the heavy box.
It was filled with cans of food.
I remembered as a kid, giving cans for food drives and putting them
in a cardboard box not unlike the one I was being handed.
I thanked the person awkwardly and brought the box inside to our pantry.
Right away I took out a can of green beans, opened it, stuck a fork in it and ate it cold, right out of the can.
(Judge me if you want, but let's get on with the story).
My grandparents (on my dad's side) had recently hit their retirement and used it to move to Port St. John, Florida where they built their retirement home.
They knew what we were going through as a family and offered to obtain a foreclosed home for cheap and let us live there, in Port St. John, Florida.
But, it being Springtime -- the same year that I'm supposed to graduate high-school -- I decided to stay behind to finish school.
(My personal story after that is another long one in and of itself that I won't get into)
We packed up, tossing a lot of things, and they moved down to Florida while I stayed in Maryland.
--
I visited them as much as I could while I was in college.
Katie was working and my dad was doing what he could to get by.
The injuries never really let him live his life the same way after all was said and done.
It's 2018 now and he's still in recovery, if you can even call it that.
--
So, now were in the present.
The story is almost done:
My dad and his mother (my grandmom) had worked something out so that him and Katie (his wife) could buy the house from my grandmom for well below it's value.
My grandparents were having a hard time with costs and it would be much cheaper and possibly profitable for Katie and my dad to simply own it themselves.
So my grandparents signed a contract with a realtor to oversee the transaction, and my dad got to work on getting approved for a loan.
Lo and behold, my dad figured out a way for Katie to get not only approved, but with no money down, all closing costs wrapped into the loan, and all for less than half of what they were paying for rent.
On top of that, the house was valued at double the price they were getting.
Cha-ching!
Right? . . .
--
So that brings us to this GoFundMe page. . . .
You see,
Immediately after getting that approval, that light at the end of the tunnel,
While my dad was away at his usual doctor's appointment,
Katie quit her job, grabbed one of the dogs, and left my dad.
She left the state. Drove north to who cares where.
She left him alone with no income, no mortgage approval, and a house under contract.
Here we are in the present.
This is no small task.
It is, yet again, a new chapter of life.
This time it's me and Tori, with our little girl, Evie, doing what we can to help.
And I'll be honest, we don't have much to give.
Which is why we made this page:
To offer you a part in this ongoing story.
And to ask for help.
Regardless, of what we have financially, our effort is and will continue to be 1000% towards re-stabilizing this situation and offering my father a home, a family, a place to be.
I'm just going to ask you one time.
Just one GoFundMe.
I don't want to beg, and I don't want to bother.
And what ever amount of help we get, we get.
I'm so grateful, to the point of tears, just to have you read this and understand what's going on in our life right now.
Your donation can help with my plane ticket to get to my dad,
with the moving van and trailer costs,
with the manpower we're going to need to load it up,
with a gallon or two of gasoline to get back,
with the cost of a meal or a coffee,
with the cost of a bed,
with the cost of shelter,
with the cost of a lost income,
Your donation can help with so much more than you know.
Any amount will help. Oh my goodness, will it help.
I never do this. . .
So thank you, thank you, thank you.
Thank you.
-Rick
This is Rick writing to you, and right now (like right now, right now), we're in the process of relocating my father from Cocoa, Florida to our home here in San Antonio, Texas.
I'll be flying over there to pack up what we can.
Not a lot will be coming with us.
After that I'll be driving him, his 2 doggos, and the moving van across multiple state lines to get him safely here so he can live with us.
It's gonna be difficult. It's gonna be long. And it's (already) expensive.
But, the truth is, right now, my father has nowhere else to go.
I have to do what I can to help. There's really no other option as far as I'm concerned.
To fully understand the situation that is currently unfolding, I'll have to into some backstory.
I'll start at the beginning. . .
--
While I was still in utero (no longer a glint in my father's eye but now a kumquat in my mother's belly), my father, Rockie, worked as a foreman of a concrete company.
Before I was born, an accident happened that seriously injured and permanently disabled him.
He fell from a concrete truck, tried to grab hold of a rope but missed, and instantly broke multiple vertebrae in his lower back.
The weird thing was, he never felt it.
Because he had just lost all feeling below that injured section of spine, instantly and permanently.
"You'll never work again," they said.
"You'll never fully recover," they told him.
"You'll never walk again," they warned.
But Rockie wasn't (and still isn't) the kind of guy to roll over and let his life be taken like that.
Many months, surgeries, and you-can'ts later, wrapped up tightly in a full body cast, my dad stood and walked.
--
Real quick: Have you ever had your foot fall asleep?
I'm sure you have. the tingling and the numbness combined with a pins and needles type feeling?
Ever tried to walk on a sleeping leg?
Pretty hard, right?
That's what it's like for my dad. Every day, even now.
--
Anyways,
Wasn't long after that, I was born.
And then not long after THAT, my mother filed for a divorce.
To be honest, I don't have any memories of my father and mother being together.
They we're still together a few years after I was born, but not long.
So, LONG story short:
My mother got full custody and my dad ended up with visitation.
Tuesday night / Wednesday till 6:30pm and every other weekend.
That and a phone call once a week on Thursdays at 6:30pm.
I lived by that schedule.
I lived for that schedule.
Growing up, it was everything to me. I always knew when I'd see my dad.
And he held up his end by never once missing a day.
--
Now, I've heard that there are deadbeats dads out there, and I gotta say that I am beyond grateful that my father was never one.
You see, his whole philosophy of raising me was this:
"You're not gonna do what I tell you to; you're gonna do what I do."
He lead by example.
So when, as a young tyke, I innocently and excitedly told my dad and my daycare lady that I could "always find my daddy. He's on the couch!"
(Mind you that he heard me speak this sentence while he was still in his full body cast, barely walking with a cane)
It struck a nerve in my fathers heart and soul.
He wanted nothing more than to lead by example.
How did he fix this image I had?
He went out and took a career choice questionnaire, trying to find out what kind of work he'd be suited for.
The results were either a park ranger or a mechanic. . . .
So he opened up shop as a diesel mechanic in White Plains, Maryland.
He chose to work on the biggest engines on the road, requiring the biggest tools and biggest shop.
He did it still in a body cast.
He did it to set an example for his growing son.
--
That shop was where the boy became a man.
It was like a playground to me as I was growing up.
I'd run around and explore all over.
I found a family of kittens and climbed giant rock piles.
I'd play in the dirt and puddles with my toys.
I'd help my dad by getting him tools or finishing up odd jobs that needed to be done.
It still takes up a large portion of my childhood memories.
When I was off school for the summer, I couldn't wait to spend my Wednesdays and every other weekend at the shop.
We'd stay late tinkering with things and eventually getting a rusted old go-kart to go 60+mph with just a little 5-horsepower engine.
And when it was time to pick me up from daycare or school or my mom's house, my dad just closed up shop and got me.
Because HE was in charge of his business.
This meant so much to me.
I learned so much at the shop. I never stopped learning.
It was a major source of joy and growth for us both.
--
Fast-forward a bit to 2007 and I'm in my early teens.
It's summertime.
July.
I'm living full-time with my dad now.
And we're at the shop.
My cousin, Joey, who was around my age was visiting and we were both hanging out on a laptop.
Doing whatever was on the internet in 2007.
(a lot of wikipedia) (I'm still a dork like that)
My dad was just outside the shop, working underneath a greyhound bus that was lifted off the ground by a single jack.
Now, I don't know what your experience is with passenger buses, but some of them have this feature called "kneeling."
This is where the bus will pull up to a bus stop and lower itself to be level to the curb, thus making it easier for people to walk onto the bus.
This is accomplished through use of an adjustable airbag suspension system that inflates and deflates.
Before going under it, my dad actually warned me about this and told me he was a bit worried because the airbags could release on their own.
So Joey and I are in the shop doing whatever we were doing, I don't remember. And my dad is underneath on the bus, rolled on his side to get some tools, when BAM!
Joey and I heard a loud thud and a weak grunt.
We ran out to see what happened.
I remember seeing my dad's legs flailing from under the bus. . .
He was crushed sideways and literally holding the bus up with his body.
Joey panicked.
"Oh God! What are we gonna do? What are we gonna do?"
He ran back and forth in a frenzy.
"Go get anyone," I told him. And he ran off.
I went straight to the back of the bus where the jack had previously been holding it up.
I reset the jack and got the bus up and off of him and pulled him to safety, leaving him laying on the ground, not knowing what damage had been done in the accident. . . .
It was blue skies, sunny, and my dad was dying.
I don't know how long this all took.
I don't know how heavy he was or how hard it was to pull him out.
I don't know how I even set the jack and got the bus back up.
But he was out from under it.
--
Having been suffering from his spine injury since 1990, he was already on regular pain medicine.
This allowed him to get up, but barely.
We walked him over to the sink where I washed his hands for him.
He told me he couldn't feel or move them.
Later we found out that he had fractured a few vertebrae behind his chest that allowed him to move his arms.
He had also broken every rib and punctured a lung.
Every single rib. . . .
And they never really healed correctly.
You see, when you break a single rib, you have the surrounding ribs to hold it in place so it can heal correctly.
When they are all cracked like this, however, they just sort of heal any way they can.
Talk about pain and difficulty.
This accident marked the end of the shop and the beginning of a new chapter of life.
--
2009, and I'm about to officially graduate high school.
It was my dad, his new wife Katie, and I at that point.
We'd fallen on some hard times.
Without the shop, things had taken a turn downhill financially.
I remember answering the door one day for someone who had a large cardboard box.
"This is from the baptist church, down the street," they said, handing me the heavy box.
It was filled with cans of food.
I remembered as a kid, giving cans for food drives and putting them
in a cardboard box not unlike the one I was being handed.
I thanked the person awkwardly and brought the box inside to our pantry.
Right away I took out a can of green beans, opened it, stuck a fork in it and ate it cold, right out of the can.
(Judge me if you want, but let's get on with the story).
My grandparents (on my dad's side) had recently hit their retirement and used it to move to Port St. John, Florida where they built their retirement home.
They knew what we were going through as a family and offered to obtain a foreclosed home for cheap and let us live there, in Port St. John, Florida.
But, it being Springtime -- the same year that I'm supposed to graduate high-school -- I decided to stay behind to finish school.
(My personal story after that is another long one in and of itself that I won't get into)
We packed up, tossing a lot of things, and they moved down to Florida while I stayed in Maryland.
--
I visited them as much as I could while I was in college.
Katie was working and my dad was doing what he could to get by.
The injuries never really let him live his life the same way after all was said and done.
It's 2018 now and he's still in recovery, if you can even call it that.
--
So, now were in the present.
The story is almost done:
My dad and his mother (my grandmom) had worked something out so that him and Katie (his wife) could buy the house from my grandmom for well below it's value.
My grandparents were having a hard time with costs and it would be much cheaper and possibly profitable for Katie and my dad to simply own it themselves.
So my grandparents signed a contract with a realtor to oversee the transaction, and my dad got to work on getting approved for a loan.
Lo and behold, my dad figured out a way for Katie to get not only approved, but with no money down, all closing costs wrapped into the loan, and all for less than half of what they were paying for rent.
On top of that, the house was valued at double the price they were getting.
Cha-ching!
Right? . . .
--
So that brings us to this GoFundMe page. . . .
You see,
Immediately after getting that approval, that light at the end of the tunnel,
While my dad was away at his usual doctor's appointment,
Katie quit her job, grabbed one of the dogs, and left my dad.
She left the state. Drove north to who cares where.
She left him alone with no income, no mortgage approval, and a house under contract.
Here we are in the present.
This is no small task.
It is, yet again, a new chapter of life.
This time it's me and Tori, with our little girl, Evie, doing what we can to help.
And I'll be honest, we don't have much to give.
Which is why we made this page:
To offer you a part in this ongoing story.
And to ask for help.
Regardless, of what we have financially, our effort is and will continue to be 1000% towards re-stabilizing this situation and offering my father a home, a family, a place to be.
I'm just going to ask you one time.
Just one GoFundMe.
I don't want to beg, and I don't want to bother.
And what ever amount of help we get, we get.
I'm so grateful, to the point of tears, just to have you read this and understand what's going on in our life right now.
Your donation can help with my plane ticket to get to my dad,
with the moving van and trailer costs,
with the manpower we're going to need to load it up,
with a gallon or two of gasoline to get back,
with the cost of a meal or a coffee,
with the cost of a bed,
with the cost of shelter,
with the cost of a lost income,
Your donation can help with so much more than you know.
Any amount will help. Oh my goodness, will it help.
I never do this. . .
So thank you, thank you, thank you.
Thank you.
-Rick