First Father's Day

First Father's Day 

What Is a Father? 

First Father's Day

What Is a Father?

Written by Troy Alan Cox

6/21/2026

Where Is My Father?

It wasn't actually an official Father's Day, but to a little five-year-old boy it was a special Father's Day.

The earliest memory I have of my father is my mom sewing. My mom was a seamstress, and an excellent one at that. She didn't do it for a living. She did it for fun. I so wish I had kept her little pink Singer sewing machine, although I did not inherit the skill. I have these big, fat, clumsy fingers that are not designed for detail work or little needles.

In 1970s San Diego, my mom would take the little-boy version of me with her everywhere. It was just her and me. I was lucky in that I had all the time I wanted with my mom when my dad was away at sea.  My dad began his career in the Navy aboard ships. It wasn't until much later in life that he would talk about the U.S.S. Bayfield.

The USS Bayfield was a 1940s World War II Navy vessel that participated in D-Day, playing a major role in the invasion. The ship went on to serve in many important missions up to 1968. My father was assigned to this ship, I believe, as his first ship around 1966. At that time, the ship was near the end of its commission and was serving in Vietnam. Its main mission was rescuing refugees and soldiers. Without going into detail, which I know very little about because of my father's difficulty talking about those days, they not only rescued people from the beaches but also recovered soldiers' bodies at sea.

By the time I came around in 1968, my dad was serving in Washington at the Pentagon. In the mid-1970s we moved to San Diego, where he was stationed at Miramar Naval Air Station and assigned to another legendary ship, the USS Kitty Hawk. This aircraft carrier has a long and decorated history. Through navigating the VA and getting help for my father in his later years, we would meet other people who had served aboard this famous ship throughout its long career.

In the mid-1970s it was sent to San Francisco for six months to be overhauled. This was probably the longest I had been without my father. As a four- or five-year-old, it felt like an eternity before I saw him again.

The First Father's Day

I remember hiding in the fabric shop. I loved playing hide-and-seek with my mom while she shopped for fabric and patterns. I would usually wind up squeezing between the bolts of fabric stacked in a round rack and hide in the middle.

I remember the bright, sunny, beautiful San Diego weather and riding in the car with my mommy, going to different shops while she searched for buttons, zippers, and all the things needed to sew my little sailor outfit.

My earliest memory of my father is traveling on a gorgeous 1974 day to the Navy shipyard in San Diego. It was a big day, that is all I knew. I remember my mom wanting everything to be perfect.

There we stood on the asphalt, my mom looking like a fashion model, all hand-sewn and stylish with big hair, and me dressed in the fruits of her labor. My mother was obsessed with brushing my hair to try to make it straight and lay down. I remember my little blue Navy uniform was stiff and uncomfortable, but I didn't care.

I held my mommy's hand tight as she had been my safety for the six months my father was gone while they redid the ship in San Francisco.  We held our sign high, probably reading "Ed Cox" in bold letters. With 5,000 men aboard, it was a sea of sailors coming off the ship in waves. Who knows how long we stood there.

All I remember is that out of the crowd walked what seemed to me like a tall, lean, perfectly blond movie-star man walking toward me and my mother.  I couldn't register that it was my dad. It had been too long for my memory to be reliable.

He probably took my mom in his arms and planted a big kiss on her before tussling my hair and messing it up, which I preferred. He probably was in awe of the little sailor uniform and laughed and joked.  I don't remember what happened after that, but I'm sure we had a happy day.

In my mind, that is the first Father's Day. Because we made such a big deal out of him coming back, and everything took weeks of preparation just for Daddy.

How Does a Father Show Up?

Since my father's passing, I have heard so many kind words about him. What a great listener he was. How he was such a good storyteller. How much laughter and joy he brought to other people. How he always had a wink and a smile for others.

People shared how he made them feel special and how he would listen to their stories.  My father loved writing and collecting funny stories in particular. He always seemed to be on a mission to make other people laugh and have a good time.

In San Diego we belonged to the Y Indian Guides, which I don't think we're supposed to talk about anymore because of its cultural inappropriateness. However, his Big Thunder complete feather headdress from head to toe hangs in the closet to this day. He proudly brought out Big Thunder over the years to show off his handiwork and, to him, keep the story of Native American history alive.

It wasn't until much later in life when we did a DNA test that we found out he actually had a small amount of Native American ancestry.  I was his Little Lightning and so happy to get to spend time with my father after he had been away for so long. We went to meetings together, parades, and who knows what else I can't remember. But we loved dressing up in our Y Indian Guides outfits.

Later in Japan he would bring out Big Thunder, including war paint, to show all our Japanese friends a taste of Native American history. Even later he would use the costume to present one of the highest honors in Scouting, the Arrow of Light, to many Scouts.

In Japan there were no American Boy Scout leaders when we were there. So my mother and father stepped up and created the first Cub Scout troop in Yokohama on base.  As I went from Cub Scouts to Webelos, my mother and father spent countless hours creating adventures for us and the other boys. I remember it took a long time to find a place for us to call scouting headquarters.

We finally found a space in an old abandoned horse racing track that had been turned into a museum. Up in the dusty old stands underneath the seats was where we met and planned our adventures.

My father was the first to organize a Japanese Scout and American Scout mini-jamboree. It was one of the highlights of his life, and he received a commendation from the Emperor and the local government for his service.  My mother taught English off base to mostly Japanese women, so we had many local friends and saw a lot of Japan.

The Final Father's Day

After retiring from the U.S. Navy, my father dedicated his life to working as a professional Boy Scout Executive. Yes, it is a real paid job with a salary, or at least it used to be.

We moved home to Kansas so my little brother and I could get to know our grandparents better, and because that was where my parents had grown up.

He served four years in Kansas, four years in Missouri, and his final four years with the Boy Scouts in Iowa before retiring.  Over the years, Father's Day was always a special day for me. I loved making a big deal out of Mother's Day and Father's Day for my parents.

Even though I didn't get the gregarious side of my father, he was quiet at home and we never had lengthy discussions. He mostly spent his time in the garden when he was there.

I'll never understand why we had none of what was shared with other people. At home things were different than they were outside the home. Probably because he spent all his energy pleasing others, there wasn't much left for us.

However, I remember him being strong and silent, and I felt guarded and protected.  I had made peace with this duality in my father around 1994 after my little brother was killed in a tragic motorcycle accident.

My brother's martial arts teacher gave me a collection of bootleg Ram Dass teachings. In one of his talks he speaks about coming to the realization that his father was not the role of father.

Ram Dass became aware that we are not the roles we are assigned at birth. We think of ourselves as mother, father, daughter, son, aunt, uncle, sister, brother, grandma, or grandpa. However, we are souls, each on our individual journey of understanding.

Our mothers and fathers were not given books on how to become perfect parents. They are humans with their own fallible traits and lessons to learn. Just like we are not perfect children to our parents.  We are individuals who happen to be born into this thing called a family, but it does not define us.

Once I started thinking of my parents as other souls rather than mother and father who had some sort of responsibility to me, it allowed me to lay aside our differences and conflicts and drop the expectations of how my parents should have shown up.

My father shared with me that his father was also mostly silent, although they did a lot together when he was growing up. My grandfather was already an old man, having raised his first two boys twelve years before my little dad showed up.

He also told me he never heard his father say the words, "I love you."  After my mother passed in 2021, my father decided to move to Orlando, where I was living.

My dad was in his late seventies when he moved here, and the dramatic difference between the seventies and the eighties cannot be put into words.  Luckily, after my brother's passing, we said "I love you" every day. That is what I hold on to.

The last Father's Day was a horrible comedy-of-errors tragedy that I'll spend the rest of my life trying to forget.  As I look at pictures and videos of my father now, in retrospect, I can see that I was totally unaware, or unable to admit, how much the Alzheimer's and dementia had progressed.  I still clung to wanting him to stay active and viable so we could have some golden years together.

After so much caregiving, I started forcing myself to take some personal time. Last Father's Day I saw a client who lived about forty-five minutes away. Afterwards I did some light shopping and took some personal time for the first time in a long while.

I picked up a bouquet of yellow roses, my father's favorite, to surprise him with.  I remember coming home in such a great mood, so happy that I had taken some time for myself.

I arrived at the front door full of joy, ready to surprise my dad, who I assumed was in his usual chair watching his usual television show.

As soon as I threw open the door and said, "Happy Father's Day," there he was, lying face down on the floor in the middle of the living room.  A large pool of blood had formed around him like a crime scene.  He had been there so long that the blood had begun to coagulate.

Through later research I discovered that dementia patients often stay where they fall because they no longer have the cognitive ability to figure out how to get up. The brain simply cannot fire the necessary commands.

Lord only knows how long he had been there.  Thankfully it was mostly torn skin and tissue from instinctively putting his arms out to break the fall. Nothing major had happened because he had used the chair to keep from hitting his head.

I guess I was in shock because I didn't call an ambulance. I just grabbed the first-aid kit and began cleaning him up.  The roses thrown on the floor, the hot tears shooting from my face, and the shock of the emotional whiplash after opening the door are horrifying to think about, let alone the fact that I will never know how long he lay there.

When this memory floods my mind today, I immediately try to replace it with the memory of standing next to my mom, holding her warm hand on a beautiful sunny San Diego day in my little sailor uniform, waiting for my mythical father to return from six months away.

If I can latch onto that beautiful black-and-white photograph in my mind, one I wish actually existed, it helps me forget the final Father's Day.  Please remember your father is a man who tried the best he could despite his shortcomings and failures, and think of a fond memory if you have one.

While I am realistic enough to know that some fathers do not deserve to be loved because of the horrors they may have inflicted upon their families, I know that my father, as imperfect as he was, loved me in the best way that he could.

I will forever remember the first Father's Day and let the rest go.