If he was still alive today, my Daddy would be 99 years old.

During the economic depression of the 1930’s he worked a couple of years in the CCC camps, helping build a bridge in Washington state.

Drafted into the Army in 1943, he was assigned to the 36th Infantry Division. The 36th was a National Guard outfit comprised of Texas and Oklahoma boys, called into federal service.

They were part of General Alexander Patch’s Seventh Army. The 36th Division helped liberate Rome, then transferred to Normandy shortly after D-Day. Daddy was involved in the battle of the Bulge, still the largest battle the US Army was ever in.

He told me a humorous anecdote of an incident late in WW II when he stumbled upon an entire company of German Infantry who were tired, starving, and promptly surrendered to him. Daddy explained, he marched them to a US POW camp nearby where overwhelmed American MP’s informed him they were too short handed to process more POWs and wanted Daddy to guard the Germans all night.
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Daddy told the Captain over the MPs he had been drafted and did not start the war. He said I imagine most of these Germans are the same way and if you put me in charge of them; I will tell them to go home and come back tomorrow. The US Army suddenly found some additional MP’s to take the prisoners.

Dad told not so humorously of liberating a Nazi POW camp and the condition of the starving prisoners.

After the war, Daddy spent almost two years in Germany with the US occupation Army, where he learned to speak German.

Back in the USA after the war, Dad worked for a while on the famous King Ranch in west Texas. He met and married my mother in 1948 and I was born in December of 1950. My little sister was born 18 months later and since Dad was married with two children, he was not called back into the service for the Korean War.

For over four decades he made his living as a painter, thirty one years of that at the Monsanto plant in Texas City, Texas. Daddy was a Democrat and a strong supporter of organized labor. We disagreed so much on politics, Mamma forbade us from debating it at the supper table.

His main passion in life was anything that grew in the soil. We had flowers, fruit trees, pecan trees, pear trees, and every sort of vegetable it was possible to grow in a garden. For many years he worked three gardens as well as a full time job at the Monsanto plant and was also a volunteer fireman.

One plot was the vacant lot next door to our rent house. Daddy did not own the land and did not know who did. That never stopped him from plowing it up and planting a garden there for the next 28 years, never learning who owned the land.

He also plowed up most of our back yard for a second garden. Several years later he befriended a couple in nearby LaMarque, Texas, and together, they actually bought a large plot of land next to their home, Daddy worked that garden, splitting what was grown because he was half owner in the land.

Daddy is why I became a Republican at the age of 9 in 1960.

Know all the stories you have heard about the excitement of watching paint dry? I can tell you from personal experience, watching paint dry is much more exciting than sitting around watching a bunch of grown people drink coffee and talk gardening for hours on end.

In 1960 my Mamma, then only 28 years old, was president of the Galveston County chapter of the Federation of Republican Women.

At age 9, I was given a choice. I could put on work clothes, go with Daddy to the garden and have him work me like a sharecropper, till I came home tired, dirty, bug bitten and sunburned, after a boring day of gardening.

My other option was to put on church clothes and go sit in air conditioned buildings, listening to my Mamma make speeches for vice president Nixon, telling old ladies why not to vote for Senator John F. Kennedy in the 1960 election.

I thought about the garden at least ten seconds. . . . before becoming an enthusiastic Republican at age nine!

Daddy was never rich, famous, heroic, or even well educated; but he earned an honest living; loved America; taught us good values by his example; and was well respected by anyone who ever knew him. Not a bad accomplishment for a poor boy who came of age on an Arkansas cotton farm during the great depression.

Daddy’s birthday, August 27th, is a legal holiday in the state of Texas. I would love to tell you how the legislature honored Daddy as the world’s best gardener, which he was; but the truth is Lyndon B. Johnson was also born on August 27th.

Daddy has been gone since 1999 but on this, his 99th birthday, I miss him so much, I would even go hang out in the garden with him, if I could just see him one more time.

Dean Allen is a decorated Vietnam veteran, book author and former Secretary of the Anderson (SC) GOP. He is also President of Freedom Source University.

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