Norman William Ingram

My Father could be a complicated man. He was a very private person but he was a very generous man. I don’t think most people know how generous he was. At some point he began telling me when he would give to someone or something because he wanted to teach us to be generous. He was a father who wanted to teach his children and grandchildren the knowledge he had, he was a teacher at heart. He worked for the California Department of Corrections for 22 years as an Auto Shop Instructor. I told him that he spent more time behind bars than some of his students.

He was drafted into the Army during the Vietnam conflict and worked in Transportation. Occasionally he would tell stories about his time in the Army. After he came home from the Army at some point he met and married my mother. As complicated and frustrating as he could be at times, he LOVED my mother. Her name was Cherry and when he would buy her a card for her birthday or their anniversary he would draw a little cherry in the card and he would call her his Cherry Blossom.

My Dad, who we started calling Pop when the grand kids came along, was the Knight in Shining Armor that always saved me. If my car broke down, if I needed a few bucks (sometimes I called him the Bank of Norman), if I needed advice or a sounding board, if the kids needed a ride to an appointment or to be picked up from school. He always came through for us. Because of who he was, we never went without anything we needed.

Another defining trait about my Dad was his faithfulness and loyalty to my mother. She lived with cancer for over 10 years and he walked every grueling mile with her. He stayed with and took care of my mother as she lived with the cancer and all that comes with that. I love my Dad for the way he stood by and took care of my mother. He took care of his mother the same way the last few years of her life. That’s what he did, he took care of us.

Even though he frustrated me with his stubbornness sometimes, I often told him his name was Norman Stonewall Ingram, I was not really ready for him to leave. I will miss him more than he will ever know. We shared a similar sense of humor and we both were always looking for new knowledge and ideas to discuss. Memories I will treasure for the rest of my life. He was a good father and husband and an honorable man. He missed my mother desperately and I cling to the hope that he is with her now, where he wanted to be.

I chose the Footprints poem for my Dad’s Memorial program because he always really, really liked the poem, but when I came across a cartoon that said “My child, I never left you. Those places with one set of footprints? It was then that I carried you. That long groove over there is when I dragged you for a while.” He laughed and laughed over that and would occasionally quote it saying he could identify and that he had created a few grooves.

He liked to send us little riddles in texts for us to figure out what he was saying.
On the nights when I wasn’t home or if the kids weren’t home he would send us a text saying “Thinking of you & praying for GOD’S blessings on/for you. L U G K
(L U G K means Love You Good Night)

Pop, you were always a tough act for any man to follow. I’m glad I got you. I miss you now as I sit here and write this and I will miss you for the rest of my life. My hope is that one day I will get to see you again. Thank you for loving me the way you did.
L U G K

Annette Ingram