My Father’s Stetson Goes on a Road Trip

A few days ago, I received an email, copied in along with a long list of recipients, all of whom were cell phone numbers @mms.att.net. As was the sender. No names attached. Mine was the only typical email address.

I didn’t recognize any of the cell numbers. Area codes came from all over the country. The sender’s area code was from Florida. I don’t even know anyone living in Florida.

It had a file attachment.

I didn’t open it.

Later that day, another five emails arrived from the same sender to all the same recipients, each with an attachment, none with a subject line or other explanation.

A final email arrived, this time with a single sentence: “For those new to the group chat, this is stop #1 on my epic cross-country road trip: Harpers Ferry, WV.”

Hmm. Okay, the attachments were probably photos, but Outlook didn’t display them as an attachment I could preview or open.

Returning to the first email, I opened it, and read: Alright everybody, prepare your inboxes cuz pictures are inbound >:)

Starting to guess who the sender is, but still unsure, I was wary of opening any attachment that could contain malware. I get at least ten spam emails a day, including those thanking me for some order, adding “your invoice is attached,” but of course I didn’t place an order and I’m never going to open that PDF invoice.

The next day, yet another email arrived. This time, the message was: Wallicks- anyone recognize this hat?❤️

This time, I could preview the photo and I knew for certain who the sender was: my niece. She had just “retired as a civilian” after 11 years in the Navy. A cross-country road trip would be the perfect post-service gift to herself.

The hat in the photo, the give-away?

My father’s Stetson.

I was instantly transported back in time to fishing trips with my father. When I was a kid, he’d fly our entire six-member family in a Grumman Widgeon amphibious airplane to remote lakes with fishing camps in the interior of British Columbia. We’d spend a weekend fishing, or hiding from the rain in the cabin, play card and board games. Later, when I was an adult, sometimes just Dad and I would go, once my boyfriend joined us, and once Dad and I flew in loose formation with two other small airplanes flown by his friends. The terrain we flew over, or through (in the case of the glaciated mountains at the upper reaches of 50-mile long Bute Inlet), was stunningly beautiful.

The only time I saw my father wear his Stetson – the hat a nod to his country roots in Kansas – was on those fishing trips.

***

After my father died in 2009, precious few of his personal items left his wife’s custody. What did she offer me? A black-and-white photo of my father doing his famous half-gainer dive (well-known among his colleagues as well as his family; he’d do it for laughs) into the pool at the motel outside Edwards Air Force Base, where Boeing flight test crews stayed when doing tests at the base. I already had a copy of that photo, which my father gave me when I was researching and collecting stories for Growing Up Boeing.

One brother got Dad’s Stetson. I learned that later, when he gave it to our niece and she posted on Facebook how delighted she was to have it.

At first, I was hurt; why didn’t my brother offer it to me, if he didn’t want it? But, upon reflection, I realized the rightness of the gift. My niece is a wonderful person who struggled to forge a positive relationship with her own father (another of my brothers). Her grandfather adored her, giving her the same positive affirmations he gave me when I was young, helping heal the wounds left by the negativity of her own father. My niece got to spend time with her granddad just a handful of times, when she was young, but those visits made a lasting impression on her. She chose the Navy because of her fondness for her granddad, a Navy Aviator during WWII.

I knew my niece would take good care of the Stetson, the only tangible connection she would have to her granddad.

***

Fast forward to 2024 and Dad’s Stetson is on an “epic road trip” across the US. I touched that my niece wanted it with her.

I responded to the email that included the Stetson photo, writing, “I’m sure Dad’s ecstatic to be going along as your co-pilot.”