For Friends and Family
Dad -- former Los Angeles Superior Court Commissioner Donald Wayne Pike -- passed away on his 84th birthday: 9 June 2008.
I keep thinking I'll work and then I can't so, not knowing what else to do, am making my father a memorial blog.
Before taking the whole dad-thing over there -- http://donaldpike.blogspot.com/ -- I want to say a couple of things.
Thank you to everyone for your love and support. If I haven't responded to you it's because I am completely unreliable at the moment. I know you'll forgive me. As will my readers AND the wonderful Kevin O'Keefe whose voice-in-my-head keeps telling me to STAY ON TOPIC!! 
On Dad's behalf, I have this to say to as much of the world who might stumble across this message in a bottle:
What a great country where a kid from a Nebraska farm, uprooted by the dust bowl, driven into poverty with the rest of the country during the Great Depression, who left home at 14 or 15, earned his high school diploma in night school while driving a milk truck, married to my mother with two kids, and, who never spent a single day in college -- can go to law school; become an attorney; and ascend to the bench of the largest state trial court system in the world. A man who -- for all his flaws -- inspired his daughter to go to law school when it was still not a common career goal for women.
Thanks Dad. And thanks America. For all your flaws. For all our flaws. Given the opportunity, we can still do great things.
