Happy Father's Day

Hi everyone. It's been nearly 6 months since I've posted anything on this site. I guess I never really went away. I stopped reading blogs for about a month, and then slowly started reading blogs that I've always liked to visit, and finally dropping comments on them again. I've posted occasionally on my off-road club site, but those posts were few and far between - until recently. And I'll be posting there more often over the next couple of months as I share pictures of our last club outing.

I figured it was time to post something on this - my family blog site, and why not in honor of Father's Day? After all, I'm a father, and I should be able to do anything I want to . . . today. It's also a day that, in the past, I've posted something in honor of my father, Carlos Aguirre, or as everyone in my family affectionately called him: Papa Kirk. If you care to read my earlier post, posted on Father's Day 2006, it was dedicated to him.

In another post, not having anything to do with Father's Day, but one that was also about my father, reader LA wrote me a nice comment, to which I replied and promised a story about how Papa Kirk got his nick name. Here's that Earlier Post in it's entirety, and here are the comments I just referred to:

LA - "Bittersweet indeed. Anniversaries are hard, but it's nice to memorialize our loved ones. That's a sweet picture of you and your children."

"Sometime will you explain why you called your dad Papa Kirk even though his name was Carlos?"

Me - "LA, I'd love to share the story of how the name Kirk came about. It will be in a future post."


Here's the story:
When my dad was born, he was named Carlos. In his young adult years, he hung around with a group of friends. They were the ones who called him Kirk. I really don't know why, and neither does my mom. My mom met my dad after this nickname came about, and my dad's family had a different nickname for him: Chali. (Chali, roughly translates from Spanish to English as Charlie.) So no big mystery, his nickname Kirk came from his friends; the boys he used to hang with before he met my mom, more than 50 years ago. Here's a picture of them:

My Papa Kirk is the short one in the middle of the back row. Sorry for the quality of this photo. It's a digital image of a restored photo. Here is a close up of him thanks to the zoom feature on our digital camera:
Now the "Papa" part of Papa Kirk came about after my parents met and got married. Their first child, my older sister Diana, is responsible for the "Papa". When Diana was learning to talk, she added that to his name. Similarly, she added "Mama" to our mom's name, Norma. To this day, my mom is referred to as Mama Norma by all of her kids, grand kids, and many nieces and nephews. And up until his death in 2000, and in fond memory of his life, my dad was and is referred to as Papa Kirk.

If you're a father, I hope you had a great Father's Day. (I did). If your father is still with you, I hope you wished him a Happy Father's Day. And if your father is no longer with you, I hope you thought of him today. Thanks for stopping by and reading this. All my best, Dan.