My dad was born in 1903. He would be 109 if he was still here. His name was Ladson Gentry Cubbage, Sr. Lewis Gizzard, the great southern humorist, wrote that the highest sentimentality a southern man could reach was talking about his dead father. Every year on his birthday I seem to have that strong flood of emotions. My memories of him are vivid and clear. The lessons he taught me were both verbal and from the example he lived. At the time, I never realized what an advantage it was to have an older father (he was 50 when I was born). He was basically self-taught and only had six years of formal education. The fundamentals that brought him to his success where driven from knowing the Bible and a work ethic that still makes me shake my head. I spent a lot of years in some long tough football practices and yet literally couldn’t match him when he was in his seventies on his farm! Like so many people that lived through the Great Depression, my father was shaped by the conservative imprints that built his special generation. He was an entrepreneur before people used the term. His income was driven by his cotton, tobacco, soy beans, cows, and hogs. He always had another job that gave him a small but dependable pay check. His work as Sumter County Forest Ranger was a mainstay. My father then invested his humble profits consistently in real estate. There were long stories of how he had paid cash for land for his farm, when the market conditions were so favorable for buying. Folks would tell him he was crazy. I remember his rental property, collection of rents, and the pride he had talking about his farm land. I can hear him say, “You know they aren’t going to make any more land.” Then, he would tell me about every deal he could have had when we would ride by something. “I could have paid so an so for that in 1935…today you know what it’s worth??!” I know he would be encouraged by what we have done and are doing here at Serrus. Thanks for reading a blog about my dad. I still miss and love him. Leighton