On March 21, 1974, Gee and I found out that our father John Southall, the only man I’d ever called Daddy, was very sick. He was fifty-two. On April 13 Gee and I were heading home from New York when David, knowing how important a visit would be, arranged a private plane to fly us to Texas so we could see Daddy. We walked in the room and his skin so yellow, like the color of a banana. He was almost unrecognizable as the handsome father I remembered as he lay in bed in a veterans’ hospital not far from Burleson, dying of liver failure. When he saw me and Gee, his face lit up.
