Dear Dad…
Walter Glendinning, 10.13.31–03.14.09
“Walter Glendinning, age 77, passed March 14, 2009.
It’s been 10 years since Dad passed away. Over these years, there have been untold numbers of times that I’ve wanted to pick up the phone and have one of the long conversations we used to have as I was traveling on this incredible journey to now.
In addition to obvious physical characteristics I inherited from my Dad, I also got his habit of following my intuition taking me to new places, with the deep interest in meeting new people, listening to their stories and finding ways to be of service to the community. I think that particular imaginal cell was activated in him when he was still a kid & he was sent out to the countryside to escape the bombings in London. An American GI was sent to stay with them and he filled Dad’s imagination with stories of California beaches and endless sunshine. We moved to Texas in 1967 and he became a US citizen, he never got to live in California, but he enjoyed visiting me and my sister out there over the years.
I got a call from him in 1987, soon after I moved into my apartment in Santa Monica. He said he wanted to apologize for not being more supportive when I was a kid and wanted to make sure we had a more connected relationship as adults. [I didn’t realize how extraordinary this was until I told other people about it and they said how much they wished their own fathers would do something like that.]
That first call led to many others. Dad lived down on the Texas coast and I was always somewhere else, ranging from the Caribbean to California and back to Austin in 2000. I spoke with him almost daily, especially after I was back in Texas and had the first thoughts about the big social impact ideas including iCREATE and the Texas Legacy Arts Communiversity back in 2002. Those long conversations as I drove back to the lake from meetings in Austin, the road dark & lit only by stars, made me feel nurtured, appreciated & connected if not always fully understood, lol.
To his dying day in 2009, Dad told me that, although he didn’t always get the ‘big picture’ I was painting with my thoughts & words, he knew it was something important & valuable because of my passion for it.
Here it is 9 years later, and the truth of the world I began imagining years ago is becoming evident to many others. The story of a community-driven inclusive, generative economy keeping wealth local is moving from ideation to actualization. Dad may not be here in body to see it, but his spirit is definitely present in every story about what’s next.
So, cheers to Dad, who was born into financial poverty, but a wealth of heart & soul. Who taught me to stay connected, refresh the screen, bring forward stories of meaning and have faith that the audience would appear.
