My Dad and I had a complicated relationship. That sounds worse than it is; the bottom line is that though everything, he was always a loving, caring, supporting father. Divorce (and physical distance) limited my access to him in childhood. As my Mom worked her way up the corporate ladder, we moved from Maryland, to Virginia (now a 4 hour drive to see Dad), to Florida (flight), and then California (long flight). Fortunately, my Mom and Dad stayed friendly through the divorce, and worked hard to ensure Dad was able to be in our lives as much as possible. But, of course, it wasn’t the same as having Dad every day.
One of my favorite memories of my early childhood, living in Silver Spring, is that Dad (who was working for local TV stations at the time) would bring home his camera and film us opening our presents at Christmas, and this would get shown as B roll on the evening news during the credits. We’re talking a full 30 second clip of us playing with toys as little kids, while the credits roll over top of us (I think it was the credits, that seems weird to think of the evening news having credits, so it may have been some other segment where they have some reason to show text set to music with random B roll for 30 seconds). I’m sure some people now would be horrified at the thought. Such exploitation! Of your own family! But we thought it was the coolest thing ever. Dad was connected, Dad was important. We’re on TV!
Another core memory of early childhood is Dad’s love of technology. He had an Atari 800 with a 1200 baud modem. He would connect up to the BBS that NBC ran. He would subscribe to these weird magazines where they would provide all of the source code for a game. You would have to manually type it in and save it to cassette tape (or not!). He would spend hours typing in and then proofing and debugging this code. And then the game would be awful. But I was sitting there, watching, absorbing this. I was pretty hooked from the start. For those who don’t know me, my entire career has been in IT. I started an ISP (turned datacenter, then MSP) in 1998 at the age of 19, which is still thriving to this day, providing my primary source of income. In many ways, my means of living originated with sitting there watching Dad dial into NBC and hack away at these video games.
After the divorce, we were living in Lynchburg, VA. One time during school in the third grade, I went to use the bathroom. When I was coming back to the classroom, I noticed in the distance turning into our classroom, a very familiar back with a big camera on his shoulder. I sprinted up and hugged him from behind, feeling so proud and happy that he was there and I could show him off, this person I had been bragging about but so far only existed in my words. He spent 30 minutes filming the class and displaying it on the monitor, and talking about his career. This did wonders for my social cred. I went from being the new kid to getting invited to birthday parties.
When it would be time to visit Dad (every other weekend when we lived in Virginia), it would be a 4 hour drive, where Mom and Dad would meet halfway. Dad would always talk about computers and his career, and it was absolutely fascinating to an 8-9 year old. He had a captive audience for a couple hours at a time, and definitely opened my mind to a lot of things.
Around this time, Dad took us on a very memorable vacation to Kiawah Island in South Carolina. Of course, cameras were rolling the whole way. When you watch this video he edited together, you have to remember: We didn’t have cell phones with cameras on them. To make this video in this era, you had to have access to both broadcast quality cameras AND a real edit suite. You couldn’t just edit this on your computer back then. Imagine Dad with this huge shoulder mounted camera standing in the shoreline at the beach. A camera he owned, and that cost mid five figures. In 1988 money. Makes my balls clench to think about. I get nervous about dropping my waterproof iphone in the water.
When we lived in Florida, I had an amazing opportunity. My Mom had a cousin, Bruce, who was stationed on an aircraft carrier, which was going to be docking in Ft. Lauderdale, and traveling to Norfolk. There’s a program called Tiger Cruise, where relatives can basically take a cruise with their relative who is stationed on a ship. No women allowed at that time, so Dad flew down to accompany me. And let me tell you, three days on an aircraft carrier when you’re 11 is hard to put a value on. They did a full air show with live munitions, dropping bombs in the water, launching missiles, demonstrating the antiair guns, it was absolutely amazing. I couldn’t stop raving about the unlimited chocolate milk in the mess. Dad was a big guy, so it was a little awkward sleeping on these tight bunks, but he never complained or gave even the slightest indicator he was frustrated. I think he was as blown away by everything as I was, but had to play it a little cooler. After all, he had been on Air Force 2 with then-VP George Bush and many other high security, behind the scenes situations.
One Christmas around this time, in the very early 1990s, I had asked for Use Your Illusion 1 and 2 from Guns N Roses. And he got them for me, but he also gave me the two CD set from Pink Floyd, The Delicate Sound of Thunder. At first I was like huh ok cool, set it aside. It took a little while before I even listened to it. But it grew on me. By the time I was in college, Pink Floyd was everything to me and GNR was a distant memory. That wasn’t because of Dad, that has more to do with the music, but he was the one who introduced me. To so many things. He had great taste in music, always with classic rock playing when we were younger. He was always excited to share good music he loved, but strangely he had almost no interest in being exposed to new music. He liked what he liked.
When I was about to go into high school, I decided I didn’t want to risk having to move again, and Mom was about to get promoted AGAIN, and was planning to move to Denver. So, we moved in with Dad, who started renting 6636 Coldstream Dr on the beach in Lake Linganore. This was such a blessing, Dad absolutely hooked us up here. We lived RIGHT on the beach. I could wander down and join people playing volleyball. I could walk down the esplanade and jump off the bridge. I could ride my bike down to the dam. It was a teenager’s paradise. And it’s here where I met my two best friends, Matt and Chris, who I still talk to constantly to this day. It really was out of a novel. That was part of the equation of Geoff Dills…he couldn’t be there as much as he wanted, but he always found a way to compensate for that.
The second summer, Dad got us a small sail boat, and I had an absolute blast ripping around on the lake. This is one of my favorite memories. Sometimes the wind would be just right to where I would stand up, hold the boom with one hand (rather than holding the rope attached to the boom), then hold the rudder with the other hand, and have to lean back to fight the force of the wind in the sail. It was like windsurfing. I have no idea how fast I was going but it felt incredible. One of those moments in life that transcend mere existence. It’s up there with pancaking somebody in football, pinning somebody in wrestling, and carving down a mountain on skis.
Speaking of football, my life hit an absolutely critical fork in the road the first summer there on Coldstream beach, when I was 14. I had indicated I wanted to play football, and I was all signed up. But I started getting nervous and afraid. I told Dad I didn’t want to play anymore. And he sat me down, and basically told me no, he wasn’t going to let that happen. Gently, but firmly, he made it clear I’m going to at least go out there and see what’s what. Thank god he did. Football was one of the true loves of my life, and while he wasn’t there to take me to baseball practice when I was younger, and so I missed out on that sport, he WAS there to make sure I went to football practice. And that led to a state championship, getting recruited to play football at Harvard, and getting paid to play semi-professionally years later.
I will say this: I delivered a steady supply of reasons for Dad to be proud. And he was always there with a camera pointed right at it. When I came out of nowhere to win the Chesapeake Classic wrestling tournament as a junior heavyweight, suddenly pinning my opponent in the championship, you can hear my Dad having an existential moment on the tape. It was somewhere between screaming, cheering, and openly crying.
My senior year, after we won the 1995 2A state championship and I was named to the consensus all-state team, he surprised everybody at the team banquet by putting up a large projector and showing off what he’d been working on in secret. See, throughout my football career, Dad was always there to film it with broadcast quality equipment and technique. We had better film than anybody. And it was so great to be able to watch it right after the game, when we got home, before even the coaches had a chance to review it.
He had filmed all these games, and we won the state championship, so he secretly booked time in an edit suite and worked after hours putting this together. He presented every player on the team with their own copy of the tape. Years later we digitized it and uploaded it to Youtube…unfortunately, most copies were watched so many times that they were destroyed, and the only working copy we could find had seriously deteriorated. Bulk VHS tapes let us down. But, if you can tolerate the audio, you can appreciate some of his most valued work here on Youtube:
1995 Linganore Lancers Highlights Part 1:
Part 2:
Years later, when I joined the Frederick Outlaws and Chambersburg Cardinals, Dad resumed filming my pursuits. This culminated in my ultimate accomplishment in football, getting paid $100/game to play for the Cardinals in 2011, when we won the GDFL championship against the Oklahoma Thunder, an organization that had never lost, and had numerous former NFL players.
Dad filmed all of the games, even coming down to Atlanta for the championship game.
This video below was a collaboration…I put in numerous hours logging the clips and planning the vision of the video, picking out the music, and finally sitting with Dad while he did the editing. I was basically the the producer and he was the editor, and we put at least 30 hours into it. It was a grind. But it was great to be with my Dad doing what he loves, doing what he did to provide value to the world. Giving him an opportunity to give me the thing he was best at. It was truly a labor of love. I’ll treasure this always.
This video is the product of the efforts of a lot of people. This video doesn’t happen without all the extremely talented people I was fortunate enough to play football with and who supported the team, and it doesn’t happen without the skills and love of Geoff Dills.
Shortly after this, at the end of June in 2012, Nicole and I got married, which made Dad really happy. He always loved Nicole, and they always got along so well. Dad had friends film our wedding, which he later edited into an amazing DVD. Here’s the highlight video of our wedding, which is another artifact of love that will resonate through time:
10 months later in April 2013, Dominick arrived on the scene. The day Dominick was born was one of the best days of Dad’s life. He could barely contain his emotions, and often couldn’t. He loved Dominick with every ounce of his existence. He always had time for anything Dominick wanted to share… that would just be an excuse to start filming. There are so many great memories in the photo albums with Dominick and Grandpa.
A little over a year before he passed, Grandpa got to witness and film one of Dominick’s biggest baseball highlights: a home run. It was a special moment for all of us, and Grandpa couldn’t stop smiling. He knew what a special moment it was, and how fortunate he was to be there for it. We hoped he would be there for so many more, but it feels good to have this moment.
Dad introduced me to technology, he fostered my involvement with football, he showed me the value in working for yourself, and he was there to record all of my highlights and be there to celebrate all of my victories. But, the thing I currently value most also came from Dad. When I was a kid, he took me skiing three times, for multiple days each time. Once to Seven Springs, once to Snowshoe, and once for a full week to Park City. He did it right; I was in ski school every day. I developed a love for skiing that was unfortunately forced into dormancy in my teenage years, as my huge feet (wide, high instep, high volume overall) did not fit comfortably in any ski boots made at the time.
Recently, Dominick became interested in skiing, which has led to me discovering they make boots that fit me now. And that let to me discovering that not only can I still ski, it’s the most fun I’ve had since football. It’s become an obsession, shaping my health, fitness, travel plans, everything.
And I owe it all to Dad. Almost every interest I have can be traced in some way to him. Thanks Dad.
