Today would have been my dad's 85th birthday.

[caption id="attachment_818" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="My dad and me in 2005"]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Vacation-2005-008.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-818" title="Vacation 2005 008" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Vacation-2005-008-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225" /></a>[/caption]

Most of you who follow my writing knows that my father died three years ago after a lengthy illness, and you also know that I have always had unresolved feelings about my own role as a son.

A lot of those feelings probably stem simply from the fact that I am a touchy-feely baby boomer, and he was part of the generation that lived through the Great Depression and won the Second World War.

That's pretty much enough of a rehash.

What I want to do today is celebrate his life, a life lived well enough that his family and his friends -- the people who loved him -- still miss him three years after he left us.

The two most amazing things about my dad were his unselfishness and his intellectual curiosity.

I never knew anyone else who so consistently put the interests of others ahead of his own interests, although I'm relatively certain he would have said that by doing that, he was acting in his own interest. He never spent money on himself; I'm pretty sure that the clothes I have in my closet right now cost more than he spent on clothes for himself in his entire life.

He didn't have friends with whom he went bowling, played golf or sat in bars drinking and complaining. His best friend for more than 50 years was my mother.

As for the intellectual curiosity, I can't think of anything -- any subject -- that he didn't want to know more about. He tried to pass that along to me, and I'm not sure why it didn't take. There are subjects that fascinate me and others in which I have no interest at all.

He enjoyed traveling tremendously, and if there was a place in the world he and my mother didn't visit, it probably wasn't worth visiting. They traveled to every continent except Antarctica, and I know they were hoping someday to get there. I'm pretty sure that if space tourism at reasonable prices had come along during his lifetime, he would have been up there somewhere.

I have visited more places than I ever thought I would, especially when I consider that three of my four closest friends have never been outside North America. I've only made it to three continents, though, and my only incursion into the Southern Hemisphere was a week in French Polynesia in 1999. I do expect to visit Indonesia and Greece this year, thanks to my two children being stationed there. I have a feeling Pauline and Virgile will turn me into world travelers.

As for my dad, I miss him, but I also know that as long as he remains in the memory of his wife, his sister, his children and grandchildren, he will always be with us.

And when I do strive to learn something knew, or visit someplace I have never been, or simply to be a better man than I am, I am trying to be more like him.