My 100 Year Old Dad’s Not Here Anymore

By Michael Willard

If he were still around, Willard would be 100 years old this month.

That’s what my mother called him throughout their lives together, as did most everyone. His given name was Herald. He was a star without the sequins and swagger.

Willard — I called him daddy — was short-changed terribly and died of heart failure on a sticky hot night in North Mississippi. He was 53, and on that July weekend he had planned to attend a family reunion near Oxford.