ESSAY 

The Photograph Dad Sent Me On Father's Day 2026

June 21, 2026

Something told me to wait until Father’s Day to write a tribute to my Dad and I’m glad I did.

***

This afternoon, I texted my father and wished him a Happy Father’s Day.  I thanked him for the gifts of our connection and his wisdom and spoke prayers and blessings over him.  

Of course, he texted back to say that he was proud to be called “Dad” by me.  It’s a little thing, but highly significant because all my father ever wanted to be was a family man, like his Dad, and his father before him.  He followed up with a statement:  “That’s the only way I addressed my father!”

***

When I was a kid, “Daddy” and “Granddaddy” were the terms I used to address my father and grandfathers for many years, until something inside me determined that I was too old for childish things. So I switched it up and started calling him “Dad,” and his father, “Granddad.” (my mother’s father, Grant Taylor, passed away in 1979 so I never had the opportunity to address him this way.)  

As I was reflecting on this, another text from Dad popped up in the thread.  It was a photograph of his father, my grandfather Benjamin D. Smith, sitting behind a card table covered by a floral table cloth, overflowing with food and a punch bowl (IYKYDK).  He was smiling and looking pretty satisfied to be the center of attention, or perhaps he was smiling because he made it to his early 50s in an openly hostile city like Chicago? Or maybe it was both, AND something else? 

***

I visually scanned the photograph for clues and saw the date Jan-71 stamped on the side. What else could this image tell me, I thought to myself, with tears welling up in my eyes?  

I thanked Dad for sharing the photo and asked if he had taken it, to which he replied yes. He continued:  “That was either his birthday in 1970 (November) or during the Christmas season that same year. The date on the photo from the processor was January ‘71. Two months later, I moved into my first apartment.”

The details of the room felt familiar:  I recalled the wet bar to Granddad's right, and the turntable to his left.  Yes, this was the Smith family home in LeClaire Courts in Chicago, an apartment on the corner of West 44th and Lamon that they moved into at the end of 1953, right after the first phase of construction of this public housing complex on the southwest side of Chicago was completed.  My father recalls living next door to families of all races and backgrounds during those early years.

***

In the fall of 1969, my father had returned to LeClaire Courts a changed man, having been honorably discharged from service in the Army during the Vietnam War.  He resumed his job as a car repairman at the Chicago Transit Authority and began taking classes at Wright College and later, Kennedy-King College.  By the time Dad took this photo of my grandfather in the fall of 1970, conditions in LeClaire Courts, and by extension, my father’s family, were beginning to shift. 

He returned to a growing family in a space that could never be reconfigured to accommodate everyone's comfort.  Dad had to share his bedroom with his younger brothers, and of course, that made for cramped conditions and boundaries being tested.   Plus, he was dating my mother, whom he met during the summer of 1970.  So I asked my father if he brought my mother to the gathering suggested in the photo and he texted back:  “I took that picture before most of the guests arrived. That’s why that tray (of food) was neatly arranged.  I have other pics of various individuals with plates and cups of beverages in hand.  Earnestine (my mother) was there.”  

***

So there you have it.  It’s the late fall or early winter of 1970, and my father and his family are celebrating my grandfather’s birthday, or maybe Christmas, and the woman who would become his wife, and my mother,  is there celebrating with them. Maybe he realizes in that instant that he wants what his parents have:  Tables laden with food, family sitting and standing around, eating and drinking, laughing and dancing, putting aside their sorrows, anxieties and fears to be picked up another day.  Looking back, it occurs to me that he not only wants what my grandparents managed to scrape together despite their struggles, but he wants more:  A house that could comfortably accommodate his family with room for growth, celebrations and more.  Whatever Dad put his mind to, he achieved.  I'm living proof of this.

***

Not too long after that gathering, he would take a roll of film to a processor like Fotomat and have it developed and printed and mailed back (or either picked up).  This photo would become one of Dad's favorites of his father, and the others of that day in 1970 would be packed away in a family album.

So in March of 1971, he got an apartment on West Garfield Blvd and life began to accelerate:  marriage to my mom in February 1972 and a newborn daughter (me) in September of that year. Dad knew what he wanted, and he made it happen, not just for him and his wife and children, but for his parents, siblings and extended family.  A true Black man of measure, born to and shaped by another Black man—my grandfather—who did what he could to hold his family together until his death in 1989.

***

On this day where we celebrate our fathers, I am reminded yet again that photographs carry more than scenes or imagery from a moment in time. They carry memory, context, and lineage.  This photograph now connects three generations: my grandfather seated at the table, my father behind the camera, and me receiving the image more than five decades later.  Today I'm grateful for both of these men and for the gift of seeing my family history through their eyes.

***

As I sit with this photograph, I realize something else. This is how I write. Give me an item from an archive—a photograph, a letter, a document, a text message—and I start asking questions. One clue leads to another. One memory unlocks another. Before long, what appeared to be a simple photograph becomes a doorway into family history, one that in the case of my family, is also a doorway into the history of a community that was eventually erased.

As I continue working on the Black Men of Measure manuscript, I give thanks for the ways fathers leave traces of themselves behind. Sometimes in stories. Sometimes in habits. Sometimes in photographs.  What traces did your fathers leave behind for you and your families?

Happy Father's Day to the fathers, grandfathers, and ancestors whose love still reaches us across time.