A photograph of a baseball glove on a person’s hand

Source: Baseball glove, Kingofears,
Wikimedia

“After my baseball games, he’d take me over to the ice cream place by the elementary school”

A photograph of soft ice cream swirled into a cone

Source: Soft Ice cream,
Acidbum24m, Wikimedia

“and buy me a chocolate and vanilla swirled ice cream cone.”

A photograph of a man smiling

Source: Jens Holm 2, Gabriel
Liljevall, Wikimedia

“And he always had a grin. It wasn’t the self-conscious kind: it would come up from inside him whenever the occasion for a smile arose, which for him was most of the time.

That smile might surprise anyone who knew where he came from.”

A photograph of a coal miner. He is wearing a hard hat and work clothes. He is also smiling.

Source: Coal miner (Polish). Capels, West
Virginia, Library of Congress

“As a child, he had to live with another family for a while because there wasn’t enough for him and his brothers and sisters, and he had to quit school after 8th grade to work in a coalmine.”

A photograph of an orange

Source: Navel orange1, Benjamint444,
Wikimedia

“Even when he was a young man, his children would wake up on Christmas morning to find that their only gifts were ripe oranges, one for each of them, placed in their stockings.”

An old photograph of a family sitting together outside. There are three women and one man in the picture.

Source: StateLibQld 1 98064 Wilson Family,
1949, Wikimedia

“But he always knew he was lucky, because he had a love that never went away, and the assurance that he never left his beliefs, and some chances to pass down what matters . . .”