The image I formed of him when I was a child remains the same today. It just took me 30 years to figure out why, every time I think of him, I feel like a kid again.
Ever since I can remember, my “Be Pa” was the coolest guy. 
I liked everything about him - his cool “Be Pa” hats, the clothes he wore, the pipe he smoked, the cars he drove, the way he combed his hair. Not because those things were cool by the standards of the day. He didn’t drive a Corvette or a hot rod. It was a Ford LTD, or an Oldsmobile 88. He didn’t smoke a hash pipe or a bong. It was just a pipe, with ordinary tobacco. He didn’t wear designer clothes. No Armani suits or custom-made snake skin shoes.
I was completely puzzled when my mom told me a “Be Pa” hat was just an ordinary Fedora you could buy in any store. If that was true, what made him so cool? I remember “Be Pa’s” house was a really cool place. He had a back yard pond with fish in it. I could pretend I was on a jungle safari, and the pond was a lake with man-eating piranha in it. What could be cooler than that to a little kid?
You would think as I grew up, I would abandon this childish image, and form a mature one, but I never did. Not because I didn’t mature, but I did grow to understand what made him so cool.
It was not the car he drove, it was the classy way he drove it. It was not the fedora hat, it was the way he wore it. It wasn’t the shoes, it was the way he walked in them. As I grew up and matured, I began to really understand why “Be Pa” was so cool. It was because he was always in control, always, and in all ways. He walked with confidence and purpose. He didn’t go into a house or room, he entered with a presence. He didn’t park his car and get out, he arrived on the scene. He was the master of self-control! That’s what made him so cool!
His eldest daughter, my mom, once told me that what makes a person “cool” is the ability to keep your head, when all those around you are losing theirs. That kind of wisdom only comes from living with the example of the coolest person in the world, “My Be Pa”.