Finding the Right Words

Jun 17, 2011 by Rebecca Crichton

My father, Sol Radam, died at the age of 90, right after celebrating his ‘second’ 90th birthday. It seemed fitting that my bigger- than- life father would wind up with two birthdays. We always believed his birth date was December 17, 1913, the date on his passport and Army papers. But at the age of 88, after requesting his birth certificate from Liverpool, England, where he was born, he was informed that his birthday was ‘officially’ January 22, 1914. Evidently the midwife, who delivered him on December 17, didn’t register the birth until January 22 after the turn of the year.  His tombstone in the National Cemetery in Denver, Colorado shows the January date of birth. When it came time to choose words for the tombstone, my family knew we wanted something that captured...