Letter to My Dad: A Daughter’s Tribute to a Single Father

A personal letter to my dad about single-parent love, unforgettable memories, and the man who made me who I am.

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I’ve wanted to write a letter to my dad for years — long before this blog existed. In fact, I started drafting it in a book I never finished, likely saved on a floppy disk that’s now completely unreadable. So here I am, starting fresh, because some things are worth saying even if it takes a decade to find the right words.

This letter to my dad is the first in what I hope becomes a long series — a collection of honest, heartfelt memories written to the person who has influenced my life more than anyone else.

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Originally written March 30, 2012

Dear Dad,

I wish I could call you every single day just to say thank you. Thank you for everything you’ve done for me — the things I know about, and the things I’ll never know. Most of all, thank you for showing up.

Being a single dad in your twenties in the 1970s wasn’t exactly a common or celebrated path. It couldn’t have been easy — but you took responsibility, you stayed, and you did the best you could. Looking back, “the best you could” turned out to be extraordinary. Here are just a few of the memories I carry with me every day:

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1. Living with Grandma and Grandpa While You Found Your Footing

While you figured out life as a young single father, I got to live with two of the most colorful humans on the planet. They were fun, scrappy, loving, loud, thrift-store-obsessed, fried-food-eating, bingo-addicted characters straight out of a sitcom. I watched so many episodes of The Price Is Right that year — at the ripe old age of 4 or 5 — that Bob Barker is basically etched into my soul. They’ll get their own letter one day. They’ve earned it.

2. No Curfews. No Restrictions.

Not exactly standard parenting advice. But it worked for us, and I won’t pretend it wasn’t one of the best perks of my childhood.

3. Making Me Your DJ for the Baseball Games

You let me help build the music playlists for the games, and without realizing it, you made me a DJ. To this day, if everything else fell apart, I know exactly what my backup career looks like — and I owe that entirely to you.

4. Royals and Rainbows Games and My Unofficial Role in “Player Relations”

Those games in my middle school years were everything. I may have developed crushes on approximately three dozen baseball players during that era. I still think about those nachos and the sneaky sips of beer in the basement lounge like they were yesterday.

5. College Football and Fight Songs — Our Thing

No one else in the world shares this particular obsession the way we do. One day, we are renting an RV and hitting every SEC game we can fit into a single fall. I mean it. Put it on the calendar.

6. Teaching Me Public Service From the Ground Up

Going door to door, working campaign events, dealing with the press (including telling them where to go at 6 AM) — your love of public service gave me a front-row seat to civic life that most kids never get. It is, without question, one of the biggest reasons I am the person I am today.

7. Your Work Ethic

Yes, you worked too much. Yes, you needed to unplug more. But the passion you brought to every project taught me something I couldn’t have learned any other way: that caring deeply about your work isn’t optional — it’s everything.

8. Our Late-Night Wine Sessions

What happens at 1107, stays at 1107. The spoons, the terrible YouTube rabbit holes, the Telemundo New Year’s countdown — I wouldn’t trade a single ridiculous moment. There are too many memories to count and every one of them is gold.

9. Owning Your Mistakes — Openly and Without Excuses

You never pretended to be perfect. You acknowledged your faults, apologized when it mattered, and kept going. That kind of honesty and humility is one of the most important things a parent can model for a child.

10. Being Bob Smith

If you know, you know. Enough said.

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This letter to my dad could go on for a hundred entries — and maybe one day it will. But the heart of it is simple: thank you for being my inspiration, my best friend, my confidant, my counselor, my dance partner, and my constant reminder of what matters most.

You are one of the most extraordinary people I have ever known. And I am so lucky I get to be yours.

Yours forever, Angel

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Want to know more about Angel and everything she’s passionate about? Visit sipindipity.com/angel-holmes.