Dear Daddy,

You know how much I relied on your guidance as I was growing up. But I wonder what you’d think if you knew that, even now, more than 26 years after we lost you to a stroke on a snowy February day, your wisdom still guides me.

I know you regretted dropping out of school as a young man and, although you seemed content to work 16 hours a day, it must have hurt not to have the opportunity to better yourself.

I know you wanted better for us, your children.

We may have grumbled when we were kids because you demanded so much. You insisted we get the highest grades in our classes. An A wasn’t good enough for you. You expected every grade to be an A+. We had to reach so high that nobody could yank us back down.

People laughed when you told them your five girls were going to grow up to be doctors. Impossible, they said.

And yet, as the first African-American woman to be board-certified in maternal-fetal medicine (high-risk obstetrics), I’m living proof that your dreams weren’t impossible after all.

Your dreams and your demands for us to do our best are the reasons why, among your five daughters, two are now physicians, one, an oral surgeon and another grew up to be a lawyer.

But I owe you for more than my career in medicine, Daddy. There isn’t a problem that I come across in life where I don’t ask myself, what would Daddy do? There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think of you. There will never be a time when I will stop missing you.

Even though, I know, you’re very much with me. Even now. Happy Father’s Day.

– Yvonne S. Thornton, MD, MPH