Richard Ernest Partida

Richard Ernest Partida. Born December 24th, 1941, died February 26th, 2024. Son of Ernest and Lupe Partida Since 2006, I have been out of contact with my father and most of my family all together. Even though it is my choice to isolate myself, I do like to hear about family. Mainly to hear that they are healthy and ok. Still living. My father died two days ago. I opted out from family relations long ago and I know, it was selfish. If you knew anything about my father personally then, that would be no surprise. Like father like son. You may think that I am criticizing my father, but you would be wrong, I am selfish because of him, Selfish made me get a job when I was 10 years old, gave me the willingness to earn money to buy my own bike, my own toys and later, my own car. Granted I only did this because I had nothing to fall back on like my parents, but I wanted freedom. It was only later that I truly appreciated that he had given me that, by denying me so much that was so easy for other kids to get from their parents. Even though I do have grievances from my childhood and my young adult life, I do not choose to remember my father like that. Instead, I will tell you a story. Long ago when we were kids, I was maybe five or six. It may have been earlier than that. We would go to the grocery store on Mills Avenue, East Whittier. They had this section for toys. I think we had bugged mom about guns to play army with and we were trying to get her to buy some for us. So, we could play army with our friends. We didn’t know at the time that the family was struggling or that there were issues with money. We just wanted toys like our friends had. We must have really been begging her. Mom must have told Dad about what happened at the store. He took all three of us to the back yard. He took a piece of wood from the wood pile, took a pencil drew a rifle on the piece of wood, gave it to my older brother with a wood saw and said, there, now you can have a rifle to play army with. We spent hours drawing and cutting our own rifles and guns to play army with. We even used an old car jack as a 50-caliber machine gun. We made our own skateboards. We made soap box derby cars. When we moved to Yorba Linda, we started making paper airplanes and balsa wood gliders to fly off the dam in the dry lake. We helped Dad build the fences, lay brick, split wood, split railroad ties, landscape the yard, lay PVC to water the yard, lay concrete for a patio. Later we made handguns for body surfing. We made snowboards when they first came out. My older brother made a water ski. We seemed to always be making something or helping dad to make something. Now, a quick time travel to one of my earliest memories, when Louie, me and Mark were young before our sister was born, the best times of the day were when dad would return home from work. That’s when we would wrestle with dad all over the carpet. We would be laughing like crazy. Laughter was always in everything we did and jokes, cajoling, etc. was always in everything we did. So, it is amazing that my father taught us how to laugh, how to think and how to be self-sufficient. In his own way. I will not miss who Richard Partida became but will have fond memories of who he was. Our Father He taught us many things and I will cherish those fond memories of everything we learned when we were young. Frank A Partida Written by Frank A Partida Posted on behalf of Frank A Partida