Where do I even start? First I have to say reading the obituary, now I know where Aunt Kathleen got all her children's names:) I never knew everyone's full names. I have too many memories to post, I could write a book, we all could. But I will share some of the ones that come to mind often. Uncle Golden and Aunt Vina were always there. For my birthdays, for my high school graduation, anything special and they were there. My favorite memories are of his prayers over the reunions because he got to witness to his whole family and you could see the passion for saving our souls and the grace of God's love in every word he said. I often wonder where we would all be without Uncle Golden's leadership. I bet it was such a beautiful thing to him as each of his siblings grew to know Christmas and became Christians. He was an educator of everything Biblical. He used to come to our house when I was a kid and have meetings with the Jehovas Witnesses and he would get so heated trying to show them the errors of their ways. I actually picked up quite a bit of knowledge just walking through the kitchen in those times even though at the time I was too young to know it. He used to always have those little Heaven and he'll comic books all over the dash of his truck and I loved reading those things. Scared me straight more than anything...lol I used to be fascinated at how he could walk holding on to the truck even though he was paralyzed. And even at the last reunion I saw him at, I saw him lift his leg and I thought for sure it was a miracle...but he explained to me that he had always had a little movement in them. I remember I was about to jump for joy because I thought his faith in believing he would one day walk again was so strong that it was about to happen. The last reunion I was at I was so heart broken to know that he couldn'the make the journey to be there. I knew that it would take something horrible to keep him away from there... This man was as my brother said earlier, the cornerstone of the family in so so many ways. He was such an amazing man and you can see it in all of us. He left his mark. And seeing how instead of shedding tears for him, we are all so joyous for him because we know exactly where he's going!! And that he was excited to go! If you haven'the seen Smileys video on Facebook, I would go and watch it now!! I think above all, my best memories are of going to his place where he bought that old hotel and playing in the strip mines all day with all my cousins and begging our parents to not make us go home. But then we got to sleep in that scary old place which was so worth it to get up in the morning and go do it all over again. We would always have a never ending stack of hot dogs to roast on the fire and marshmallows. The adults would be out there to the weend hours of the morning just laughing and carrying on. I remember on one of our trips down, I stood up in the car and when mom yelled at me to sit down, I did and sat on a huge furry bumble bee. When we got to the house Aunt Vina put a big onion on it and told me that would heal it right up. I am sure I was off playing within minutes. So I'll end this by just saying Praise God for all his Grace and for letting us have Uncle Golden for so many years after his fall. I can't imagine a world without him in it. Love to all of my family out there...