My father, who died six years ago today, was a modest man, and far less likely to brag about his accomplishments than I am. Which means it wasn’t until recently, as I emptied out the desk in his studio while helping my mother pack for a move, that I learned he’d won the Jesse H. Neal Editorial Achievement Award for his work as the Art Director of Engineering & Mining Journal.

Folded tightly into a small presentation box with his award was the following telex from 1970.

I would have been 14 years old.

I remember nothing of this, not the honor, not that he’d attended an awards ceremony, and certainly not the medallion he received for his magazine design work at the beginning of his lengthy career at McGraw-Hill.

I know, of course, that my ignorance of this might be on me, not him. Do kids really pay attention to what’s going on in their parents’ lives? After all, I was lost in comic books back then, and looking ahead to my first convention. So he might very well have told me, and I might very well have forgotten.

But I choose to think otherwise, that it was instead as I suggested up top—that my father was a modest man.

And that was only one of his many positive attributes, which included warmth, and kindness, and patience, and the ability to make me feel loved. As I’ve shared before, I am without the hole in my heart that many men have and are unable to fill due to flawed father figures. For that, and so much more, I am missing him today, six years on from when I last held his hand.

If ever there was a father who deserved a medal, it was him. And for a lot more than having been an Art Director.

I miss you, Dad.