Tuesday, August 20, 2024
To everyone, I am Chris Pressman, and Rande is my dad.
I’m going to make a long story relatively short.
When I was 15 years old, I found out that my dad was actually my stepfather and that my real father was Rande.
Over the years, I did try to find him and tried to find out about him only to really get nowhere.
Conflicting stories, etc.
It wasn’t until my youngest daughter Emily got fascinated with ancestry.com that she was able to trace her ancestry back to my aunt Nanci, and to her grandfather, my dad, Rande Smith.
My daughter, using the Internet and a lot of diligence and perseverance finally found a phone number that I could call to talk to my dad.
In February 2021 at 53 years old I got the courage up and called the phone number from my classroom before school started and left a message.
Within a day or so, Rande called me and I told him I believed that he was my father. A lot of talking and convincing and information went back-and-forth and phone calls and he finally accepted that I was his son, and I was convinced that he was indeed my father.
What I learned from then on is priceless, I did not get the chance to meet Rande, but I did learn about his wonderful life, and in typical Rande fashion He was self-deprecating on how cool his life was. but to me it was cool.
He was a backup musician who played for many famous bands, some of which were my favorite bands.
He also wrote music we had many discussions about what songs constituted, good written music compared to meaningless Babel set to a beat. Actually really good discussions.!!
After his musical career, he pivoted and became a chef cooking for many restaurants in the San Francisco Bay area, and then later a private yacht. I would love to have had some of his meals.
Eventually, he returned back to Denver and married Jan and kept on cooking, but he also became an avid bike rider.
I introduced Rande to my children and he began in Earnest to call and write letters to them. He connected particularly well with Emily and Brianna sending them gifts that he had made and lucky silver dollars to them.
My son also got a lucky Silver-dollar.
I had truly planned on going out next summer and seeing my dad and Jan and perhaps even bringing some of my kids with me, but unfortunately, we ran out of time.
While it was only a few years, I can honestly say that I am richer forgetting to know him as much as I did and my kids as well. I do have grandchildren, which would be his great grandchildren, but they’re too young to remember any of this but at least Rande got to see pictures of them and hear stories about them.
As I told Jan, I don’t have any regrets I don’t wish things had been any different just as he would’ve thought the same. if I could go back in time and get to know my dad and live a different life, I wouldn’t do it because then I might not have my actual children and grandchildren. I might not be the person that I am.
I just absolutely glad that before he died he got to find out that not only was he a dad, a grandfather, and great-grandfather, and not only was he was able to talk to his son he got to also talk to his grandchildren and get to know us all a little bit.
On my Birthday, August 5th, 2024, Emily came over and We made a dinner together in honor of my dad and her grandfather. It was the first time I had made a full meal with Emily.
He will be missed by all of us, the family he always had but didn’t know it until three years ago.
Chris Pressman
