Daddy Bill Didn't Come for Coffee Today in the Courier-Journal
Janurary 24 2008

(click here to read the article on the Courier-Journal website)

Fondly remembering a special dad

By Dale Moss
The Courier-Journal

ENGLISH, Ind. – Bill Smith got sick and, around here, everybody knew Bill Smith. Keep us up to date, friends and family asked.

Krisanne Smith Roll agreed.

She sent e-mails, day after day, when her father improved and when he didn’t. Roll held back little, as if she ever does. When she rejoiced, people knew. When she despaired, people knew. She let people in and kept them there. They took to heart Roll’s raw emotional roller coaster. They forwarded copies that multiplied. Roll heard from sympathizers who otherwise were strangers. They thanked Roll. They unloaded on her their own such ordeals.

Smith, 75, died on July 21, 2005. Roll grieves pretty much like it was yesterday.

“It never will leave,” she said. “But the anger will.”

By anger, Roll refers in part to the reality of having to cope without a man she considers as good as men get. He deserves an honor, in fact, and that she provides with a book built from those e-mails. She calls it “Daddy Bill Didn’t Come For Coffee Today.”

Not just a memoir yet neither steadfastly self-help, the result was an outlet for Roll to remember and a cinch-of-a way for Smith not to be forgotten. “The only thing I did not want was my picture on the cover,” Roll said.

Editors tend to get their way, though, and Roll’s editor, Eileen Wilmoth of Cincinnati, imagines sales this year of about 10,000. The book soon should be available widely after a debut in Roll and Smith’s Crawford County hometown in which every available copy -- 300 – was claimed. “If you read it, it’s not easily forgotten,” Wilmoth said.

Roll, 50, said she can grieve without being obsessed with grief. She balances being mad that Daddy Bill is dead with being unafraid of death. First e-mail readers, now book readers, learn what she did not intend necessarily to teach. “If it’s going to be there, you want to feel it,” Roll said of grief. “You want to feel every aspect of it.”

Roll is grateful, yet remains surprised, by the interest. She set out not to suggest herself as an authority, much less to produce a book. Roll simply did as asked. She shares her father’s death and recounts his life. She reveals small kindnesses, such as being given blankets to keep her just-dead father’s body warmer, longer. She cherishes how, while feeding him pudding at the hospital, he insisted she slow down. “He still was the father, and I was the child,” Roll said.

And she relates profound qualities, like how Daddy Bill loved and doted on her three adopted children – each of color – every bit as much as her three birth kids. Smith encouraged the kindness, patience and faith he exuded. “I wouldn’t have it out there for a minute, if it reflected badly on him,” Roll said of the book.

How could it? Smith understood what most matters and he practiced it unwaveringly. He traveled little because he might miss something at home. “He certainly loved English, he loved the interdependence of the people here,” Roll said. “He loved what is Mayberry about it.”

Smith made time to take grandchildren to school, to challenge himself with crossword puzzles, to study history, to pitch in at church and, yes, to drink coffee daily with his grown-up little girl. “He was very self-confident, very comfortable with who he was,” Roll said.

Smith co-owned a saw mill, helping son-in-law Jeff Roll run the place. Before that, Smith delivered fuel oil. He did not take himself too seriously. He was way better at smiling than at frowning. Quick with a tease, he helped people laugh at themselves. He died on no one’s bad side, it seems.

“People still say to me, ‘I miss your dad,’” said Smith’s other child, Deborah Nichols of Hardinsburg.

Nichols gave book copies as Christmas gifts, but is not quite ready to read it all. Neither is its author, by the way. “I tried to, I started to,” Roll said of the finished product. “I just put it down.”

Norma Lee Smith said her husband of 56 years worried how time might erode especially his grandchildren’s memories of him. The book assures otherwise, of course. She is proud of it, of course, like of its author.

The book can be ordered from Daddy Bill Publishing, Box.157, English, IN 47118, by calling (812) 338-2115or by going to www.daddybillpublishing.com on the Internet. The book costs $23.50. A Canadian company, Trafford Publishing, is to handle distribution and marketing.

Dale Moss’ column appears on Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at (812) 949-4026 or dmoss@courier-journal.com. Comment on this column, and read his blog and previous columns, at www.courier-journal.com/moss.