My senior year in high school I was enrolled in a class where we wrote computer programs to prove Algebra II-Trig-Physics problems. My dad was a pilot. We sat together over his circular slide rule using principles from class to plot flight plans. He made it all real, practical.

Our last project was to use a circuit board to build a binary computer. Mine worked! I lugged it home, set it up, excited to show Dad when he got home from his flight.

Then I remembered. Dad wasn’t coming home. He had died from a heart attack three weeks earlier.