My father, Edwin C. Mertz, died last week.
Shortly before he died he gave me a little book where among lists of many things he had recorded some quotes that had struck him in some way. Here are three.
“There is a lot to be said for making people laugh. Did you know that’s all some people have? It isn’t much but it is better than nothing in this cock-eyed caravan.”
From the movie Sullivan’s Travels.
“What I want is so simple I almost can’t say it: elementary kindness. Enough to eat, enough to go around. The possibility that kids might one day grow up to be neither destroyers nor the destroyed.”
“We ended legal segregation. We ended the idea that you can send a million soldiers ten thousand miles away to fight in a war that people do not support. We ended the idea that women are second class citizens…we were young, we were reckless, arrogant, silly, headstrong – and we were right.”
Abbie Hoffman
Thomas J. Mertz
AMPS 
Thank you, TJ. I wish I’d known your Dad. He sounds like a great guy…
How lucky you were to have had him as a father.
Very sage wisdom that he passed on to you – made you the man that you are today. I echo others here – you were very lucky to have had him as your father.