The older I get, the more I appreciate my late father, Harley U. Biggs, Sr.

Dad was a three-sport athlete at Cherokee High School in the late 1930s. He starred in basketball, football and baseball – but his first love was baseball.

He said he had an offer to play baseball at Oklahoma A&M (now Oklahoma State University) but his college plans got cut short when he got drafted during World War II. After the war, he did play some minor league baseball but back then, you couldn’t make a living doing that.

Dad served in the U.S. Army under Gen. George Patton and he fought in the infamous Battle of the Bulge in Europe. He was wounded slightly and was awarded a Purple Heart and later he was given partial disability by the Veteran’s Administration.

He met and married my Mother during the World War II. I know nothing of their courtship but they were married in the summer of 1942, when the end of the war was in doubt.

When Dad came home from the war, he and Mom did what almost everyone else did – they had kids. They had five boys, each about two years apart.

When baseball didn’t pan out, Dad was trying to figure out how to make a living and feed and clothe all of us kids. Mom wanted him to learn a trade, so he went to barber school. He was a barber for more than 30 years.

When Mom passed away in 1959, Dad was left with five boys (ages 5-13) to raise. That was a tough assignment.

He worked hard but back in the 1960s, he only made about $100 a week cutting hair. He used to moonlight some at a barbershop on 11th Street in a strip center across the street from where Bama Pie is now.

But he cut most of his hair at Boulder Towers, a high-rise office building on Boulder Avenue at 15th Street downtown. It used to be called the Skelly Building because it housed Skelly Oil Company. That building was built by J. Paul Getty and housed Getty Oil Company. Getty at that time was reported to be the richest man in the world. Texaco later took over the building.

Dad’s barbershop was in the basement. He didn’t own the shop but he leased his spot from another barber. A black man named Red shined shoes in that shop and he had a thriving business.

One of the perks for the oil company employees was that they could get their hair cut on company time. Dad got to know the presidents and CEOs because he cut their hair.

Skelly Oil Company had a company cafeteria on the first floor of the Skelly Building. They subsidized the food and Dad would get up early and eat breakfast there and then be the first in line each day to each lunch. I ate lunch with him many times.

The food was very good, thanks to chefs like the late Winfred Reaves (another World War II veteran who lived down the street from us).

Dad was a Christian but he wasn’t comfortable in church. He would only attend when we visited his brother, Alton Biggs, in Greenbriar, Arkansas. Dad preferred to sit in his own living room and watch services on television.

He was very proud of his five sons. He urged us over and over again to get a college education so we could have a more prosperous life. Four of his sons got college degrees – something that made him very happy. He went to Norman in 1976 to watch me graduate from OU and that made both of us very happy.

Dad loved to see his sons play competitive sports, especially baseball and basketball (he forbid us to play football because we would get hurt).

As he grew older, Dad fell in love with golf and he was a great golfer. Then he joined a bowling league and did well at that, too.

Life was rugged for my Dad. He never wanted to talk about the war, except to say that he didn’t want any of his boys to go to war.

Dad took great delight in his grandchildren, especially my daughter Sarah. In our family, we had a string of 13 boys born in a row over 72 years and Sarah ended that string. She has few memories of her Granddad because he died when she was an infant.

I miss him. Every Memorial Day, I put flowers on his grave and I yearn to see him again. He wasn’t perfect but he was the best Dad a guy could ask for and I love him dearly.

Happy Father’s Day!