ALS killed my best friend

ALS killed my dad

He was an immigrant, a conservative, a pastor, and then totally not a conservative.

Northern Ireland

He played the British sports

I love this photo because it's awesome. Hell, as far as you know, my dad might not actually be in it.

(Real) Football

Sports are always family driven. Obviously, my family has always been, and by god it always will be, a soccer family. I say soccer, because I'm an American, goddamit.

The most conservative

My parents met and got married at the most conservative Christian college in the country. Later, they were asked to never return because they loved black people, and Jews, and my dad stormed the presidents office and told the old white bastard off when students cheered on hearing the news that Dr. King had been assassinated.

Love bug.

My parents did their honeymoon in a VW Beetle.

Liberty University

My dad with soccer coach Bill Bell, who had played for the Scottish National Team. Dads family had left Northern Ireland at the height of The Troubles (I honestly think that made my dad the most inclusive and loving person I've ever known) but we Irish love our Scotsmen brethren. So obviously, for a fancy evening with the Americans, kilts were required.

Legendary Theologians

So Francis Schaeffer was there.

Moral Majority

My dad effectively wrote the agenda for the Moral Majority in the late 70s. Here he is debating the President, Jimmy Carter. My favorite part is that my dad and President Carter ended up on the same side of nearly every issue. Dad went from being Jerry Fallwells pit bull to, you know, not on the same page.

South America

Dad went a lot of places in the early nineties. He put church money to support the ouster of Ceacescu in Romania, and then went there to support the churches. He put church money to supporting not just baptists, but the Orthodox Church in Russia before the end of the Soviet Union. I went to breakfast one morning in January 1991, and asked my mom where my dad was, and she just said (miffed slightly) "Russia". But this is my favorite picture. He put church money to open a clinic in South America, and went there incognito, one of the gringos, to just serve food.

Candid camera

He had a sermon illustration in which I (at 13 years) was supposed to set up a camp site. I brought a camera and started taking photos. The illustration fell apart, and he dismissed the congregation early, completely forgetting the point he was trying to make.

Appalachian know how

He learned to play the gutbucket. And consistently pulled it out.

Take nothing seriously

Rob Bell, the guy behind Love Wins, was a pastoral intern with my dad. Also, Rob's dad, a federal judge, gave the oath of citizenship to my dad. But as you can see in this picture, Ed Dobson don't care whose in it. If it's funny, roll with it.

This is my childhood.

We sent this out as a Christmas card.

Hiking

My dad and I did a lot of hiking together. I honestly didn't take a lot of pictures. We went into the woods to be away from all of that. But this was taken in our North Face mountaineering tent. It was ten below zero, pretty stiff winds, and we called it an early night. We cooked dinner inside the tent, and I snapped this pic, a year after he was diagnosed. At this point they gave him 3-5 years to live, and I wanted those bastards to know how he lived.

A grandchild

Look at that face. That's a fella who's delighted to see a grandchild.

Another grandchild

OMG WHAT?

SERIOUSLY?

Yeah he looks like Hans Gruber, and yeah, I told him that, but he still sported the German terrorist half-beard for a while

Accidental

Awkwardly, my brother, my sister, and my mother, put these same Marx brothers glasses in everyone's stockings.

Last hike

After my second tour in Iraq, dad and I went out to a friends ranch in Montana. We drove a Gator half way up the mountain, and walked about 500 yards in. When we were younger, dad and I had taken on the Pukaskwa Trail in Canada. 50 miles of wilderness. Now, it was just barely a few hundred feet.

Coming home

I came home early from that tour. This is the last picture we took with him. He couldn't swallow, he could barely walk. But most of all, I want you to see his eyes. I want you to look at them. At how sad they are. At how lost they are. I'd never seen this man so broken. This is what ALS does. It destroys people.

This is how you remember Ed Dobson

As a smiling, joking, loving, accepting, driven, intellectual, and most importantly, amazing human. I refuse to remember him by how his disease destroyed his body. I remember my father by his entire life.

FUCK ALS