Homage to Dad,and guns that have been passed on to us

You have some nice mementos of your father ... take good care of them. Those 'helecopter soldiers' of the Vietnam era were a special breed. Do you have his Purple Heart from the back injury ? He was obviously a fine shooter. I doubt he would be yelling at you over your targets ... maybe some caring fatherly advice might be his words.

Good luck and good shooting.

I'm fortunate enough (and young enough) that my dad and grandpa are still alive, so there aren't any guns being passed along.

He bought me my first .22 when I was twelve, eleven years later I returned the favor and got him a 9mm for Father's Day (he was the envy of the tie and breakfast receiving neighbors).

I figure one day he'll pass something on, hopefully not for another few decades though.

Like Hook said, great things passed down from Dad. Take care of them. I have a few pieces from my Grandpa who passed in '79 that I take special care of... It was he who taught me how to shoot. I have EVERYTHING he ever gave me.. including 11 coal miner's lamps he used to wear racoon hunting, old wrenches, Old Spice shave cup & straight razor, even his old Brownie camera.

Everything I own will be passed down to my kids, also... including everything in the gun safe. I can't die fast enough for'em, though.

My two favorite pieces in my collection, my grandfather's pistol and pocket knife. A Hi Standard Sentinel .22LR and an old stag handled Camillus folder, passed from my grandfather to my father to me.

My dad died 2 weeks ago today. Seems like yesterday.
A WW-II vet and an avid hunter and shooter.
He took My Brother and I aside a few mts ago and went to the gun cabnet and passed out the Family treasurs to each of us .I never will sell any of the guns He gave me . I miss him so much !

You fellas are very fortunate. Your fathers were/are men to be respected and looked up to. Men to be admired. My paternal grandfather and great grandfather were such men, as well as one uncle,but anything that my grandfathers left me, or wanted me to have, was appropriated long ago by my 'father'.

I am very happy for you, and thank you for sharing such wonderful memories with the rest of us. God Bless.

I need to give my thanks to everybody who shares their stories. Luckily, I still have my dad with me to create memories. Our relationship was more turbulent than I would like when I was growing up, but we've both grown up considerably. I have been inspired by some of the stories I've read on here, and have made an effort to spend a lot more time with my dad. Please keep the stories coming as it serves as a good reminder that they won't be with us forever.

HK91 - sorry for your loss. Make sure to keep those memories alive by taking those guns out to play once in a while.

Hee are my three of my most prized possesions...



My dads 1911A1. Its in beautiful condition. He was a Navy fighter pilot
in WW2 (F4U).



A gift from my dad to my mom. (94 in 22lr)



I love these firearms. Even the little Bauer Arms .25. The fact of the matter is that each one of these was something that was close to one of my parents for many years. The little .25 was always in my dads jacket pocket. Who knows how many years the .45 traveled with him and what it saw. The Baretta was given to my mom before I was born. The conection you can draw on from these items is real. The fact that they were relied on for so much more than a pair of cufflinks or a golf club makes them a better link to people who are not hear any more.

I inherited about a dozen or so gun's from my dad (actually got them from him while he was still alive, which was a much nicer way to go about it for both of us I think), so I wont post pics of all of them, for bandwidth's sake.Here are my too favorites though:

nickle plated Colt Trooper MKIII .357 mag. Made in 1974, and bought by him that year a few months after I was born, so aside from being a reallt great looking, great shooting gun, its kinda neat with the year made and bought.



This was his first gun, that he got for Christmas from his dad when he was around 13 give or take. J.C. Higgins model 42 in .22lr (also takes .22 long and .22 short according to the barrel). He did all the stock refinishing, glass bedding, checkering and white line spacers himself sometime in the 80's for fun. Probly one of the nicest lloking El-cheapo brans .22's around.Really good shooter too.

I lost my father 8 weeks ago yesterday. He was two weeks shy of his 83rd birthday. He was a crew chief ( head mechanic) on two B-29s stationed on Tinian. Yes, he was there when the Enola Gay took off. He never was a hunter, or really even much of a shooter, but he loved collecting guns. I am keeping them for my mom. If it comes to the point she needs the money, I'll begin selling them. If not, I'll inherit them when the time comes.

Maybe one of these days I'll take some pics and post. There's some neat stuff there.

RIP dad. I miss you.

My dad got killed in a construction accident when I was ten and all I have of his is his college freshman beanie, a photograph, and a set of drafting tools. In my mind I want to shoot with my boys and create good memories around these firearm objects they will keep and have a link to good old dad when I am put in the bye bye box. The thing about guns they are DURABLE objects. What else do you pass on? jewelry? not me. Electronics? ha ha. Automobiles? nope. Guns have already proven to be good heirlooms just by some of the comments posted in this thread.

wow, there have been some really outstanding Dad's mentioned in this thread. fortunatly, my Dad is still around. so i haven't had anything passed on, but he is the one that taught me to shoot, and he bought me the first rifle i ever had. that means alot to me. that rifle is without a doubt the most prized possesion i have. alot of memories now accompany that rifle. every scratch tells a story about some hunt we went on. we are fortunate to have had the Dad's we have. many folks haven't. that i have the Dad i have means more than anything he could ever give me or leave behind for me.

My father has a shotgun he hasnt seen in over a decade. My biological grandfather died and all his pistols were sold except the replica 1851 Colt (he was a Civil War reenactor, a Major) because nobody in the family had a pistol permit at the time.

My step-grandfather has a small collection which I am to inherit when he dies. I know it includes a Nazi P38 which was a bring-back by his uncle. Everything else he may or may not own is a mystery.

Other than that, I have a SAR-1 that a Marine buddy abandons at my place for months at a time, probably because he knows ill keep it clean and his current roommate is somewhat of an anti.

My Dad was killed by a drunk driver in December. He was worried sick because he gave my sister a power of attorney ans she forced him to sign over every dime he had in the bank to her or she would stop caring for him. When he died she got 265K dollars and my brother and I got nothing. She worked for an attorney who made a living robbing the elderly in Florida.

Thankfully, I visited my dad a week before he died and he made me load up all the guns and most of his prized possesions and ship them home with me. If he had not, my sister and her trucker trash husband would have robbed them as well.

They waited nine hours after he died to call anyone and ransacked the house like villians. It will remain the most appalling thing I have ever seen in my life. She better never need any bone marrow.

Fortunately my father is still with us. He served in the navy right at the end of WW2. He was with the Task Force that tested the and Baker Atomic tests They got a book that had all the facts about the tests. On the inside of the cover was a statement from ADM Blandy about how they all belonged to The Royal Order of The Guinea pigs. Has had no illness related to the testing. Had seven children all reasonably healthy. Has a .300 Savage that breaks down with a 20 gauge shotgun barrel. An old S + W 38 Special his dad used while a Deputy Sheriff in Naylor, Missouri, and a Japanese Pressure Testing Rifle my moms brother brought back from Japan when he went in with the invasion force. A Marlin 39A and an old Win Model 12 shotgun. I'm hoping to get the Sav and the Testing rifle. He's a great father and was a great husband to my mom when she was alive. Sorry about the book but I don't know how to say all this in a few words. You all seem to have great dads also.

Hi Lionking,

When I was much younger, my Gramps took me to the range where we had a little competition, I with my Lee Enfield and he with his Garand. I won by a couple of points and I tried to console him that his eyes weren't what they used to be. He gave me a look that... wasn't pretty... reloaded the Garand and fired a seven round rapid fire string that made a number of the young men case their weapons and leave.

I was given a valuable lesson that day: never underestimate a WWII vet with a Garand!

I received weapons from my Grandfather, a Marlin 39, a 92 Winchester, a Colt revolver... and a few others. In the end it's the lessons he taught me that I cherish.

Selena

Dad's still around & I'm in no hurry to inherit the several guns he has. Besides, he's only an hour away & I can borrow whatever whenever. I do have my great-grandad's Rem 17 20 gauge that he killed countless dove & quail with, taken a few limits of dove with it myself. My grandad flew P38s out of North Africa/Italy during WWII yet somehow managed to come home without his 1911 or any other guns, not even an Italian piece. However, when helping Grandma pack up last week to move into a smaller place, we did find his log book with every flight he ever took, from his first plane ride ever all the way through the end of the war, including the mission(s) he won the DFC for. That one's now at my house, and will belong to my son someday.
ETA: well, there is that Ruger M77 in .243 of Dad's that I sorta permanently borrowed after I used it to kill my first deer 19 years ago.......

I'm fortunate/young enough to still have my father and both of my grandfathers.

Which reminds me...Me and my dad haven't been shooting in awhile.





lonegunman, that is probably the most disgusting story I have ever heard.

Sorry about your father.

My Dad was killed by a drunk driver in December. He was worried sick because he gave my sister a power of attorney ans she forced him to sign over every dime he had in the bank to her or she would stop caring for him. When he died she got 265K dollars and my brother and I got nothing. She worked for an attorney who made a living robbing the elderly in Florida.

Thankfully, I visited my dad a week before he died and he made me load up all the guns and most of his prized possesions and ship them home with me. If he had not, my sister and her trucker trash husband would have robbed them as well.

They waited nine hours after he died to call anyone and ransacked the house like villians. It will remain the most appalling thing I have ever seen in my life. She better never need any bone marrow.

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That's awful to hear. Sorry that happened to your family.

The only gun in my family with any sentimental value is my Grandpa's old Montgomery Ward single shot 12 gauge. It's probably only worth 50 bucks or so, but I remember him talking about how he went pheasant hunting with it the day before he joined the Marines in WW2, and scared up such a big cloud of roosters that he just stood there in amazement and didn't shoot.

My Dad died a week before Christmas. He was a vet of WWII and Korea (Army Infantry and Air Force Intelligence, respectively). Yep, the Air Force sent Dad to spy school. Then they issued him a Nambu, which I never understood.

His funeral was Dec. 21st, my Mom's birthday. I don't think Christmas or her birthday will ever be the same. Dad was really into Christmas, and always got all Dickensian around the holidays (plum pudding every year, and he even roasted a goose once).

He left me the only gun he still had, a 1962 Colt Frontier Scout Model '62. My mother bought it for him for Christmas in 1962. It's the first gun I ever fired. It only had about a hundred rounds through it, but it looked a little rough from handling all those years.

My mother paid $75 for the Colt back in '62. Now I see nice ones going for $600-$1000.

The little Colt is at Ford's right now, being nickel plated (originally blued with anodized frame). 10 week turn around, so I won't see it again until May. It's costing me $320, plus a small fortune in shipping costs. I'm going to pick up a .22 mag. cylinder for it from Numrich, which will also be sent to Ford's. I'm also going to put a pair of these on it.

http://www.klamathriverwoodworks.com/wst_page2.php?idx=2&file=images/New_Grips_00003.jpg&&ID2=fCDPAq (Scroll down a little.)
Check out their other grips. Some really beautiful and unusual woods. Pistachio, anyone?

I'm not sure if he'd be pleased, or if I'd be scolded for spending too much money on it. Dad wasn't a real extravagant guy. Sometimes he could be a little Amish about these things.

The grip guy has an in-shop turn around of 4 days, and will custom fit the grips for free. I've been looking all over for a pair of Colt medallions for it, but no luck so far. Anyone have any sugggestions?