Dedicated to the One I Love

I'm getting ready to publish the paperback version of "Spirit Dad." I dedicated it to the memory of my own dad.

My father USCG LCDR, Stuart Talmage Scharfenstein, was killed, along with two other pilots, in a helicopter crash on June 29, 1961 at the Air Station in Salem, Massachusetts during an instrument training mission. The cause of the accident was failure due to fatigue of an RE5M7 rod in the Sikorsky aircraft. I was born three days later.

My mother signed every gift, card, note, and letter to me: "all our love, Mom and Dad-in-Spirit. There was never a day I didn't feel his presence or his love. I often carried on conversations with him to the point of stamping my size 3 sneaker on the ground in the backyard in frustration while shouting up to the heavens, "why can't I bring my swing set up there and have you push me?!"