It could be said that the measure of a man is the way he touched the lives of others. I’m certain that my father touched the lives of more people than I can possibly know -- especially in the horse world -- but it is the quality of the way he touched people’s lives that I celebrate today.

I had a rather idyllic childhood, and I owe much of the happiness of my early years to my father. How many little girls, for example, get to become celebrities while riding a beautiful black pony to horse-show victory? I will also never forget how my father enabled me to impress my kindergarten friends by giving rides in a pony cart at my 6th birthday party.

My father told me when I was a little girl that I would be Phi Beta Kappa at Wellesley as his mother had been. I didn’t go to Wellesley, but I wear my Phi Beta Kappa key proudly. My father used to teach magazine writing one evening a week on top of his regular job, and I went to one of his classes with him when I was about 8 years old. I remember my father as having been a wonderful teacher who enthralled his students. I am convinced that a number of magazine writers probably owe their success to my father. Today, as I experiment with my latest career incarnation as a college instructor, I am well aware of my father’s legacy.

As I grew older, my father made it possible for me to travel to Europe, and he also bought me my first typewriter.

Sadly, many years went by during which my relationship with my father was more troubled and remote. Yet, he remained an enormous influence on me. I became a writer because my father was a writer.

Of course, I realize that writing was not his primary interest, but it was the one I took as my own and parlayed into a satisfying career.

It was writing that brought me back to a close relationship with my father. A few years ago, we began corresponding by e-mail, and I got to know him in ways I never had before. He also began making trips to Florida and got to know and love my family.

Last Christmas, I sent my family off on a trip up North while I stayed home. After Randall, Mary, and John visited my father and Diane, my father sent me glowing e-mail about how wonderful the visit had been. In an outpouring more emotional than I had experienced since childhood, he told me how much he loved me and my family. I should have felt sad that I wasn’t there for the visit, but I didn’t because I think my father was more comfortable writing those loving words to me than he would have been saying them.

My father also touched the lives of Diane and her family, and I am grateful to all of them -- especially Diane -- for giving him more than a quarter of a century of love and happiness.

I grieve today for what might have been -- the continued growth of a loving relationship with my father. But I celebrate what I had. And I celebrate the extraordinary ability of William Dayton Sumner to touch so many lives in so many meaningful ways.