When Shepard Bryan Broadfoot was born on December 19, 1924, his father, William, was 36 and his mother, Elizabeth, was 29. In 2009, Bryan released his autobiography, My Life As I Rember It. Throughout this post, direct passages from his book are used as he tells his own story the best.
“I started my life, I’m guessing, in probably the spring of 1924 or thereabouts, for I was born December 19, 1924 in Atlanta, Georgia at 168 Praprado. That was the residence of my parents. The reason I was born at a residence was because it was about Christmas time and my mother insisted the Dr. S. T. Barnett deliver me at home rather than in a hospital so that my mother could be with her children at Christmas. He didn’t like that idea at all and said that it was impossible because he had never done that. So my mother said, “Therefore I will have to get another doctor”, and he said, “Well, I’ve never delivered a baby at home.” My mother replied, “Well, this will be your first and you can practice on me.” Therefore I was born in her bedroom at 9:33 PM December 19, 1924. I was named Shepard Bryan Broadfoot after my very fine great uncle, Judge Shepard Bryan, who was a big time judge in Atlanta, Georgia.“
I lived in Atlanta for approximately one year and the family moved to Wilmington, North Carolina. My daddy was a cotton mill executive. (I call him daddy because I think “daddy” is somehow, to me, more reverent and special than “father”. Anyone can be a father, but it takes a very special person to be a daddy, and he was that special person.) My daddy moved us to Wilmington in 1925, or thereabouts, to open Broadfoot Iron Works, a very prosperous firm that was later to be a big part of World War II. I do recall when we moved to 133 Forest Hills Drive. Daddy built this house, designed it and everything. Many years later it was referred to jokingly as “The Broadfoot Hilton.” I remember being taken out as a little child seeing this house constructed. It was indeed a beauty, and being as Daddy actually designed it, being the engineer that he was, he designed it and took great pride in this house.”
Bryan went to Forest Hills Elementary School and then on to Issac Bear for his middle school. 1n 1938-39, he went for a time to Exeter Prep School in New Hampshire and then New Hanover High School in Wilmington. At NHHS, Bryan was active in many sports as well as student council. He then went on to Virginia Episcopal in Lynchburg, VA and later at Fishburn Military School in Waynesboro, Virginia. Bryan graduated in 1943 from Cheshire Academy in Connecticut.
“The summer of my freshman year, a Mr. Galloway came to town representing Virginia Episcopal School in Lynchburg, Virginia. My parents decided that I wasn’t doing too well in high school, so they would enroll me at Virginia Episcopal and they accepted me. It was an absolutely beautiful school, an Episcopal school. The headmaster was a Dr. Randolph, who was also an Episcopal minister, who held services in the chapel. The school was very strict, and needless to say, I walked many a demerit, each demerit being one mile long around the track. I recall at Thanksgiving break, everyone was gone for Thanksgiving, but not Bryan—I was dumb and I had to walk some demerits before I could leave campus.“
“Looking back, I truly wish that I’d have been a better student at V.E.S. than what I was and would have paid more attention to things at hand. …V.E.S. was a wonderful school. It’s just a darn shame that I couldn’t appreciate it and put forth more than I did because I’m sure the school was not inexpensive and it was just my fault.” “Summer came on, it was 1940 and all hell had broken loose in Europe a year or so previous to that and now it was getting worse, and with the summer, I went to work with my Daddy at the Broadfoot Iron Works, and worked some, played some and had a very good summer. Daddy sat me down about the middle of the summer and said it seemed like a Christian school wasn’t the school for me but I would take more, hopefully, to a military school, whereby I was entered into Fishburn Military School in Waynesboro, Virginia.”
“That summer I went to work at Broadfoot Iron Works trying to learn to be a mechanic of some sort. I ended up learning to run a lathe. We were turning propeller shafts for the liberty ships out at the shipyard and also were making doors for the Sherman tanks. Daddy bid this job and how in the world he was smart enough to get it, I don’t know.” “I had a sailboat that summer. I’ve forgotten exactly what kind it was, I believe a Sunfish, I’m not real sure. Frances and I were out sailing and it came late afternoon and she said, “Bryan, I think you better get me on home now.” And I said, “Get you on home for what?” She said, “Well, I’ve got a date.” I said, “Well, you’ve got a date with me and I don’t see the rush to get you home.” She said, “I’m sorry I don’t have a date with you.” I believe she had a date with Clark Poisson, if any of y’all know him. And I said, “You got a date with who?” And with that I took my arm and swung her off the side of the boat, and there she was floundering in the water, hair soaking wet, raising her fist up. She said, “I’ll get you for this.” I laughed, I thought that was the funniest thing. She had over a mile to go to get to her house. I don’t know how I got out of that one. Seemed to me like she should have been mad at me forever, but that was funny and I bet you she thought it was funny too.” “
His recalls his first meeting with Frances went something like this, “Mother was going to have a birthday party for me, for I guess it was my 13th birthday, perhaps. She told me that she wanted me to bring a girl who’d just moved in across the street, and I said, “Not if it’s the girl I’m thinking of,” and said, “Well, they’re a fine family. Her daddy’s a president of a bank.” I use an expression of my daddy’s…Daddy would always, if he said no, he would say “Nothing stirring.” But that’s what I said about this girl. Her name was Frances Thornton. When she came to the party at my mother’s insistence, I said I must be stupid or blind, for I later married her at the age of 20. Mother did have a nice birthday party for me and I was enthralled, is a good word, I think, with Frances, and we started dating. I had many dates with her.”
“I recall one night sitting on the swing on her front porch on Oxford Street or Henderson Street at Wrightsville Beach. I was sitting on the front porch on the swing necking and it was right in front of her daddy’s bedroom window, but I figured he was a sound sleeper and obviously she did too, and all of a sudden, this voice says, “Tancy – he called her Tancy—he said, Tancy it’s time you come in now.” I said, “Oops!” I believe there were four steps off of that porch down to the ground and I didn’t hit a step, but as I was flying through the air to the ground, I hollered back, “Call you tomorrow Frances.””
“Quite a few big bands were playing at the Lumina Pavilion that summer. I remember distinctly Louis Armstrong, I remember Cab Calloway. Cab Calloway had so many people come to the dance, they must have turned 500-1000 away, and they got on the beach underneath the Pavilion, just so they could hear the music. They had some excellent bands. Artie Shaw played there, Woody Herman, I believe, Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey.”
“I don’t know how in the name of heaven I picked it, but for my senior year in school (1943), I picked Cheshire Academy in Cheshire, Connecticut, which is fifteen miles north of New Haven. I caught a train from Wilmington and changed in New York, then caught a train to New Haven, Connecticut, and from there they had a local bus run like you would see—not too many stops. I got off in this little village of Cheshire, Connecticut, put my suitcases on the ground, and I heard a voice yell out, “Hello, you Rebel son of a bitch.” I thought to myself, “Who in the world knows that I’m from the South?” I turned around and looked and there was this fellow laughing like all get-out. His last name was Mahone. I don’t recall his first name, but dag-gone, he was from Virginia, and we were in school together at Virginia Episcopal School. From then on, I was known as Rebel, and his nickname was Dixie.” “I became head cheerleader at Cheshire and I was also bestowed quite an honor being elected vice president of my senior class.”
“Billy and Winston had now gone overseas and it was time for me to make a decision. I wanted to go into submarines but was turned down because of my height, so I sure couldn’t see living in a trench and carrying a 70-pound pack on my back and eating out of a can, so I was accepted at the US Merchant Marine Academy in Great Neck, Long Island.” “The Morse Code was very difficult for me, so I went from the deck department to engineering. I got along pretty well, but did not make it for my second year of school and ended up going to Seaman’s School at Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. I was to do some engineering study there and go to sea, which I ended up going to sea as a junior engineer. “”When I sailed on the James Jackson, it was the 24th of March 1944 and I told Frances I would be back in about three months. Well, little did I realize where I was going and how long I would be gone. We left Norfolk, Virginia and my being junior engineer, I had nice sleeping quarters all by myself, a state room with a upper and lower bunk bed all to myself. No sooner did we hit the Chesapeake Bay that ol’ Bryan got seasick. Well, prior to sailing, I had bought I don’t know how much, but a ton – a TON it seems like, of a seasick remedy called Mother Sill’s Seasick Medicine. I took the Mother Sill’s and little did it do. I can swear by all that’s holy, that it took fifteen days to go from Norfolk to the Rock of Gibraltar. Of course, once we got to sea, our orders were opened up and we knew where we were going. I was very ill until I got to the Mediterranean and what I survived on was Coca-Cola and chocolate bars.”
Bryan ended up in Oran, North Africa and then continued on to Naples, Italy and back and forth between the two for a bit. He then was off the coast of southern France during the D-Day invasion and for a bit afterwards. His time with the Merchant marines ended and Bryan headed back home to do, in his words, “some serious courting.”
And that serious courting involved Frances Thornton. Based on his autobiography, Bryan seemed quite close to all of Frances’ family.
“I would like to go back a bit to the time I was about fifteen or sixteen years old and courting Frances. We would go up to a place called Pop Gray, which was a soda shop at one end and a bingo parlor at the other. Across the street was Newell’s, at Station One, a place where they had sodas and ice cream, etc. Frances and I would go up and play bingo. Her grandmother, Fannie Holladay, was always up there playing bingo and she’d pay for a few of our cards once in a while. I just enjoyed seeing her with a great big straw hat or some sort of hat – it was a big hat. She would sit there with a smile on her face. She was an enormous lady, but she enjoyed her bingo.
Frances’ brother Jimmy was quite a character. He would go up to Pop Gray and drink beer with about five other fellas. There was a girl named Betty Cordon, and she would take off and go to the beach with the fella that was the drunkest. I guess she felt safe that way, and I don’t blame her for that. Ol’ Jimmy invariably won because he’d drink so much that he couldn’t drink any more. He’d go to the restroom, throw it up and come back and drink some more. He was a fine fella – was later killed in the Battle of the Bulge. He was a commander of a Sherman tank, and went in, heard the voice of someone in the infantry needing relief. They were trapped by the Germans and he recognized the voice. It was a classmate of his. The classmate later told the story, he had his leg blown off and was left in the ditch with a corpsman. They were told that, as the story goes, someone heard it and reported it and that they were going to come back and get them the next day. When they came back the next day, the corpsman was dead and Jimmy was gone. It was assumed he later died in the German hospital. He is now buried somewhere over there. I’ve forgotten exactly where, but it was a grief-stricken time when he lost his life.
Frances had another brother, William, and I’ll speak more of him later, but if there ever was a person that was a man of integrity in my book, it was William Thornton. She had a younger sister named Lucretia, very cute, very witty. Her mother was very witty. Frances’s daddy was president of Wilmington Savings and Trust.
Fannie Holladay lived on 7th Street – that’s that big fat grandmother that I was telling you about—a lovely lady. She had a great big Saint Bernard named Stump – stump like a tree. Anyway, Stump had a habit of walking down Princess Street, going to the WS&T bank, and as the door would open, Stump would slip through the door and no one paid any attention to him. One day Mr. Thornton had a very important client sitting at his desk and Stump had slipped into the bank and gone under Mr. Thornton’s desk and curled up to take a little nap. By and by this important customer was sitting there at the bank and this horrible odor came from underneath the desk, and with that Mr. Thornton said to the customer, “Excuse me”, and called up Fannie Holladay and said, ‘Miss Fannie, Stump’s here at the bank. Would you please send for him?’ She said “Oh, Darlin’ I’m so sorry.” And she would send a taxicab down to pick up Stump. She was such a character.
She double-parked at the post office one day and when she came out, the policeman was writing her a ticket. She said, “Young man, what do you think you’re doing?” He said, “I’m giving you a parking ticket. You double parked.” She said, “I don’t think you know who I am. My name is Fannie P. Holladay.” He said, “Lady, I could really care less what your name is; you double-parked.” She took the ticket in a huff and drove off in her usual pace of about 15 miles an hour – that’s about as fast as she went on the open highway, too, as I recall. She got home and felt so bad about being what she considered ugly to a policeman, she called the mayor. Meantime, having the policeman’s name, she asked what his address might be, that she wanted to send him a television set. The mayor was Dan Cameron and they sold TVs there at Cameron’s place at Third and Chestnut. He said, “Mrs. Holladay, you don’t have to do that.” She said, “Well, you do it anyway. Send him a television set and put it on my account.” Boy, that was Miss Fannie for you.”
Having thirty days off, there’s nothing to do, but the best thing to do was to get married. I talked to Frances about it and she says, “Why not?” We went down to Huggins Jewelry and looked at rings and that evening, I came back to talk to her daddy to get permission. Frances and Mamie, that’s her mother, were sitting in the living room. I went into the kitchen and Mr. Thornton was at the kitchen counter doing something and turned around at me and he says, “You want to talk to me? You come to see me, Bud?”, and I said, “Yes, Sir, I want…” and with that he went into the drawer and took out a large butcher knife and started sharpening it, and turned to me and said, “What did you want to see me about?”, and I said, “I forgot.” I went out into the living room and Frances and her mother said, “What did he say?” I said, “Well, I didn’t ask him. He was sharpening a great big knife and I got nervous.” Frances says, “I can’t believe you wouldn’t ask him.” She got up, went into the kitchen like a hero, and said, “Daddy, Bryan and I are going to get married, and hopefully, it will be with your permission.” Her daddy said, “Tancy, let me know when, and how much it’s gonna cost.” She told him we were gonna get married in about two weeks. That was news to me, and suited me fine. We got married and I remember my daddy was the best man. All my friends were in the service and gone.” Bryan and Frances were married on April 21, 1944.
The Army called Bryan up and the young couple headed to Joplin, Missouri. Bryan was stationed to train at Camp Crowder, Neosho, MO and Frances found a cute one bedroom in Joplin. Later they moved to San Antonio, Texas where they got bitten by the Bridge bug and both continued to be avid players for decades. For several years, Bryan was the president of their Unit 118, American Contract Bridge League.
After serving in the army, Bryan (and Frances) moved back to Wilmington and started having babies. “Frances was pregnant by now and Dr. Bill Dosher was her OB, and the first child was a daughter. That was Betty. [Elizabeth (Betty) Winston was born on March 5, 1947.] She was a breach birth and when I found out I had a daughter, they came out and told me, “Mr. Broadfoot, you have a baby girl.” I said, “Is everything all right? Got ten toes and got ten fingers?” They said, “Yes, all were doing fine.” Well, I cried. Too many people take these births for granted. That child—the doctor bill was $100. Two years later, we had son Shepard [Shepard Bryan was born on August 21, 1949.] and that was $110, ‘cause he was a boy. And then we had the third child, and that was Miriam, [Miriam Holladay was born October 13, 1951.] and it was $200 and some and I complained. By then Dr. Sig Bear had come in to work with Dr. Dosher. I went and asked Dr. Dosher, how come that bill was so high. His office was right across the hall from my office, and he said, “To make you think about this bill before you have the next child.” I said, “Well, what it’s made me think about is, hopefully Frances will get another doctor, if she’s lucky enough to be pregnant again.” But prior to this third child being born, I woke up and sat straight up in the middle of the night about 1-something in the morning, and Frances said, “What’s the matter?” I said, “Good gracious, do you realize we’re about to have our third child?” She said, “Don’t worry about it” and turned over to go back to sleep. “Don’t give it another thought.” I must not have given it another thought because I had two more after that one. [Randall Thornton, October 19, 1954 and Beverly, March 8, 1956.]
“I was also during this juncture in my life, made Norwegian Vice Consul for the state of North Carolina. Daddy had it before me, but retired and suggested that I become the Vice Consul. It was a great honor for me to serve and I enjoyed going on the Norwegian ships when they came into port. My duties were not strenuous by any matter of means. I signed seamen on and off the ship and also attended to those seamen left behind from injuries who would be in a hospital. It was amazing how, when I visited them in the hospital every day, they would not give their mail to anyone to post for them, but would wait for the Vice Consul, me being it, to take the mail and get it mailed. It so happened that the Norwegian Vice Consul at a port had almost the same power as the king. A Vice Consul had the power over the captain of a ship.”
Miriam remembers, “I loved seeing Mama & Daddy when they were all dressed up for the L’Ariosa Ball. They were a handsome couple; Daddy looked very handsome in his tuxedo & Mama always wore stunning evening gowns & looked gorgeous! Not only were they a great looking couple, they were also great dancers, winning different dance contests throughout their marriage. Once when Daddy was a Norwegian Vice Consulate, they went on a Norwegian cruise with Mamie, my maternal grandmother. They won a Cha-Cha contest where they had to dance while holding a balloon between their foreheads. They really had a very fun-filled, busy social life, going out several times a week, but also had many cocktail parties, formal dinners or just casual gatherings with friends at our house. It was not unusual to see them written up in the “Society Section” of the newspaper in the late 50’s or early 60’s. They were really a beautiful couple!”
“She [Frances] became the first female Life Master in Wilmington, and I later became the second male Life Master. Bradford Reynolds was the first male and the second Life Master in Wilmington and I became the third Life Master.”
Bryan stayed socially active in Wilmington and served with several organizations. In 1960 he was voted the Kiwanis Club President for 2 years. In 1959, he was also voted onto the Board of Education where he was active in in getting new schools built and he was instrumental in ensuring all the jobs were given out to the best architect not the same old same old. He also took pride in the hiring of two superintendents. As a committee head, he worked with school athletics and became close with the coaches and athletes alike.
While both hunting and golf kept Bryan busy he loved fishing. “In the fall, I fished for spots and mullets and bluefish, particularly bluefish. I caught many a bluefish with cut bait. One of the best rigs you can use for bluefish and all kinds of fishing, is a 2 ½ ft. monofilament leader, a heavy duty one, with a 3-way swivel tied to the bottom. Your line ties to one of those swivels and on the other two you can put a bluefish hook. Then at the top of the leader, you put a double barrel swivel and above the double barrel swivel you had what we call a fish finder, which is a slide with a sinker on it that goes up and down. You fish with a two-ounce sinker, depending on the surf. When you cast, the bait just sorta swims along the bottom of the ocean, or in the ocean it swims along and when a fish comes up to get your bait, it doesn’t have the weight of the sinker to pull against. It’s pulling free and stretches out and when it doesn’t have any interference, it will normally get that bait in the mouth, and in the meantime you will feel it and jerk. Many, many a time, I’ve caught two fish at a time. Now if you are anchored on a falling tide in the inlet, that is wonderful fishing, and you fish with the same equipment using cut bait. I would sometimes put an onion sack filled with fish scraps out off the stern of the boat and that would attract the fish to the oil and blood coming out of that sack and you could really catch a lot of fish. I fished surf fishing with this type of tackle. I’d catch three fish to every fish that was caught on the beach, if they didn’t have my tackle. Johnson Harriss, I’ll have to give credit to introducing me to this tackle. I’ve caught as many as 50-100 fish anchored in the boat.” “One of my highlights of fishing in the Simmons was being anchored in the inlet with a few beers and Shepard fishing with me. I had a radio and we’d listen to Carolina football games and catch bluefish. It was quite a feat. When we would come in from fishing, I would ask Shepard to clean out the boat and there was never any problem with that. He, and sometimes Randall, would go down and clean up my boat. I guess that was good experience in one respect in that they later made it on charter boats, and cleaning up a boat was no new experience for them. I really enjoyed fishing with Shepard, and we fished many an hour and never said a word.”
Shepard recalls “Daddy was very good friends with Captain Eddy, the most famous charter boat captain ever at Wrightsville. He and the other boat captains were awed by Daddy’s bravado and fishing skills. Inshore or offshore, Daddy was either trolling in the breakers or skipping baits 24 miles out around WR4, a favorite spot for commercial boats…he’d be right there with ’em in that 18 foot and later, the 20 foot wooden Simmons…one outboard, one compass, no radio, no fish finder, or electronics of any kind except portable, one way (meaning receiving but not broadcasting) so he could listen to the other boat captains fishing that day…and lots of gas. As i got older, 10 or 11, he started taking me with him.
At an earlier age, Mama would make sandwiches for Daddy and me to take with us cut bait fishing for blues in Riches or Mason’s inlets. We’d go on Saturdays, just the two of us. It was great fun listening to the Carolina football games on the little transistor sitting just inside the breakers with the gulls overhead and us fishin’…chum bag hanging off the stern and us cuttin’ bait and catchin’ dem blues…some of the best memories of my life growing up with Daddy…none of my friends had that with their fathers.”
“I’ve chartered with Cap’n Eddie, as I’ve said before, and on one such trip, it was an overnight trip. Louie Woodbury was the mate on board and I had a big fish on, and Cap’n Eddie thought it was a sail fish. The sail fish had gone down deep and he told Louie to get ready to bill him. Louie went back to the stern of the boat and was leaning over with the gaff ready to get the sail fish. Eddie said, “Louie, he’s getting ready to come up now. Get ready.” Well, that fish came up, and I’m gonna tell you what, Louie did a backward flip somersault into the cockpit of the boat. What it was, was a barracuda. It only weighed 42 ½ lbs. and that mouth was wide open, and I’m gonna tell you what; it was a sight to see! He told Cap’n Eddie, “Good Lord, Captain, it’s a barracuda! What do we do?” And Eddie said, “Bring him aboard.” Well, I’m glad they did because it was a showpiece, and if I’m not badly mistaken it still holds the record in weight off the coast. If it’s not, it’s certainly in the top three. My grandson, Spencer Broadfoot, was maybe 6 years old and had his picture taken with his head inside the barracuda’s mouth. That’s how cotton-picking large it was.”
“So let me tell you about a little sailing I did at the Carolina Yacht Club. I had a Sunfish and one day in a race, it was sort of a spanking good breeze. I asked Beverly if she would like to go with me and be some ballast and she said she would. She was so young she really didn’t know any better, but I put a life preserver on her. I guess she was probably about 6 and the race didn’t even get started good and we turned over. Not only did we turn over then, but we turned over many more times, about 12 or more to be exact, and when we turned over, of course she would start floating away from me. I’d reach out and grab her by the life preserver and pull her back to the boat. We’d right the boat and continue a little bit more and turn over again. This is the way that race proceeded, but she never stopped laughing and I don’t know, maybe I turned that boat over deliberately just to see her laugh, but I don’t think I’d do anything like that. But it was a great time racing with her that day.“
“When it was decided that Frances and I were going to get a divorce, boy that was a stupid damn mistake on my part! Stupid, stupid! Anyway, at that time the one person I hated to tell was my mother. I would rather have taken 50 lashes, I do believe. I actually wish I had gotten the 50 lashes and no divorce. How-so-ever, I went in to see Mother at breakfast time like I normally did. I was sittin’ at her kitchen table and by and by she looked at me and she said, “Bryan, what do you have on your mind?” That was a smart mother and I told her about the forthcoming divorce and she looked at me just as calmly and said, “I guess I’m supposed to be surprised?” I said, “Well, yes, you certainly are!” She said, “Well, I’m certainly not! Now what can I do for you? Where you gonna live? You gonna need some money to put down for your utilities, etc., etc. You’re gonna need money to pay in advance for an apartment.” I ended up living at Cypress Grove Apartments. Well, anyway, she equipped me with pots and pans and money and the like, and that’s what Mother was like.“
I was at a dance one night; the Glenn Miller Band was playing at the Wilmington Hilton and a casual acquaintance of mine spoke to me a week or so later saying he saw me at the dance dancing with my daughter. I said, “My daughter?” He said “Yes, your daughter’s blonde, isn’t she?” I said, “Wait till I tell this lady that you referred to her as my daughter.” Yes, she did look young and she was very beautiful. Her name of course was Evelyn and, oh, I enjoyed being with her so much. Her name was Evelyn Hale originally.” “She was very athletic on the tennis court and beautiful off the court. She was very good to this old plow boy. Finally I realized that she liked me. She was a gourmet cook and was very good and supportive of me.” “We were married by the Rev. Robert Cook at St. James Episcopal Church.”
Evelyn and I took some wonderful cruises, maybe 30 some, each one different in their own way. We met some people on the cruises that we keep in contact with to this day.
One time we went to Europe and that was an excellent cruise. Most of the time we went to the southern Caribbean. On a one week cruise, when it was over, we walked across the walk and got on another ship and went on another week’s cruise in another direction. A very memorable cruise was a cruise to Alaska, where I was honored having been a past Norwegian Vice-Consul. We had dinner at the Captain’s table, a private party, and were invited up to the bridge to see the Calving Glacier. We were served bean soup up there. A special cruise was one she gave me for my 80th birthday. She was known for doing things like that.”
My happiest time in sports was my close association with Coach Frank McGuire and Dean Smith at UNC Chapel Hill.
Barbara Streisand’s “Memories” is my favorite song. Frank Sinatra is my favorite male vocalist.
The most frightening time – watching my family almost drown in front of my eyes from a stupid boating accident.
The saddest days of my life – when my brother Winston dropped dead, watching my parents and brother Billy die, the burial of my best friend Muck Dunn, my ex-wife Frances dying and the hurt for the kids, and losing my pets over the years.
The happiest times – making a family and watching them grow, being a daddy and loving my offspring. I live my life through my children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.
Shepard Bryan Broadfoot, 86, known as Daddy Rabbit and Uncle Bryan to many, died on February 3, 2011.
Broadfoot Family 