My 90-something father, Harold, had been living alone since my mom died in 2001- in the same house my parents built in 1939, with a mortgage Dad paid off by 1940. To ease Dad's loneliness, my siblings and I took turns visiting him for Sunday dinners. But if you're picturing some frail elderly man...well, not quite. After retiring from his podiatry practice at 85, Dad still managed four commercial properties he owned, worked in his yard, drove to the beach for his daily two-mile walk, and cooked full-course meals from scratch — complete with homemade soup and the occasional reprimand to his kids (we were all over 50) to "Pipe down and enjoy it while it's hot."

When our peers talked to elderly parents, they usually heard about doctor visits, prescription changes, aches and pains and the sorry state of the world. Dad? Well, he never took a pill. We had to drag him in for any medical procedure. He remained actively engaged with former patients, present tenants, grocery store clerks and others he encountered on his daily walks. When he cut his hand with a drill — an oozing sore nasty enough to send anyone to the ER — Dad not only brushed it off but was delighted to demonstrate how he was fighting the wound naturally: "Pus is a sign that the body has won!"

Dad loved his six children, and often saw the humor in his own eccentricity. But along with his commanding presence, he had self-concocted ways of doing EVERYTHING, whether it related to cooking or health remedies or saving money. I could go on and on with the stories....and in "Sundays With Harold," I do! The narrative unfolds as a series of family-wide emails, as my siblings and I keep tabs on Dad. It's a story spanning several years in our family, with its joys, heartbreaks, challenges, routines, laughs...and the indomitable spirit of our fearless leader, Harold J. Blass.