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moretothem · 3 years

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Daniel Mitchell Trent April 3, 1951 – October 10, 1996

They say a lion doesn’t need to roar for you to know it’s a lion.

If there is to be any understanding of the kind of man Daniel Mitchell Trent was, we must suspend what we know to be true and renew our belief in giants. He was a giant. And in what must have felt like a tiny home to such a big man, he was everywhere.

“I ain’t dumb and stupid” poured from his lips so often, joking mostly, but sometimes serious, it should have been engraved on his tongue and maybe, just maybe, his tombstone. He was right. Daniel was neither of those things. He was love, he was brilliant, he was monumental, he was light, he was simple. Raised by a steady woman on the same land that steady woman raised hogs and bottled her own molasses, Daniel found beauty in life’s restraints. All that calm simplicity burrowed itself deep into his spirit as a boy, as a friend, as a man, as Vivian’s husband, as a father to three, and he gave it so freely when needed.

Surely, however, there were screams. If they ever happened, they happened in the Oldsmobile Cutlass he kept parked outside. The game would always start on the TV and Daniel would always start in his gray La-Z-Boy recliner. It never took long for him to turn off the TV and disappear into that beautiful car when the University of Virginia Men’s Basketball Team lost a lead or weren’t playing according to the playbook he’d kept stored in his head. He’d enter his safe haven, turn on WINA 1070 Talk Radio and just be. In that box, in those soft seats, in that fabric are stories and tears and screams.

Daniel stole meat from pots on the stove while dinner was still cooking and brought home the dirtiest jokes from work to share with anyone who’d listen. He was more lover than fighter and never found a need to argue with his wife, but, when she’d find a need to argue with him, he’d find the nearest exit when she’d turn her back. The country boy from Cumberland, Virginia funny and no one cleaned a chicken bone like him; gristle and all.

If there is to be further understanding of the kind of man Daniel Mitchell Trent was, we must look at Darryl, his son. We look at Darryl, not because his life is his father’s life, but because Daniel’s life ended too soon, and if it’s true that we sometimes become who we are because of or in spite of those who found the love to raise us, Darryl is a great reflection of who Daniel would have gone on to become.

Darryl is the man who sent love in form of care packages to his little sister. He’s the man who watched over his mother after her Alzheimer’s diagnoses and until she died, commuting hundreds of miles weekly, while simultaneously tending to the family he built. He did these without grievance. He did these things remembering the talks with his father while working on the cutlass, while watching basketball, while learning electrical systems. This is who Darryl is now. This is who Daniel was, and if given the time, who he’d be today.

He did dad and granddad things. He protected his kids from thunderstorms that were never out to get them and letting them lay in his bed for extra security. He stood toe-to-toe with the biggest of his kids’ fears and showed those fears they were no match against him, then he’d turn to the kids and say, “see, ain’t nothing to be scared of.” He’d nod off to sleep while his granddaughters climbed into his recliner and put barrettes in his hair. He was a superhuman thunder fighter with barrettes in his hair. He was magic.

The last time Daniel drove the Oldsmobile Cutlass, it was because he still needed to be dad. There was an accident. No one was hurt. By this time, cancer gathered so much of his sight, but he simply needed to be dad, and he refused to let cancer take that, too.

Daniel Mitchell Trent was son, husband, dad, brother, Uncle Pack, M-Man. he was a giant who expanded every space he entered. We don’t need to see him to know he was here.

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