Happy Father’s Day! Following the theme of our Coolest Mother’s Day scrapbook, we gathered photos of our dads / dad-figures from way back when they either didn’t know us yet or we barely knew them. Either way, they sure are some hip, hip guys, and we love them more than our hearts can hold! Thanks for every single thing forever, dad people.
Randy
Laneia’s Dad
Here’s me and my dad at the Smyrna Air Show in 1986, where the shorts were shorts and the sleeves were shorter. Air shows make me a nervous wreck but man, my dad sure did love them. Air shows, hot air balloon shows, national parks, flea markets the size of city blocks, the band Yes, outer space, being smarter and more hilarious than anyone else in the room — that was my dad. That’ll always be my dad. Also who needs shoes when you’ve got a human crow’s nest? Not this girl!
Jerry
Laneia’s Stepdad
This is a guy who means business. As you can tell by his prominent hat, my stepdad was on the Marijuana Task Force and as such, he would fly around in helicopters and burn your pot fields to the ground. Don’t let that casual country decor fool you. No, sir. To the ground.
Bubba
Erin’s Dad
I’m not sure exactly where my dad is posing here but what I do know is that puppy he’s holding would grow up to leave scars on both my face and arm. I love my dad but I’ll see that dog in hell.
Roland
Alaina’s Grandpapa
My grandpapa just turned 20 in this picture. He just turned 80 this year. We aren’t sure who that baby he’s holding belongs to… and neither is he. He’s still got that sweet smile though; I’ve seen it many times. He’s a good guy.
Alfredo
Isabel’s Dad
This is my dad with his brand new Sony Betacam camera circa 1984. It was always his goal to work in film, so those are the eyes of a man that’s living the dream. That camera is also the reason why my older brother’s first steps were professionally lit and shot by a full film crew.
Don
KaeLyn’s Dad
My dad was a cat person until he got this cat, Butchie, for my mom. Dad and Butchie had an antagonistic relationship for most of the 18 years of Butchie’s long cat life, but at least for a little bit, there was love between them. Also, my dad has always had amazing hair.
Steve
Rachel’s dad
My dad isn’t generally a very chill or fun-loving person, but there’s a whole swath of photos from before I existed where he does indeed look chill as heck and generally happy with life. I love these photos and am fascinated by them: who is this person?? What was the secret to his serenity??? Also what happened to him?? Someday when we invent time travel I will visit this period, have a glass of iced tea with him, and find the answers to these questions.
Marc
Stef’s Dad
Here’s my dad sitting on my great grandmother Sophie’s lap – I never met her, but I was named after her. I don’t recognize any of the furniture but I do recognize those photos of my uncles, so this must have been at her place? I believe this would have been before my dad met my mom because there is no way she would have let him out in public in those pants. He wears mostly standard Dad Uniforms now.
Rene
Laura M’s Dad
I’m about two years old in this photo, which would make my Dad about 33. It looks like we’re on the porch in our house in Kentucky. Within a year, we’d move to to upstate New York and my Dad would start a private practice. His future partner there would name a sheep after him.
Abu
Sarah’s Dad
It’s 1991 in this photo, I’m three, and my dad and I are watching the Disney parade in Orlando, FL. My family lived about 5 hours away from all the parks, and some of my best memories of being a kid involve packing up my mom’s Toyota and spending a weekend at Disney or Universal Studios. I love how strong my dad looks in this photo–and how seriously amazing his mustache is.
Victor
Riese‘s Dad
This is my Dad on a camping trip presenting, with gusto, a large slab of meat which he has apparently been preparing in the great outdoors. I can’t imagine my mother, the camera person, being excited to eat this slab of meat, but I think she was pretty excited about my Dad in general so maybe we all contain multitudes and love is a many-splendored thing. It’s the late ’70s, so they’re either on a weekend trip or this pic is from their road trip back to the Midwest from Los Angeles, where they lived for a minute. I can’t imagine that either — them living in LA — any more than I can imagine my Mom eating this slab of meat. If this picture is from the road trip that means they’ll be in Illinois soon and my existence should begin shortly thereafter. My Dad loved camping, loved traveling, wanted to see everything he possibly could before he died, which ended up happening a lot earlier than anybody expected. I had so many pictures I wanted to use for this post but I picked this one because SWEATPANTS. YELLOW SWEATPANTS.
Alok
Kayla’s Dad
This photo captures the very rare moment of Baby Kayla existing outside of that backpack strapped to my dad’s back. I was my dad’s first kid, and he was obsessed with me. Seriously, there are hours and hours of home video footage just of me sleeping in my crib. My dad’s unwavering love for me meant that he was constantly holding me—either in his arms or in that handy backpack. My mom wondered often if I was ever going to learn to walk given how infrequently my dad let my feet touch the ground. Here we are on a family camping trip in northern Michigan. I guess he needed a moment of rest and took me out of the baby-backpack for a photo opp. Nowadays, my dad has replaced carrying his children around on his back with CrossFit.
Eric
Mey’s Dad
This picture is from the spring of 1983, three and a half years before I was born. My dad, with help from his terrific sideburns, is teaching sign language. He was a student at Loyala Marymount University getting his teaching certificate so he could become a science teacher, but he was also taking counseling classes because he maybe wanted to become a counselor. He says he thinks the sign he’s doing in the picture is “study”? Also, his shirt says “Let your fingers do the talking” and has the ASL alphabet, which is incredible and way more sexual than he meant it to be. I asked if he still owned the shirt, because I would kill for a thirty year old shirt that said “Let your fingers do the talking,” but alas, he hasn’t had it for years.
Bill
Cecelia’s Dad
Despite this cute set of Bake Your Way Into the Patriarchy toys I’m playing with, as it turns out I have no actual cooking skills as an adult, and I hope my father isn’t disappointed by this fact. I guess the most inspiring thing about this photo is that during the time it was taken my father was in school to get a PhD in Sociology, and he looks like a total nerd. But he definitely got a lot cooler as I got older. I’d like to think this was my influence. So that’s a hopeful tale: your kids can make you cooler. You’re welcome, pops.
Gary
Audrey’s Dad
I can’t tell you much about this photo. It’s probably in Missouri, where his extended family lived. It was definitely the 70s, as proven by the Eric Forman haircut, the mustache and the couch. But I don’t know what child’s leg he has suspended or who took it or who the lady is next to him. My dad died when I was 10 and I don’t know his family. I have no stories, just this weird, perfect picture.
Bruce
Maddie’sDad
This is a photo of my dad in Key West circa the late ‘80s. He went with my mom. I believe this was one of the several times he has accidentally ended up in some type of gay bar and/or resort while on vacation. He also owned this button-up until at least 2005.
Juan
Yvonne’s Dad
My dad says he’s about 16 in this photo which I think is ridiculous because he looks at least 20 with those killer sideburns. He’s sitting in his brother’s ‘69 Ford Gran Torino, which reminds me of the Dukes of Hazzard car. There are numerous photos of my dad posing with various badass cars that weren’t his when he was young and he always looked like a cool dude. My dad is still a cool dude.
We’d love to see an older picture of your dad / grandfather / uncle / dad-like person! Here’s how to make that happen in the comments:
Find or upload a photo on the web, right click (on a Mac, control+click), hit “Copy Image URL” and then code it in to your comment using these tags, like so:
The most common mistake y’all make when making image links is foregoing the http: or using two sets of quotes instead of one.
To upload the photo you love from your computer, try using imgur. To learn more about posting photos, check out Ali’s step-by-step guide.
I love all of these cool dads. Here’s my very German pops standing next to an American hero at Madame Tussauds in the 80s:
oh my god
This is wow.
fathers’ day to me is also unofficially the annual celebration of amazing eighties dad facial hair
here’s my dad working a super casual dad look. i was going through albums of photos at my grandma’s house when I was young and this was my favorite picture of my dad. i insisted on keeping it even though grandma was pretty serious about her albums. i don’t really know why i loved it so very much except to say that my dad is a very subdued and serious person in general, but every once in a while he would get silly and delightfully unselfconscious. those were always my favorite moments as a kid…when his quirkiness came out and suddenly i could see who he really was under all those layers of responsibility and anxiety. i believe this picture really captures his weird and i love it so much.
That mustache. The slightly exposed chest hair. So 80’s dad.
Side note: Is he holding a cat?
oh I don’t actually know! I always thought it was flowers but now that I’m looking at it…what if it’s a cat! WHAT IF IT’S A CAT, KAELYN. I like that so much more I’m going to tell myself it’s a cat. pictures are all about the stories we tell ourselves about them right? I mean my dad adores cats. these days it’s just him and his cat against the world so story checks out.
I don’t have it on my phone, but there’s a picture of me when I was about three sitting on my dad’s lap holding a book. I am wearing a giant Hebrew alphabet t-shirt, and he has a mustache but no beard yet, and the two of us are smiling like we are SO EXCITED to read together. Not that much has changed.
I always have mixed emotions on Father’s Day. For like the first 11 years of my life, I thought my dad was the coolest. When he would get home from work, I would rush downstairs to give him a hug and throw a frisbee to our dog with him even if it meant missing some of the Power Rangers or whatever show I had probably been watching on TV. But then, the summer before I went into the 7th grade, my dad cheated on my mom and left her for the other woman. He packed up all of his stuff while she was at work one day and left it to my older brother to tell her what was going on when she got home. He even asked me to help him take his stuff out to the car and I was too young and in shock to say, “No dad wtf.” And then he spent most of my teen years generally being a shitty person until he died from liver cancer ten years ago when I was 20. If he had been around more, we inevitably would have gotten into lots of arguments about politics and his stupid opinions about LGBT people. But I still miss him sometimes. He told the worst/best dad jokes, he loved classic rock (which I guess was just called rock in his day), he let me watch a bunch of movies my friends’ parents wouldn’t let them watch, and he gave really great hugs.
This is him a couple of years before I was born, wearing some amazing cutoffs, and doing something with a stick, I guess.
My father is a beautiful ghost, a haunting mystery.
He died when I was two, but his few grains of time with us had slipped through the hourglass long before.
My mother discovered his absence was universal as well as personal through a chance encounter on a bus. “Did you hear…” transmuting her common journey into a pellucid metaphor.
He hadn’t run out on her – they’d been just a fling, a thing; the momentary only turned momentous by the slow explosion of my formation.
Fathers featured rarely in the pick and mix of friend’s families, so we formed a familiar familial group. We swapped personal stories like candies, or cards, in the schoolyard and “my father fell off a cliff” was my trump card.
Truth to tell, it was my only card. The one and only story I knew about my father, it was a magic incantation whose provenance was mystery itself. I could not remember having been told it, and did not dare to ask. There was no outward interdict, just a powerful silent spell I was unable to break.
At twelve years old, our holiday project – a family tree. Branches sprouted through my grandmother’s voice. A lopsided tree, one half lightning-struck, left out overnight. And in the morning, a bud – my father’s name, filled in (by whom, I’ve never known). My father’s name! Sacred mystery unveiled! And a resounding bump-slump-thump as my imagination grounded itself on the mundane shores of reality.
No longer formless, his name, Raymond, gave my father a shifting substance. He grew from atmosphere to shadow, from fairy-tale to puzzle. I searched for clues, and stumbled on a key by accident. In a stack of faded photos, something compelled me to suddenly ask: “Who is in this photo?”
“Don’t you know? It’s your father.”
Mouth-numb, heart-thrum, brain-undone. I am afraid to shatter the moment, myself. I keep it inside, glass-fragile.
I hunt through papers whilst my mother’s away, and discover a letter. On the reverse of a Bodhisattva picture is curlicued writing filled with optimistic mysticism, and ending with “I’d like to come and see you both I miss you beyond everything love and peace Ray”
No date to anchor my desire am I one of the both was I loved wanted what what what is this how do I what do I who am I now??
I am tumbling, suddenly.
I did not know how to find my feet, and stumbled, jumbled love inside of me. Love for a father I created in my own image; a reflection of every teenage hope and anxiety.
It took me adult-years to learn to speak – my first question about my father like falling from a cliff myself. My mother, catching me by surprise, answered each one lightly, easily, with as much-little as she knew. Baker, illustrator, believer in the world as belonging to all, snippets of the man she’d known.
I have wondered so many things about my father, shaped him in so many ways. From story, to shadow-figure, to comforting ideal. He was never any of those things – and he was all of those, and more.
I look at the photograph of my father, my forever young father.
I see a beautiful boy in the sun, hopeful, happy, seeking dreams. I see my father, I see part of me.
I love these round-ups so much.
I am now of the impression that Alaina has the Coolest Family Ever?! First her mum, now her grandpapa, both so cute and stylish!
Also, is Stef a derivative of Sophie or do we secretly have the same name?!
we do not – it’s a very very vague homage, although i think we might have the same hebrew name.
Yeah, the other time was when Tanya booked us into the Empress Hotel in Asbury Park. They have quite a party there on Saturday night!
they still do!
Here’s my dad with his younger brother on Santa’s lap, looking very 50s, circa 1955. I have very few photos of my family, it turns out, and my dad was not prone to “cool” photos. This looks like A Christmas Story, though, which I love so much I even went to the musical! (I don’t recommend the musical.)
Third time’s the charm? Sorry, everyone…