This year I placed a memorial to my father on the wall of the Temple of Juno.

Below is the prayer that accompanied his photo. His message that I have carried with me throughout my life is simple:

This world is all of ours to protect.

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Capt. Edward B. Jarman, 1965

Prayer for my Father

You died before ever knowing that I was going to join the Navy.

The last night I spent with you in your hospital room, you were in a coma and I read a poem to you I had written the night before. It was about taking your ship out to sea one last time heading for a sunset that rested just beyond the clouds on the horizon.

"He is taking his ship out to sea, as he has done countless times in the past to protect and watch over his country just as he has watched over his family for so many, many years."

The military was never a popular topic with us children back in the sixties, and even though you devoted your life to it and were extremely proud to serve in the Navy, you never put us down for our rebellious behavior and anti-military protests. Instead, you encouraged us to excel in whatever it was we believed in and didn't seem to mind when, one at time, we left the roost to pursue our dreams in far-off lands.

Two years after you died, when I told my closest friend in Oregon that I was joining the Navy, (he was very anti-military and felt I was making a mistake), he said, "Chip, don't spend the rest of your life chasing your father." I know he did not mean it disrespectfully, and to reassure him, I said, "don't worry, I'm not."

But I always knew that I really was looking for you. I wanted to know what it was like for you, what you went through and how it made you feel. But more importantly I wanted to understand how a man could have endured so much of what you went through in WW II and still come out of it being one of the most incredible and loving fathers a son could ever have.

I may not ever know what it was that made you become the person you were, but I will always feel deep in my heart that you are the reason I love this world as much as I do.

Your encouragement and belief in me helped me to achieve great things in my life - I became a captain of my own craft and I found a wonderful world that I love called Burning Man. They seem like opposite worlds but they are not. You always taught me that opposites are okay.

I love you forever, Dad and I miss you very, very much.