Remembering My Dad

Terry Lynn Leibold

November 5, 1952 - november 21, 2023

I’m sad to share that my dad passed away a couple weeks ago. I’ve been struggling to use words to capture all that I have been feeling lately but this is a start…Sometimes I have to remind myself that he’s not just away or out of town because it still feels unreal that he’s gone. It feels unreal because it feels like he’s still here. And that’s cause he is. He lives in my heart. He’ll always be with me. I believe that. I feel that.

I was very close with my dad. And I think our father/daughter relationship looked different than most due to my nontraditional lifestyle. Between not having a family of my own and spending more time at home in between my travels, we had been able to share in so much together. There are simply too many stories to tell of him road supporting me on my long-distance hikes, bikes, and rowing trips. One of the most notable was when he showed up at 3AM after driving through the night to come help me portage my canoe around a lock and dam when I was rowing the Mississippi River. My dad could have withdrawn his love and rejected my decision to create this unconventional lifestyle for myself but instead he supported me unconditionally, and I know he was proud of me for it. Wherever I go, whatever I do, I know he’ll be proud of me.

I surprise myself sometimes with how peaceful I feel about it all. But even though I feel peace at times, I am still mourning a future without him. I foresee perpetually grieving for the rest of my days all the life events I won’t be able to share with him or all the times when I’ll need my dad and he won’t be there to help. I’m having to reimagine my life without him in it.  

It was hard to summarize his life when I wrote his obituary but here are some of the highlights. My dad was a star athlete in high school where he was captain of the football, basketball, and track teams. He played the drums in band and was the class president. He received a football scholarship to Bowling Green State University but he ended up transferring to The University of North Alabama where he met my mom. He was a scuba diving instructor, earned his pilot’s license, and rode a motorcycle cross country. He worked as a photographer for NASA where he took photos of rockets being tested, met astronauts, flew in the famous Vomit Comet, and filmed in the neutral buoyancy space simulator. He kayaked the first couple hundred miles of the Mississippi River, traveled to China and Europe, and was all in all the best dad ever.

Our Last Family Photo on Dad’s 70th B’day in November 2022

2021

The Four Leibold Brothers

Here’s a YouTube Video of my Dad being interviewed about his career as a photographer at NASA. I learned some things I didn’t know about. I’ll treasure having this record of his stories and career.