A friend told me the other night that she’s been using the picture of my father we gave out at the funeral (left) as a bookmark.

That made me happy. And, of course, it seemed appropriate to me; I was touched, too. How better to memorialize my dad than in a book. I wanted to know what book she was reading silently hoping that it was a book my father loved.

But I didn’t blurt that out. I waited for her story.

She explained that the night I gave her the picture, during the shiva, she was starting a biography of Nicholas Tesla called Man Out of Time. So she stuck the photo in the book.

Immediately I wondered if my father would have read a book about Niklas Tesla, the legendary mechanical and electrical engineer, who’s work formed the basis of modern alternating currents and electric power and has been called the man who invented the 20th century.

Yes, I decided. He’d pick up the book, and even read it. My father’s curiosity was boundless as was a desire to understand things like engineering, not a natural interest of his.

Okay, it wouldn’t be his first choice to read about electrical power—he loved philosophy, literary criticism, art and music history, poetry and fiction—but I decided he’d give it a go.

My friend is still reading that book. She confessed that she’s having a tough time with it: “I don’t like the writing at all.” Still, I had the sense that she intends to finish the book. And in the process she has forged a connection with my dad through that picture.

A talented graphic designer, when my friend was just starting out, she revered the ad creatives of the 1960’s, the golden age of American advertising. Those were her heroes. My father was a copywriter and later a creative director during that legendary time.

In fact, a wonderful pro bono ad he created for National Library Week, while at Doyle Dane Bernbach, is featured in the book, When Advertising Tried Harder, The Sixties. The Golden Age of American Advertising, a book this friend lent me a month ago.

My friend loves that small picture of my dad.

“I took it,” I told her proudly. Only a sometime-photographer, I am pleased that my portraits of my dad came out so well.

“There’s something about that picture,” she said. She struggled to articulate it.

“The book. The blue book.” I said referring to the turquoise book that is on top of a stack of books behind my father in the picture. It’s a nice, inadvertent compositional touch.

“Yes, the book,” her eyes lit up.

“The book,” she said again. “The blue book.”

It’s so interesting the many way my father lives on.