On this date a year ago, my dad, John "Buggsy" Bogdanski, left this earth at the age of 74.

By now you would think I would have my feelings about him and memories of him wrapped up fairly neat and tidy, ready for a definitive written tribute.

But I don't. There's so much still swirling around inside me that it's picked up some kind of emotional centripetal force and won't come out.

Here's just a little. Now that I've got my own child, I understand better than ever what Buggsy felt when he looked around himself at his life and his family. I savor all the great things he did for me, because those are some of the same things that I want to do for my family.

I remember making a phonograph record with him when I was really little, maybe 3 years old. It was in a booth in a penny arcade on the Seaside Heights (N.J.) boardwalk. You went in, put 50 cents or so in the slot, and you got 30 seconds or a minute to record your voice on a vinyl record. I sang a song that my parents and their siblings had taught me, "Me and My Shadow."

And at the very end, Buggsy could be heard saying "That was very good. Now open up --" At which point the recording cut off, but he was instructing me to open up the drawer, and showing me that the record would be there. Which it was. We took the little disk home and put it on the turntable and listened to it over and over. It was a wonder; it made us proud.

"That was very good."

Thanks, Dad.