Father of fallen soldier shares message to dads

Sunday is Father's Day, a time for sons and daughters to shower dad with love and appreciation.

And that goes both ways, especially for one father who lost his son in the Iraq War four years ago.

Darrell Roy Griffin Sr. said his son Darrell "Skip" Griffin Jr. was not the easiest son to raise.

Darrell Sr. said of his son, "He'd run away a couple of times. First time he ran away he was four or five. He was caught on the freeway next to our house. We went through a lot of hard times together. We got very close as he was older."

Darrell told CBS News his son was a son, a husband, a brother, a teacher, a soldier and a philosopher.

He said, "Being a soldier fit him because he always liked to protect people, but being a philosopher he always wondered, 'Why do we go to war? ... He thought, 'Wouldn't it be great dad if we had armies with nothing to do?' I absolutely agree. It would be great."

Darrell recalled the pair's father-son weekends were Merlot and philosophy.

"We started out with Nietzsche, that was the first bottle. The second bottle was Heraclitus. The fourth bottle was the philosophy according to South Park."

The book "Last Journey" started out as conversation between father and son through emails and letters they passed back and forth.

Go here for more information about the book "Last Journey"

Darrell said, "It's a book I think he would have wanted, except it would have ended a lot differently if he had been alive to write it with me."

He added, "I never thought Skip would get killed. ... He always seemed bigger than life to me. ... It was a single shot - it was a freak situation - that went just underneath his Kevlar and hit him in the forehead, right above his eye."

Darrell recalled, "The day we got the call, I remember asking my wife, she calls and says, 'It's Skip.' I say, 'Has he been hurt?' because he's been hurt before, and I said, 'Is he OK?' and she says, 'No, he's gone.'"

Darrell said, "I feel like why my son, why anybody's son? I mean, I miss him. He was 36 when he died. I wanted to have him see me get old, and that ain't gonna happen. It's out of sequence, and when life is out of sequence, you never get used to it."

He added, "I'm incredibly proud of being Sgt. Darrell Griffin Jr.'s dad. It's not just because he was a soldier, it's because he was a a good individual. He grew up to be a good person, and he was a good person. So yeah, I'm real proud of being his dad."

Darrell said his message to fathers on Father's Day is to not miss an opportunity to hug your son.

"You don't know when it's going to be the last one," he said. "Communicate. Remember every word you can. Be together. Love.You just don't want to miss those opportunities."