Who is Lil' Ricky?

Lil' Ricky was my fathers nickname as a child. He had many stories of growing up on military bases in the Philippines and Hawaii. He would tell me stories of pulling pranks on the superior officers. He and his cousin would run around the bases causing havoc.

Lil' Ricky's name was Richard Arthur. His family called him Rick. He was a religious man who loved his family and his country. He played the 12 string guitar by ear with no education. He played beautiful melodies, a few from the musical "Fiddler on the Roof". He would play these melodies as his three girls listened with wonder from the other rooms. Sometimes he would allow me to come in and dance for him as he played. As young girls he allowed us to pick on his guitar, hoping to pluck a few cords in just the right order to impress our father.

Richard loved to keep his hands busy. At work he was a maintenance man, at home he was always busy on the computer, tinkering. He had an active mind, always thinking, always inventing new ideas. His big invention was the Holodeck, like the one from the T.V. show "Star Trek" by Gene Roddenberry. He would boot up our IBM computer and type code. He had a pad of graph paper with doodles. I remember him talking about taking our smoke alarm apart to get the laser out of it. He would talk to me about his ideas and how his invention would work. We would brain storm together and give each other grand ideas. My father was always my inspiration and would always uplift me. As I grew up we would constantly brain storm together. If we weren't brain storming, we were playing games, like "Final Fantasy" or "Gauntlet", together.

As I grew older my love for electronics never dulled. When I was a teen my father pulled out our old Commodore 64 for me. I was determined to get it working again and connect it to the internet. Seeing as our knowledge for computers and the internet are nothing like they are today, and I didn't have the proper tools or knowledge. I was ultimately unsuccessful. The didn't damper my determination to learn more about computers. I set my sights on our new family computer. We had a Gateway computer that ran on Dial-up internet with AOL (We called it AOheLL) as our provider.

I tinkered and played. I would go deep in our computer and play with things. I drove my mom nuts changing the settings. I would change the start-up and shut-down sounds. I changed the colors of the windows and the sounds of the windows minimizing and maximizing. I learned how to code and loved to create webpages. I had so much knowledge and didn't know what to do with it.

Lil' Ricky's IT Support is in memory of my loving, empathetic, faithful father.

Daddy, this business is for you. As you were always patient with me and my questions and curiosity, so I will be with all those I encounter. I love you. This one's for you.

Richard Arthur Swan

A loving father, An inventor, A man of faith

9/9/1969 - 1/21/2022