Dear Dad,

It seems impossible, but Dec. 20 marks your 100th birthday. Even as you have been gone from us for over 45 of those years, having passed away a couple of months shy of turning 55.

Who knows what, if anything, the hereafter holds for the soul? That remains the great mystery. Clearly, this letter is written for my benefit and perhaps that of a few readers, both those who knew Fred Sondermann and some who just may be curious.

You left a legacy that is still well remembered. I cannot think of a better occasion to honor it and to note all you missed in the long years since you departed the earth.

Your candle burned intensely during your lifetime before being extinguished far, far too soon by a dread cancer that reappeared after 23 years of laying dormant. I can hate that terminal recurrence at the same time that I am grateful for those extra decades you were given.

You made the most of your years and lived as if you knew, somewhere deep down, that your time was borrowed. From escaping Nazi Germany on literally the last train across the border to your post-war admission to Butler University on academic probation given your lack of a high school diploma to your eventual Ph.D. from Yale and a 25-year teaching career at Colorado College that is still legend, your flame roared.

That intellectual heft was paired with a knack for civic leadership, a vibrant sense of humor, a gift for mentorship and a core conscience. It all made for a formidable combination and quite the high bar for those you left behind.

In some respects, your death in 1978 still seems like the day before yesterday. In other ways, it belongs to a wholly different era.

The world today certainly carries echoes from the one you knew. Though in many ways, it would be unrecognizable.

The rate of technological change has been nothing short of astounding. Virtually every person today carries around more computing power in his or her pocket than that harnessed by the most powerful behemoth of a computer in your age.

The home phone? Largely gone. Maps or directions for getting somewhere? Long outmoded. Everyone’s phone contains satellite-based global positioning. The old set of encyclopedias? Essentially worthless. Search engines point us to virtually any scrap of information in seconds.

Given your prowess on an old, manual typewriter and your penchant for correspondence, I can only imagine how you would take advantage of what we call social media.

The international order now taught in foreign policy classes, your specialty, is vastly changed. The Berlin Wall came down in 1989 (literally the same week your first grandchild was born) and the Soviet Union collapsed within a couple of years.

One might have thought that the disappearance of the bipolar world would have led to enhanced stability, but that has hardly been the case.

The fights you spearheaded to constrain the growth of Colorado Springs came up rather empty. The population of the city and surrounding region was approaching 200,000 when you were elected to City Council in 1973. Today, it is almost 700,000. While the state has more than doubled and is nearing six million people.

Though you would be pleased to know that soon after your death, Colorado Springs leaders dedicated a park in your name. Four decades on, Sondermann Park is fittingly still a large tract of trails and open space.

These intervening years have witnessed a sea change when it comes to America’s acceptance of gays and lesbians. In the 1970s, we had attended the Fort Collins funeral of a family friend who used the occasion to come out of the closet from the grave. Thankfully, such repression is long past. One of your grandsons is proudly, openly gay. As is Colorado’s current governor.

Our nation took the profound step of electing and reelecting its first black president. However, while there has been huge racial progress and reconciliation, the ethos of group identity has grown disturbingly prominent. That struggle goes on.

Colorado College, your home base, remains a well-regarded institution. Though you would strain to recognize much of modern academia. Many campuses, including CC’s, that were once hotbeds of free speech and robust discourse have fallen prey to group-think and enforced orthodoxy.

The powers-that-be would dictate that the popular course you taught on Freedom and Authority would now be recast as Identity and Correctness.

The world, including our own country, is now going through a period of growing nationalism that you would find deeply worrisome. Tribalism dominates our domestic politics, but not along the old lines of race, religion or even income. Instead, political affiliation has become all-defining, and true independents of moderate bent have withered.

Perhaps of most relevance as your childhood was defined by Germany’s rush to Nazism, that scourge of antisemitism has again reared its ugly head in too many parts of the world, as Israel again finds itself at war. It is the prejudice that recedes underground but never really dies.

Under the heading of good news, the story of your return to your small German hometown 30 years after being chased out, per the 1969 essay you wrote, lives on via a film, simply and appropriately entitled, “Return.” It aired nationally on PBS and won some Jewish film festival awards a decade back.

All of this buries the lede. Topping it all, your family has largely prospered. Gary ran hard away from your flame and opted for an unscripted life of wanderlust and living for the moment. Judy retired a handful of years ago after an accomplished career as a public school teacher. She now volunteers profusely and seemingly knows everyone in your haunts of the Old North End.

Mom outlived you by a full 44 years before succumbing to old age earlier this year. She built quite the solo life on her terms, based until the end out of the house the two of you bought way back in 1958.

Tracy and I are coming up on our 38th wedding anniversary. You would have loved her as a kind, engaged, multi-faceted person and a deeply committed partner and mother. It was her loss not to know you, just as I never met either of her parents who also died way too young.

Katrina and Clarke are our children. Along with Dylan and Graham, sons of Gary and his wonderful ex-wife, they are your four grandchildren. All are now young adults pursuing their passions. You would be immensely proud of each of them.

There is so much more. Though, again, this writing is a selfish act for my remembrance. You have whatever enlightenment and knowledge attend to spiritual immortality.

100 years. Time does go by. You are missed and loved.

Eric Sondermann is a Colorado-based independent political commentator. He writes regularly for Colorado Politics and the Gazette newspapers. Reach him at EWS@EricSondermann.com; follow him at @EricSondermann