NORTHAMPTON — The Oxbow Ramp on Route 5 near the Easthampton town line was packed with pickup trucks Sunday evening, their drivers waiting to winch away boats that drifted in the Connecticut River, as parents on the shore corralled children and savored the waning rays of Father’s Day.
“His children are his number one focus. He’s there for them in every way,” said Deborah Perez, 41, of Springfield, about Javier Lopez, 39, her husband of 19 years. They took their four children boating, in honor of Lopez, with a group of more than 40 friends and family.
Perez, who paused to applaud Lopez while walking toward the car, noted that she most appreciates the way he goes out of his way to express love to their children. She noted that boating on Father’s Day, a first for their family, might become a tradition in coming years.
“There were a lot of fathers and grandfathers out there,” Deborah Perez said.
With temperatures in the mid-80s throughout most of Sunday, according to the National Weather Service’s Boston office, the river became a hotspot for many people from throughout the region.
“It was great weather today. This place was flooded (with people),” said Emily Lopez, 30, of Springfield. Nearby, her fiance, Alexis Vergera, 38, prepared a truck to pick up a few jet skis and a boat. She highlighted the way that Alexis Vergera puts their three children first.
“He’s special. It’s hard to explain. He’s a great dad,” she said.
In a parking space nearby, friends Vicki Owen, 63, of Chicopee, and Jerry Brooks, 74, of Westfield, sat on two motorcycles watching the boaters pack up to leave. In honor of their respective dads, the pair rode through the hill towns to the Glacier Potholes in Shelburne Falls, returning via Spruce Corner Restaurant in Goshen to Northampton.
The fondest memories that Owen has of her past father, who received a purple heart in the Korean War, are of their conversations — which she says were always authentic.
“My father was soft-spoken, and he didn’t say much. But when he did say something, you listened,” Owen said.
Sitting next to Owen, Brooks, a Marine corps Vietnam veteran, reminisced about the hunting and fishing expeditions he often went on as a child with his father, who isn’t living either, to Worthington and Vermont. Now a father himself, Brooks says he intentionally has shared similar memories with his own children by teaching them to hunt and fish.
Of the traits her father passed along while parenting, Vicki Owens is most grateful for his examples of “honesty, respect,” she said, adding, “I couldn’t have asked for a better dad.”