My brother, Tim, and I have been wearing Hawaiian shirts since we were toddlers, because my Dad loved to wear them. So when the family went on a Sunday outing, Hawaiian shirts were the uniform of the day. We even had curtains in our living room that looked like they were patterned in Oahu.

It shouldn’t surprise you that both Tim and I began to collect Hawaiian shirts and often gave them to each other on birthdays and Christmas. Tim, however, had more shirts than King Kamehameha. That’s why Tim was always the undisputed King and I just tried to catch up. In fact Tim had an entire double-door closet devoted to nothing but his vast collection. (I wish I had taken a photo).

As a film editor he was known for his shirt collection. He would declare, on every movie he worked on that Friday was Hawaiian shirt day and all his staff complied happily. Although he would wear them every day, some of his co-workers never saw him in the same shirt twice.

Of course, when he’d stop at his local watering hole, The Gold Apple, after work he was already dressed for drinking beer and throwing darts, playing pool and B.S.ing. My family always wondered why he favored this dive rather than a classier restaurant. But Tim liked to rub elbows with real folk and blue collar types. And besides it was close to home. It was a good place to watch games on the big screen and cheer, cuss out the other teams or even his team. He was well-liked at this dive and a respected “Hollywood Film Editor.” He was generous to a fault and was known to loan money to people, never really expecting to be paid back.

After his untimely passing in 2007, the family held a service at the Forrest Lawn Mortuary. We declared that the dress should be Hawaiian and everyone showed up accordingly. We heard many stories from his bar buddies about his antics at the bar and of his generosity to his loyal friends.

Afterward, The Golden Apple invited everybody to their bar for a wake of their own. They served Tim’s favorite appetizers like cheesy garlic bread brought in from the Smokehouse, and his favorite candy Charleston Chews, etc. His place at the bar had a beer and a shot of Goldschlager, his usual, and no one was allowed to sit there.

I had sometimes wondered, that if Tim passed away before me if he would will his shirt collection to me, and I guess I thought I was deserving. But on the afternoon of the wake, his daughter Katie carried many arm-loads of shirts into the back room of the bar. This was a surprise to me. First she invited his three known best friends back to choose two of their favorites. I saw them walking to their cars with tears in their eyes. Then she invited the rest to pick a shirt. They lined up and gladly chose a favorite. One guy stripped off his shirt right there and donned his new Tim-shirt. He said to me, “I always liked this shirt. This means a lot to me. Every time I wear it I’ll remember Tim. And so will all the guys in here when they see it.” It was a shirt that I had given Tim with old Corvettes and Route 66 signs.

After seeing all these teary-eyed men proudly carrying their new Tim-shirts, I knew that Katie had made a wonderful gesture and one that Tim would have wholeheartedly approved of I’m sure.