A doting father with a rose garden has made it his mission to ensure his daughter never leaves without a fresh-cut flower in her hand. He even remembered to give her a rose on her wedding day, and the pair’s special bond is touching thousands.
Cassi Adams, 26, lives in Michigan about an hour’s drive from her father, 55-year-old Steve Adams, whom she sees for boating trips and dinners as often as she can.
“He’s goofy, he’s very funny, and he’s sensitive but in a masculine way,” Cassi told The Epoch Times. “He has an extremely tender heart and he cares deeply about the people he loves.”
Cassi, who owns a digital marketing agency, said that she thinks her father’s roses are his way of showing his love, respect, and gratitude.
“He‘ll do it for me and my sister all the time ... we always leave with one. He’ll get a paper towel, wrap the stem in it, then seal it with aluminum foil so [the rose] makes it home,” she said.
Cassi received an influx of positivity from netizens after posting her video but was also saddened to know that not everyone has a father figure like Steve.
“Everyone was saying, they’re so happy and so touched! ... ‘It’s amazing that you have a father who does that, that there is a man that does that.’ People were also saying, ‘I wish I had that,’ or ‘I can’t imagine having that, but I hope that for my children,’ and it was really sad, because for something that was so normal for me, it’s not normal for the world,” said Cassi, more grateful than ever for her “hands-on” dad.
In the summer of 2022, Steve grew white, pink, red, and yellow roses. Pink and white are Cassi’s favorites, and when she got married to her sweetheart, Dallas Ingraham, on Aug. 6, Steve remembered.
“We did a ‘first look’ before the wedding and he saw me in my wedding dress. He instantly got tears in his eyes,” Cassi said. “Of course, he tried to derail it and made a silly joke, and we were laughing in two seconds! During that first look, he had a white rose from his garden ... that was really special.”
One of six siblings, Steve grew up watching his grandmother tend to her rose garden, and his grandfather clip roses to gift to the women he loved and cherished. After his father adopted the tradition, Steve did so too.
“My great-grandmother had polio, and she would wheel herself around in the backyard ... nothing could stop this woman,” Cassi said. “She would lay down a mat, get on her elbows, and just kind of drag herself around to tend to her rose garden. She did it because she loved the roses.”
Growing up, Cassi has always had a special relationship with her father, which continues to this day.
“He was a part of my life, he was always at my sporting events and he never missed a game,” she said. “I was definitely a daddy’s girl.”
Cassi was entrepreneurial from a young age—“I was that girl at the lemonade stand, always trying to make $1,” she said—and when the company she worked for no longer aligned with her vision, Steve supported her in going independent. Today, Cassi is soaring, with two full-time employees and five interns.
Through his relationship, Steve has proved to his daughter time and time again how to love deeply, what it means to be a father, and how to respect women. Cassi advises any young woman choosing a male partner to choose carefully.
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