The Weight We Carry
The Echoes of Family and a Life in Uniform
The murder and the war happened years before I was born. Both shaped my childhood.
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My mother was a key witness in the murder of her sister, Sylvia Likens, a case that became one of America’s most notorious crimes. My father came home from Vietnam carrying scars of his own. By eighteen, I believed leaving home for the Air Force meant abandoning the people I loved. The Weight We Carry is the story of what I inherited, what I took on along the way, and what happened when I finally began to question how much of it was really mine.
About the Book
The Weight We Carry began as a way to preserve a family story for my children.
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As I wrote, the project became something more. Revisiting old letters, pictures, and long-buried memories made me look again at the people and events that had shaped my life, this time from the perspective of a husband, father, veteran, and man in his fifties.
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In 1966, my mother became a key witness in the murder of her sister, Sylvia Likens, one of America’s most notorious crimes. Years later, my father returned from Vietnam carrying hidden scars of his own. The headlines faded, but the impact didn't.
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Growing up, I became the buffer who tried to hold everything together. At eighteen, I sat outside Gate 18 at the Louisville airport with a boarding pass in my hand and guilt I could not shake. Leaving for the Air Force meant leaving behind the people I loved most and taking the first step toward a different life.
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What began as a way out became a thirty-year career shaped by service, responsibility, leadership, friendship, and the people who became family along the way. But leaving home did not mean leaving everything behind.
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The facts of my life had not changed, but my understanding of them had. That became the heart of the book: looking back with enough distance to see not only what happened, but what it meant.
About Bobby
Bobby Ford served more than thirty years in the United States Air Force, retiring as a colonel in 2025. His career took him from law enforcement and security operations to command, policy, and senior leadership roles across the United States and overseas.
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Today, Bobby teaches criminal justice as an adjunct professor, facilitates leadership development, and mentors others through Ryf Leadership. The Weight We Carry is his first memoir, shaped by the family he came from, the life he built, and the people who helped shape him along the way.
Who This Book Is For
The Weight We Carry is for readers who know what it means to grow up carrying more than they should have, to come from a complicated family, or to recognize the echoes of the past in the life they are living now.
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It is also for veterans and military families, for people who became the dependable one early, and for anyone who has found belonging in the people they chose along the way.
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If you have ever wondered how much of what you carry is truly yours, you may recognize yourself in these pages.