Tonight, as I collect my thoughts, a bunch of people are spewing a lot of hot air about this and that, saying what great men and women will do after winning elections and how those that did not win ran great campaigns.
But there is another man I'm thinking about tonight, someone who didn't have to tell people he had integrity, someone who showed by the way he lived his life what kind of a man he was.
The man was my father and he was born ninety years ago today.
Most of what I know about him I've been told. He passed away when I was a child and unfortunately, the number of people who knew him personally is also fading. But I do know this--I cannot recall a single time when someone who knew him had anything bad to say about him. Maybe it's because he was my father and no one wanted to say anything bad about him to me, but I don't think so.
Here's to my dad who, as a child, lived through the depression and helped raise his younger siblings, who served as a tail-gunner in a B-17 in WWII, who finished a four-year degree in engineering in three years, who took upon himself the responsibility of fatherhood by adopting three children, who designed and built the home that provided shelter to our family for almost forty years and who battled cancer the last year of his life--facing the challenge like he did everything, with honor and bravery.
Happy birthday, dad! How I'd love to tell you in person, but that will just have to wait. Thanks for being a wonderful example to me of what real fatherhood is and should be. I am one lucky son.
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