Happy (Late) Father's Day!

June 25 marked the 11th anniversary of my the day my father left this mortal life. The week earlier was Father's Day. The passing of both these dates has caused me to reflect alot about my dad, the kind of person he was and the impact his life left on those who knew him. My father was a humble, unassuming person who possessed more humanity than perhaps anyone I have ever known. Since his death, I have had many opportunities to think about his absence in my life and reflect upon the fact that there are so few people in the world who could ever live up to being the kind of person he was.

Dad had a soft spot in his heart for the people of this world who are marginalized, discarded, overlooked, and otherwise dwell at the lowest echelons of society. He truly cared about others. He worried about their trials, helped carry their burdens, mourned when they mourned, understood their sufferings and, most importantly, felt an obligation to help.

There were many times when Dad would comment that he did something "because it needed to be done." He didn't reach out to people or help them in time of need because it was easy or convenient or even because he liked the person. He did it because he saw a need and he felt a moral obligation to fill it.

When I went home for Dad's funeral there was a woman, I will call her Diane (not her real name) at the viewing at the funeral home who came up to me and told me how much Dad had meant to her and how much he had helped her on many occasions. When she introduced herself, I immediately remembered Dad speaking of her on a number of occasions. She and I had met once or twice years before.

When Diane's two daughters were quite young, her husband shot and killed himself at home in front of the entire family. As if this trauma was not enough for the family to bear, the woman suffered from a serious health condition which left her unable to work. Dad said even with her disability she still did whatever she could to take care of her family, but unfortunately there was very little money for the family to live on without the father's income.

Over the years Dad shared many stories about the struggles of this family. Always he spoke with great respect and concern for their well-being. He spoke of great affection and concern for the young daughters who would now. not only grow up without their father, but who also were dealing with the emotional trauma of watching him shoot himself in their midst. I know there were many times he did what he could to help ease the suffering of this family and I know it was clearly appreciated by Diane and her girls.

Diane was one of the first people to arrive for the viewing that day and one of the last to leave. Every time I walked past her she would reach out to touch my arm and tell me how much she loved my dad and so very much appreciated all that he had done for her and her girls. I don't know all of the details of the things Dad did to help, but I know that Dad truly cared for this family and would have done anything to help alleviate their burdens. There were other, similar stories.

When my sisters and I were teenagers a certain young man from our school would come to the house around dinnertime on occasion. Dad always offered him a seat at our table without comment. Being teenagers, some of us were not on the best of terms with this young man and were not always very nice or hospitable to our surprise guest. We never understood why he came by for those meals until years later, after we were grown and had moved to a different city. Dad explained to us that this young man, whose single mother worked long hours, would often find himself at home alone and hungry with no food in the house. When Dad found out about this situation, he told the young man to come over whenever he was hungry and that he could always have a meal.

Around this same time Dad came home from work, opened the local newspaper to read as he often did, and announced that the paper reported that the Smith family (not their real name) had lost their house to a fire over the weekend. He immediately got up from his chair, told the rest of us to get in the car and drove to the bank to withdraw money from the bank. Within minutes we were parked at the curb where this family's home had once stood. Mr. and Mrs. Smith were sifting through the rubble in search of any possessions which might be salvaged from the ashes. Dad took Mrs. Smith aside and said to her, "As the mother of your family, I understand that your first instinct is to take care of your family, but I want you to take this money and go buy yourself a nice outfit for yourself." He then handed her a sum of money which would cover the cost of the said outfit.

Not quite a week later I was somewhere in town where I ran into Mrs. Smith. She was beaming when she walked into the building. She had never appeared to me more radiant. Her face was beaming with a bright smile and she had a beautiful, new purple dress which perfectly complimented her bright red hair and ruddy complexion. Here was a woman who had lost her home, all of her worldly possessions yet for a brief moment she seemed to not have a care in the world and had never looked more beautiful.

Dad knew someone in town who happened to work in the young men's department of a local department store. My father called on this friend at work one day to ask a favor. He gave the salesman a sum of money and told him to call the teenage son, Bryan (not his real name), and to tell him that an anonymous person wanted to buy him some new clothes to replace the ones he had lost in the fire. I won't go into details here, but after this incident I saw a slow transformation in this young man. Up until that point I had not held up much hope for his future. He did not seem like he was always traversing the right path toward adulthood in my young opinion. But in the years that followed I saw him make many good decisions and today he is a happy, responsible husband and father.

There is even more. One morning Dad had the feeling he should drop by to check on a friend at his place of employment. When Dad arrived, he found the man, I'll call him Mr Reynolds, sitting at his desk in his office contemplating suicide. Dad spoke with him about his situation and eventually made his way to the family home where he found Mrs. Reynolds so disabled by post-partem depression she couldn't get out of bed. There were several children in the family who were in urgent need of care which neither of their parents were able to give. Dad, as he so often did, immediately began doing what he could to help.

For atleast 10 months!!!! he went to the Reynolds' home every single day and cooked dinner for the family. Dad said he assumed the youngest child, a three year old, did not have anything to eat all day until he arrived because as soon as she saw him coming she would go sit in her high chair where Dad would immediately feed her. The older children were given chores each day such as unloading the dishwasher, cleaning the house, taking out the trash, etc. If the chores were not done each day, the kids did not get dessert.

Dad also spoke with an acquaintance who was a mental health professional about what he could do to help this family as well as tried to get them help from the community, church etc. Dad did what he could do to help this family get back on it's feet. Eventually, the parents took over more and more of the responsibilities in the home. Mrs. Reynolds was not only able to get out of bed, but became well enough to get a job to help support the family, which came about the same time Mr. Reynolds lost his job. Eventually Mr. Reynolds found new employment as well. Dad was finally able to stop going to the home every day to cook dinner for this family.

Not long after, Dad was close with another family who lost their 17 year old son to a car jacking. When he found out about the loss, Dad immediately went to the home of the Gordon family (again not their real name) to see what he could do to help. The loss was even more particularly tragic due to the fact that this was the third child the family had lost. Furthermore, the Gordon's were not a wealthy family so the burden of paying for even a simple funeral was a great expense. Dad went with the family to the funeral to make arrangements, he helped gather funds to help pay for the funeral and tried to support the family in any way he could. This was a circumstance which touched him deeply. My father was not a man who easily showed emotion, but he said that speaking at this young man's funeral was extremely emotional and difficult for him as he very much grieved for the loss of his young friend.

Years prior, when I was in grade school, Dad was in charge of delivering Christmas presents to a needy family our church was helping out for the holiday. We drove to the other side of town in a station wagon filled with presents the congregation had donated. Dad stopped the car at a small home he described as a "cracker jack box" where the family lived. My sisters and I helped Dad take the presents to the door where we were met by a very excited and appreciative family.

They referred to my dad as "Santa Clause". I could not imagine how an entire family could have lived in a house which appeared to me to be about the size of a small one bedroom apartment. At that young age, I had never known anyone to live in such a small home. While we were not wealthy, we were far from poor and seemed to have a very privileged life compared to that of Dad's new friends. On the way home from delivering the presents, Dad commented, as he would on countless other occasions, that he had brought us along so that we could have the experience of serving others and becoming aware that there were people out there who did not have as much as we did.

There are many, many stories I could recite her and I am sure many more I don't know about. I do not remember a week went by when Dad didn't do something kind to help another person. Sometimes they were small acts like visiting someone who was lonely, driving a person to run an errand, buying much needed medication for a person who did not have the money, or taking in someone who needed a place to stay for a night, a week, a month for whatever reason.

As I have grown up and gone out into the world I have been shocked to learn that not everyone lived by the same ethos as my father. Not everyone feels the obligation to help another person when it is much needed, but not necessarily convenient or easy or even appreciated. Since my father's death just over 10 years ago I have come across many people whom I have felt would be just the type of person Dad would want to help, only to realize he is no longer on this earth to do so. Furthermore, I have been very disappointed on numerous occasions to realize there is not another person who would care for these people and their problems the way Dad did. It seems that my father was sensitive to the needs of others in a way few other people are and i have to wonder why that is.

Dad was born in 1932, amidst the heart of the Great Depression. He used to say his family was pooooor, taking extra care to draw out the word as if to add emphasis to the family's degree and depth of poverty. When I was 12 years old, Dad turned to me one day and said, "When I was your age, we were in the middle of World War II." He spoke often of the deprivations of war-time rations and a scarcity of goods which had been diverted to the war effort. Somehow my father managed to go to college and obtained a degree in English from the University of Texas. At the age of 30, he married my mother. At the age of 36, my mother died suddenly of an aneurysm leaving him with three young daughters under the age of 4 years of age. He successfully raised us all to graduate from college, stay out of prison, and become independent, functional adults.

My father's life was not easy. Few would have faulted him if he had declined to reach out to others in need due his own adversity. There were many times, as a single parent, when he put the needs of others before his own despite his own struggles.

I believe it was through his own experience with adversity that he became more sensitive to the needs of others. He understood grief, poverty, deprivation, loneliness, despair, and pain through personal experience. He had been to the depths of the darkest abyss more than once and wanted to help his fellow travels find their way back.

My father had a gentle nature masked by a sometimes gruff exterior. He was in no way ostentatious. A humble, down-to-earth facade belied the fact that he had the greatest of appreciation for beauty, the arts, literature and education. He had the most love and concern for those who had the hardest lives. His were the people who had no money, drove broken down cars, wore tattered clothing, were not necessarily physically beautiful by worldly standards or were shunned by the high and mighty.

Once, I spoke of someone I knew whose life had traveled a course much different than my own. I did not understand, at the time, why this person had not been able to do better, achieve more. In a calm, soft-spoken tone that I would come to hear many times, Dad replied, "Life is just harder for some people. Not everyone has the same opportunities." He understood.

At Dad's funeral, on of his closest friends eulogized him with the words which describe him as well as anyone can:


For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:

Naked, and ye clothed e: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?

When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?

Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?

And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

Matt 25: 34-40

I can't think of anyone who lived up to this ideal better.