Money isn't everything.

What is it you say?  I'll tell you.

I've decided I'm going to probably live in my run down log cabin for a few years.  Maybe it won't be so run down when I'm ready to move.  I've made some improvements and lots of plans for more.

In anticipation of sweeping the dust and creosote down the chimney with my wire brush attached to at least  four fiberglass rods, I decided to make it easier.  The roof is a 45 degree pitch on both sides, of the peak and the chimney is right on the end.  I can get up to the chimney easy enough with a ladder laid down on the roof .  The challenge is getting up to the top of the chimney.  For the last four years, I climbed up the rocks and somehow sit on top of the chimney and then sweep it down.  I inevitably scrape the bejesus out of my arms and legs on the mortar.  NOT THIS YEAR.  I'll build this little table, carry it up there, maybe even tie it up there permanently, so I can stand on it.

The responses I got from my friends on facebook were less than encouraging.  Almost all said to hire a real chimney sweep.  Only one of my friends  thinks like me and offered to bring the video camera so we could win some money on America's Funniest Videos.  And one friend even claimed the benefits of hiring a real chimney sweep.  Armed with a camera, they could video the inside of my chimney, and if there are problems, I can then pay a professional to install a stainless steel flue, and insulate for a gazillion bucks.   

It dawned on me, I live in a very different world than most of my friends.  For one thing, suggesting I pay someone to do something I can do is in my mind absurd.  I can do a lot of things, and with help, who knows.  My buddy Vance can do everything, as well as a few other shop teacher buddies.  I don't ask for help but when they offer, I jump on it.

I keep an eye out for a bargain or even free stuff that can be fixed. Right now on my porch, I have a door to install, and in the shed, a bathroom cabinet and a roll of linoleum.  That will go in upstairs as soon as I finish the downstairs bath.  Need to position the tub, install a sink, run some plumbing, and oh yeah, put up some sheetrock.  I fix things I don't know how to fix even.  I've fixed my washer, a couple of dryers, built sheds, fix lawn mowers, cook and bake some, make peach jam, cut grass.  While I'm not afraid to replace brake rotors and pads, and even changed out a caliper lately, I stay away from drum brakes.  I just don't like them.I'll change the oil of course...doesn't everyone?  I've got some maintenance coming up on the scooter soon, which will also be a new experience.

Do I like doing all these things?  Hell no.  If I had the money, I'd pay someone to do it, just like all my friends suggest.  Like so many others these days, both single and couples, I'm living paycheck to paycheck.  Yep, the guy that used to sell insurance and mutual funds, never followed my own advice.  I had a friend ask me incredulously "Why don't you have any money?"  You are a school teacher.  Don't you save money? My response was "I never have enough left over at the end of the month to set aside."  I am luckier than many though.  At the moment, I have a regular paycheck, and when need be, I hire myself out as a handyman.

I never went into teaching to make money.  In NC, one of the lowest paying in the country, and where we have not seen a raise in 3 years, and with 21 years of experience and a Master's Degree, I still make less than $50k a year.  I'm not complaining.  Just stating the facts.

Two can live cheaper than one but being ornery I guess, I've been single most of my adult life.  The only time I lived with a woman and shared expenses and incomes was my ten years of marriage.  Without going into details, it is not something I've wanted to try again.

My daughter came to live with me full time at age eleven.  Again, I didn't save.  The extra cash went to helping a teenager do teen age things (like get braces), and I eeked out some fun to at times with short trips to NYC or DC or Cleveland.  Lately, my daughter has needed some extra help with transportation and getting into an apartment.  I gladly support her and share what little I have knowing that some day, after she finishes school and gets a good job, I'll be able to catch up on credit card bills.And she can support me in the lifestyle I've grown accustomed to.

So back to the original advise about hiring someone to sweep my chimney?  I've invested in chimney sweeping tools years ago.  I'm pretty darn healthy, strong, agile and pretty safe.  I spent a few weeks crawling all over the roof nailing down shingles last summer so being up there doesn't phase me.  As for hiring an expert to tell me I need to have work done on the chimney.  I already know that.  The firemen told me it should be brought up to code.  Don't you love that word..."should"?  Wouldn't be able to pay to fix it anyway.  And besides, I have home owners insurance.  A nice 3 bedroom, two bath modular in place of this log cabin would be the best thing that ever happened to me.

My first Toast Master's Speech

This is my first speech, where I get to talk about myself.  If I was sitting in your shoes, I might want to get up and leave, please don’t.  I know how you feel.  A lot of people feel that way.  But what others in your shoes have found is that by just listening you might be pleasantly surprised.  Hey, wait a minute.  This is starting to sound like a sales pitch, isn’t it?  That’s not surprising because I spent a couple of years trying to eke out a living in sales.  There were:

·        cars,

·        insurance products,

·        mutual funds,

·        collection services,

·        health drinks,

·        metal buildings

·        satellite dishes,

·        long distance phone packages,

·        and the last effort involved air and water purifiers. 

I don’t own any of the things I tried to sell.  That’s too bad.  Imagine.  If I had put money in a good mutual fund back in 1992, who knows what it would be worth now? Naomi would know.

Back to you though.  You might be thinking, as I ramble on, “What’s In It for me?”    I’m hoping to broad of your horizons, or just pass the time  pleasantly and hopefully bring a smile to your face.  How am I doing so far? 

Walk with me down memory lane back in Cleveland, Oh, in 1954  where I was the baby of seven.  Childhood consisted of fighting for scraps and wearing my older brother’s clothes until I got my first job at the age of 10 cleaning a bird bath twice a day.  Two dollars a week didn’t buy a lot, but things starting looking up when I got a paper route. At 13, I became a caddy at an upscale country club, followed by several years in and out of food service as a:

·        busboy,

·        fry cook,

·        waiter,

·        bartender and

·        finally a  galley slave and deck hand on Maine’s oldest functioning two masted schooner, called the Lewis R. French. 

It still sails today with a crew of four. It takes out 22 passengers for a week at a time. For those that like bathing, they provide cold sea water showers from a bucket.  Not much has changed since I polished brass and hoisted sails back in 1979.  The schooner industry prides itself on doing things the same way year after year. 

That summer though, I changed.  I developed skills that I still use today, and pass on to my students, like knot tying.  I learned that you can work hard all week, build muscles you never knew you had, and that after 13 weeks of eating lobster once a week, I’d rather eat a couple of hot dogs. I experienced contra dancing for the first  time but not the last. 

 In preparing the ship for three months of sailing, I discovered the satisfaction of fixing things and making things but I only made $65 a week though.   So I searched for a career that blended the pleasure of making things, and helping others do the same thing. 

When I enrolled in Kent State in 1980, my major was Industrial Arts Education.  The focus was drafting, wood shop, metal shop, graphics and a little pottery thrown in for good measure.  After teaching two years in Richmond County, NC, I moved to Boone to get my Masters.  After 21 years of teaching in three different counties, eleven different schools, including the NC School for the Deaf for one year, I am every bit as challenged and excited about my career as ever. 

How can that be?  I have the good fortune of teaching from a curriculum so broad that I choose which topics to teach, based on resources, my personal mastery of the material, and the most important criteria…will it be fun?  I select activities from the Career and Technology Exploration curriculum.  The way I see it, whatever I want to teach can be part of some career or some technology in one way or another. 

What would you see if you were to walk into my classrooms?  If you plan to visit, and you are welcome to, but call ahead.  I work at four different schools: Parkway, Cove Creek,  Mabel and Bethel.  I visit two schools a day, and then the other two schools the next day.  If at Cove Creek, all I have to work with is a computer lab.  At Parkway, I have more of a regular classroom; however, there is a light duty kitchen in the corner, and a greenhouse at the playground.  Bethel, usually considered the orphan of the county schools, has the best set up.  It has a Computer lab upstairs, and downstairs in the dungeon, one classroom with a full kitchen and another room with a workshop for carpentry and small engine repair. 

If you were to walk into my room, you might see students making a video about business etiquette.  Other students might be building a stand out of recycled lumber to support a rain barrel next to our vegetable garden.  you will find students researching a small business idea on the computers, hopefully not too distracted from the music they have playing through their ear buds.

 Others are taking pictures and learning to edit them for their power point presentation. 

Others are taking surveys about careers.  A couple of kids might be taking a part a lawn mower that has seen better days, and destined to never run again.  I tell them we are going to reuse the parts, but in reality, they are just learning to use tools on a machine that they can’t break.  I keep band aids handy. 

On a pretty day, you might find kids hauling mulch, to cover the flowers that we transplanted in a flower bed. 

At all my schools, kids learn to take and edit photographs and create a business like PowerPoint.  This year, with my new found enthusiasm for public speaking, they will present their work in front of the class.

All my students get instruction in using  3D computer assisted design, basic computer programmingand keyboarding, also known as typing.

 You might think traveling and teaching so many different things is challenging.  It is but that is not the biggest challenge.  Neither is coordinating supplies, which with limited funding for my program has gotten easier. 

My challenge is to remind myself daily that kids are kids, and given the chance, they want to learn how to do things that are relevant.  They also want learning to be fun.  I have to remember there will be messes to clean up, broken tools, and wasted materials.  Kids like teachers that like them. Kids, I tell myself, are doing the best they can, and if I were in their shoes, I would do the same thing. 

I have a favorite quote.   “Kids don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” More important than lessons, the grades, the projects, my first priority is to let them know that they matter most and I care.

How to cut a box frame in half so you can get it up the stair well.

Cutting a box spring in half

Moving presents its challenges.  Recently my daughter moved into an apartment.  Moving her queen size sled bed went well despite the narrow stair case going upstairs to the bedrooms.  The box spring wouldn’t bend as well as the mattress, so we had to cut it in half, take the haves up, and then reconnect.  This job is immensely easier if you have a friend that is good with tools.

 If not, all you need are:

·         Circular saw

·         Razor knife for cutting fabric

·         Staple gun

·         Cordless or corded drill

·         1-5/8” self tapping deck screws

·         2’ long pieces of 1x4 pine

·         Patience

·         Strong back

Start off with a basic oversized box spring.

Remove just enough fabric so you can cut the wood and cardboard without catching the fabric in your saw blade.  (Note:  If the box spring will fit up the stair well without modifications, stop reading and carry the thing up there.)

Notice that the frame to a cheap Big Lot’s brand box spring is pretty simple.  Mostly 1x2’s poorly nailed together and covered with cardboard and fabric.  For demonstration purposes, fabric and c cardboard isn’t shown. 

Using an appropriate tool, with safety glasses on your face, cut down the middle of all the pieces holding the two halves together. 

If successful, the halves will look like this.  If they don’t, consider going back to big lots and buying another one and trying something different. 

Using short pieces of 1x4, and self tapping exterior screws, reconnect the two halves. 

If you find that you reconnected the two halves and you are not in the room where the bed is, then remove the screws and short pieces of wood, carry the two halves to your destination, and reconnect the two halves. 

Use screws to attach the short splicing boards to the frame when you put it back together.  If the points of the screws come through, make sure they are coming out on the inside where you don’t have a mattress.  Duh!!!

Staple your fabric back on if desired and put it on the bed frame.  VOILA!

My run in with one from the greatest generation.

Maybe I do talk too much but yesterday, my belief that it never hurts to be friendly and greet others in a friendly way was affirmed.  I went into a doctor's office to pay the final installment of my surgery bill from the fall.  Closest to the receptionist window was a man sitting down, dressed with kacki shirt and pants, and a baseball type hat that said "WWII Veteran".  Despite being in his 80's, and sitting, I could tell he was trim and healthy looking. 

Finding the first couple of opening sentences is the hardest part to striking up a conversation, but if a person wants to talk, most anything will do.  After a little small talk, I said "Can I ask you a question?"  The implication is that it might be a little more personal than the small talk that preceded this.  "My dad was a WWII veteran.  I have a friend that is a WWII veteran.  I have friends who's father's were WWII veterans.  They all seem to say the same thing.  That is, WWII veterans don't talk much if at all about their experience in the war."  His response was "What's there to talk about?"  But then, he knew had an interested listener. 

Over the next thirty minutes, he shared with me little snippets of his 22 year career in the army and CIA.  He had lost friends, experienced the pride of helping win WWII and his amazement at the lack of support upon returning from Viet Nam. He admitted, he had to follow orders and do things he wasn't proud of.   He now spends lots of his time visiting other WWII veterans in nursing homes and rehab centers.  And funerals. 

I talked a little too about my dad, my friend the pilot, and my brothers that served during the Viet Nam era. 

Finally, his wife came out carrying a little oxygen tank.  Listening to his stories, and thinking of my own father and friend that served in WWII, this old man touch my heart.  I don't know why I get so emotional, and don't really need to know.  When it came time to shake hands to say goodbye, I was too emotional to talk.  Our goodbye consisted of his very kind eyes meeting mine, a firm hand shake and a nod.  He took his wife by the arm and carefully guided her to the door. As I thought about what his life might have been like,  I sent him a thought. Job well done.

Father's Day thoughts on the old man

As father day approaches, several things come to mind.  Obviously, we all have dads.  It is a universal experience of sort, yet one profoundly personal. My goal is to share a little bit of my story in hopes that it resonates with you and I hope I get the chance to hear some of your story.

Most of you know I have a daughter, and now I have a grandson. It is wondrous to watch the, isn’t it.  They are so curious.  And full of life, and energy.  At times, they are seemingly invincible.

They soak up knowledge and skills, thoughts, dreams, plans, and hopes to someday change the world.  I’m willing to bet you were like that as a kid.  I think I was.  I believe it is universal.  And logically, I must deduce that my father was like that to.

All of our fathers were born like that.

Have your beliefs about your father changed over time?  Mine have.  My daughter’s beliefs have changed about me.  I’m not nearly as big a jerk as I was when she was in 8^th grade.  How I’ve changed!  I’ve grown up so much these last few years.

I think beliefs about dads can change.  Let’s say for example that we could gently bring our fathers back from time, when they were healthy, and when they were fulfilled that role of dad.  We could line them up and without them knowing it, rate them from poor to excellent. 

Where would your dad be in the line?  How well did he live up to your fantasy?  Was he a Ward Cleaver, or a Father Knows Best kind of dad, someone more like the character in “Oliver” known as Fagin -  A conniving career criminal that takes in homeless children and trains them to pick pockets for him.

One can philosophize about how we ended up in the family we did with the parents we had.  I used to resent it.  After all, my dad was pretty grumpy, seemed pretty miserable with his life.  Is your memory one filled with happy images. Maybe you were one of those that couldn’t wait to move out of the house to get away from him. 

My siblings tell stories of a strong man that parachuted into Normandy and saw the war’s end.

He came home to work and raised a family. He loved his kids deeply.  He had a passion for music.  He lived his earlier years with gusto, playing piano, trumpet and even singing in the choir at St. John’s Cathedral in downtown Cleveland. 

 Despite his passion for music, his sense of responsibility was greater. 

He was a police reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, not one of the beats where you witnessed lots of life affirming beauty day after day.  On weekends, when he wasn’t gardening, he played tennis, or racquet ball with passion. 

    

And speaking of passion, he with his young bride, named Marie, and a devout Catholic, had seven kids to feed by the time he was 30 years of age.  My mom told me that the first ten years of their marriage was one continuous honeymoon.  

I was the baby of those seven kids.  I had a few good years with my dad early on but without going into detail, things went south for him when I was in grade school. 

 He battled with demons of depression, alcoholism and consequences of smoking two packs of cigarettes a day.  His health declined and was in and out of the hospital a lot for the last couple of years.  Maybe so it would be easy to remember, he died on ground hog’s day, never to see his shadow again.  He was 47.  I was 16.  My mother and my siblings breathed a sigh of relief that his misery was over, and we could get on with our lives.

Twenty years later, we decided to have a memorial service for him.  It took twenty years for all of my siblings and my mom to heal, to forget, and to forgive.  During that time, three brothers became sober.  We all got counseling.  We had grown enough, that upon looking back, we could see, and appreciate a different father. 

Despite not being very close to my dad, I choose to think of him in this light.  He, like all of us, came into the world full of vim and vigor, and strived to reach his potential: creative, physical, and emotional.  Along the way, he took his share of hits.  Maybe the horrors of war haunted him, for he never spoke of it.

Maybe his overriding sense of responsibility to his family left little room to explore his passion for writing and musical.  Maybe the lack of resources deprived him of treatment for his emotional ills and addictive personality. 

I am convinced I could not do any better if I had been in his shoes.

This father’s day, I’m thankful to him. I’ve gotten more gentle in my criticism.  He provided good European DNA, perfect for manual labor and endurance sports. He made lots of good choices, like marrying my mom.  He provided for his family.  I’m a lot like him I think.  I love to garden, shoot pool, and play racquet ball.  I even like writing. Maybe someday I’ll learn to sing and play an instrument.  In reality, he was just what I needed to launch me into the life I have. 

Another way of thinking about dads

As father day approaches, several things come to mind.  Obviously, we all have dads.  It is a universal experience of sort, yet one profoundly personal. My goal is to share a little bit of my story in hopes that it resonates with you and I hope I get the chance to hear some of your story.

Most of you know I have a daughter, and now I have a grandson. It is wondrous to watch the, isn’t it.  They are so curious.  And full of life, and energy.  At times, they are seemingly invincible. They soak up knowledge and skills, thoughts, dreams, plans, and hopes to someday change the world.  I’m willing to bet you were like that as a kid.  I think I was.  I believe it is universal.  And logically, I must deduce that my father was like that to. All of our fathers were born like that.

Have your beliefs about your father changed over time?  Mine have.  My daughter’s beliefs have changed about me.  I’m not nearly as big a jerk as I was when she was in 8^th grade.  How I’ve changed!  I’ve grown up so much these last few years.

I think beliefs about dads can change.  Let’s say for example that we could gently bring our fathers back from time, when they were healthy, and when they were fulfilled that role of dad.  We could line them up and without them knowing it, rate them from poor to excellent.  Where would your dad be in the line?  How well did he live up to your fantasy?  Was he a Ward Cleaver, or a Father Knows Best kind of dad, someone more like the character in “Oliver” know as Fagin -  A conniving career criminal that takes in homeless children and trains them to pick pockets for him.

One can philosophize about how we ended up in the family we did with the parents we had.  I used to resent it.  After all, my dad was pretty grumpy, seemed pretty miserable with his life.  Is your memory one filled with happy images. Maybe you were one of those that couldn’t wait to move out of the house to get away from him. 

My siblings tell stories of a man that loved his children, played with them, encouraged them, and disciplined them.  We lived his earlier years with gusto, playing piano, trumpet and even singing in the choir at St. John’s Cathedral in downtown Cleveland.  He parachuted into Normandy and saw the war’s end.  He came home to work and raise a family.  Despite his passion for music, his sense of responsibility was greater.  He was a police reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, not one of the beats where you witnessed lots of life affirming beauty day after day.  On weekends, when he wasn’t gardening, he played tennis, or racquet ball with passion.  And speaking of passion, he with his young bride, named Marie, had seven kids to feed by the time he was 30 years of age.  My mom told me that the first ten years of their marriage was one continuous honeymoon. 

I was the baby of those seven kids.  I had a few good years with my dad early on but without going into detail, things went south for him when I was in grade school.  He battled with demons of depression, alcoholism and consequences of smoking two packs of cigarettes a day.  His health declined and was in and out of the hospital a lot for the last couple of years.  Maybe so it would be easy to remember, he died on ground hog’s day.  He was 47.  I was 16.  My mother and my siblings breathed a sigh of relief that his misery was over, and we could get on with our lives.

Twenty years later, we decided to have a memorial service for him.  It took twenty years for all of my siblings and my mom to heal, to forget, and to forgive.  During that time, three brothers became sober.  All of us had counseling.  We had grown enough, that upon looking back, we could see, and appreciate a different father. 

Despite not being very close to my dad, I choose to think of him in this light.  He, like all of us, came into the world full of vim and vinegar, and strived to reach his potential: creative, physical, and emotional.  Along the way, he took his share of hits.  Maybe the horrors of war haunted him, for he never spoke of it.  Maybe his overriding sense of responsibility to his family left little room to explore his own musical or literary talents.  Maybe the lack of resources deprived him of treatment for his emotional ills and addictive personality.  I am convinced I could not do any better if I were in his shoes.

This father’s day, I’m thankful to him. I’ve gotten more gentle in my criticism.  He made lots of good choices, like marrying my mom.  Like him, I love to garden, shoot pool, and play racquet ball.  I like writing. Maybe someday I’ll learn to sing and play an instrument.  In the grand scheme he was a pretty good guy. 

And for the things he may done that at the time seemed less than loving, I’ll get over it.

In Honor of Dads

As father day approaches, several things come to mind.  While obvious, we all have dads.  Many of the men in this room are dads.  Convinced that telling a story helps others to examine the parallels in their life, I will share something of my story. 

One assumption.  At some point, even to a small degree, we have thoughts, or emotions that our dads let us down.  Or that we let down our children.  I do believe that for the most part, everyone is doing the best they can with what they have.  Personally, I didn’t have much of a connection with my dad.  Thank god my mom was there.  It took me a while to understand how I came to accept and appreciate him as a man doing his best, and in some ways sacrificing much to help his family

While we are still waiting for some type of men’s movement to declare it, let it be known that men are  incredible.  Throughout history, we see men who develop superior skills and thinking that make the world what it is today.  But it is strange because a large number of men I talk with do not speak highly of their fathers.  Most admit their fathers simply did the best they could.  But some dads were overly harsh, unemotional, discouraging.  There are some gems out there for sure, but why do so many men my age and older seem so disconnected with their dads?

One friend of mine blames it partially on industrialization, where men were taken off the farm, worked in factories under cruel conditions, exhausting not only the body, but also their heart.  Almost all of their time was consumed with earning a wage to support the family and the mother was the physical as well as the emotional care giver.

Dads today have more time to Love the kids, hug them, play, encourage, cajole, console, provide, protect, and train.  While fathers of days gone by might have wanted the luxury we dads have today, , it would be even more difficult working seven days a week, 12 to fourteen hours a day. 

My grandfather was the son of a stone mason that came over on a ship in the late 1800s and settled in Akron, OH.  Ben Tidyman, my grandfather saw himself working with words, and betting on horses rather than a chisel and stone.  He had two sons, Bob Tidyman (my dad) and Ernest Tidyman. Ernest, something of a book worm avoided participating in WWII with very bad vision.  He went on to have multiple wives, kids from at least two different wives, and wrote books that were turned in to movies about a black detective in New York named “Shaft”.  When he wasn’t writing for the New York Times, he was working on a screen play of two, for some obscure movies, like “High Plains Drifter” and won something called an academy award for his screenplay for “The French Connection”.  I bring this up for two reasons.  My father had similar genes which might have enabled him to experience similar fame and fortune.  Instead, he married for life, and supported seven kids.  On the other hand, I also have heard that my cousins thought so little of their father Ernest; they changed their last names to that of their mother’s maiden name. 

Like so many others, my dad joined the Army right out of high school.  I’m not even sure he finished high school actually.  My dad was something of a renaissance man.  He played piano and was a good enough trumpet player to get in the army band, and for two years, played music.  He then joined the paratroopers, and a couple years later was parachuting down into Normandy.  He returned to the states physically unharmed and barely escaping a dishonorable discharge for stealing a French jeep, and breaking a stained glass window of a church with an empty wine bottle thrown from said jeep. 

He returned to the states already a husband to a sweet 4’11” nursing student named Marie, who also blessed him in his absence with a beautiful son, Bob Jr.  Bob Sr. did what many did upon returning.  He went to work to support his family.  He followed in his father’s footsteps as a writer for the Cleveland Plain Dealer on the police beat.  This was probably, at least at first, pretty exciting but not the type of writing where one could explore their creative side.  How many different ways can you say, “the victim was apparently shot at close range execution style” or “upon flicking the light switch, the cockroaches scattered, turning the walls from black to white.”.  It seems that he left one war in Germany to witness a different type of war on the streets of Cleveland. 

In his prime, I’m told my father was a passionate man.  My mom said he couldn’t hardly walk by her without stealing a kiss.  She said the first ten years of marriage was one long honeymoon. He loved music, sometimes lending his rich baritone voice for the Cleveland Cathedral downtown. In addition to singing, he played piano and trumpet.  He loved racquet sports.  In the winter, he would load up the kids and head to the WMCA and while we swam, he played handball or racquetball.   In the summer, he played tennis.  While not known for his finesse, he was known for hitting hard and pity the man who somehow got in the way of one of his killer slam shots.

Being the baby of seven kids, I didn’t experience my dad the way the older kids did.  The older ones experienced him at his best.  I know this because twenty years after he died, we decided to have the memorial service he never got.  My mother’s health was failing and it was a ‘now or never’ situation.  The older kids spoke of his deep love, his sense of humor, his playfulness and his being a strict disciplinarian.  If there is one thing I learned from watching the older kids, it was don’t get in trouble with the law. 

Raised in a family with little love and affection, he did his best to learn to love his wife and children.  His self esteem suffered from a childhood short on love and affection, and he questioned his abilities at work, where he was surrounded by college graduates at the Plain Dealer.  Maybe he was jealous of his brothers fame and fortune.  Maybe memories of the war haunted him. Maybe the responsibility of so many mouths to feed finally got to him, or the undiagnosed and untreated depression, or all of the above combined with the damage done by alcohol and tobacco.   My father’s demons ultimately took their toll.  From the time I can remember, he was on and off the wagon and one to generally avoid unless I got an all clear signal from my mom or a sibling.  At age 42, pneumonia weakened his heart.  At 47, consistent with his sense of humor, he died on Ground Hog’s day, unlikely to see his shadow. 

On this Father’s Day, I want to honor his hard work, his sense of humor, his love and dedication to a huge undertaking.  His influence endures.  Two of his children are professional musicians.  Two others make their living writing.  Most of us love to garden as he did.  Sports of one kind or another come to us somewhat naturally.   Thanks to the resources available to us today, the alcoholic siblings managed to  escaped near death or disaster and are now vibrant, creative and loving members of their community.

This father’s day, I hope that we can come to appreciate our fathers knowing that they did the best they could do.