This Sunday, June 20, is Father’s Day.
It’s a day set aside to honor the fathers, grandfathers, great grandfathers and greatgreat grandfathers.
Indeed it’s an honor and privilege to be the father of such a wonderful young woman as our daughter Meghan is.
Likewise, it’s also special to be a grandfather.
In a little more than two months our grandson Liam will turn 3.
He’s a busy little boy for sure.
In reflecting a little, I think back about my dad and one of my grandfathers and the influence they had and the role each played in my life.
Dad’s been dead for nearly 33 years and my grandfather Doc passed away almost 47 years ago.
I was thinking of the good times dad and I had together and how I also enjoyed being with my grandfather so much. He’s the one who taught me how to fish, dad showed me how to shoot and hunt and of course so many other things.
I have to credit my dad for setting me on a career that I’ve enjoyed since its beginning when I still was in high school.
Before the start of my junior year, he suggested I take this course called journalism.
Having not a clue what that was, he explained it had a lot to do with writing for newspapers.
Even though I retired more than six years ago from full time work after spending 47 years at the same daily newspaper, I’m still doing what I enjoy and that’s writing for a weekly newspaper.
When dad passed away, I was only 40 years old.
How I wish I’d had more time with him.
There’s not a day goes by that I don’t think about him and miss him.
I like to think of the good times we’ve experienced as a family. I also remember those times just the two of us spent together.
He was a perfectionist I believe and he always wanted only the best for me.
When I was a kid growing up, I enjoyed our running the bird dogs and then all the hunting we did together and with others.
If there was something he wasn’t short on it was handing out advice and I probably should have listened more than I did.
A man I was probably as close to as my dad was Doc.
I am the oldest of his 19 grandchildren and we were always close.
Part of that closeness was probably because after my biological mother passed away when I was 3 ½, I spent so much time with him and grandmother Lynch.
Dad’s job took him out of town some and I always looked forward to staying with Doc and grandmother.
Little things like fishing, playing catch with him, just sitting and watching TV as we talked were all part of what I really enjoyed.
He was a person who was kind, gentle, had faced so many challenges in his life and wasn’t afraid to be emotional when the time called for it.
To Doc, his family was first and foremost.