HE NEVER MISSED A GAME
Sunday, we celebrate Father's Day & I will reprint my tribute I wrote back in 2009. Linda & I will be in Kansas City, so we can be with her dad, Hugh's a good man. He wants his traditional Father's Day meal, Bryant's Barbeque, so I'll struggle to choke that down.
I lost my dad in 1998 & tho my wife & I were never blessed with children, the day remains very important to me. I think of my own father, grandfathers, uncles, in-laws, stepdads & of course, friends I've been close to, as sons, now as fathers & granddads. Many had similar relationships with their dads & some are lucky enough to perpetuate those bonds with their kids. As a non-dad, I've watched with great interest how they've loved, taught & cared for their children. I've always respected them, because being a mom or dad has never been easy, but it seems to be getting more & more difficult as time goes by. Some stepdads are amazing as well in a very delicate transition for both him & his new family. My mom & dad were divorced when I was in the sixth grade & way back then we didn't know anybody who had divorced parents, it was hard on both my sisters & myself. But we knew we were loved & our parents always cared about whatever we were involved in.
Nowadays we attend the bat mitzvahs, graduations, weddings & christenings for the children of our families & friends. We've watched these kids from their birth to actually having to their own children & in the immortal words of Jerry Garcia, "what a long, strange trip it's been". We respect what these friends, many of them former semi-goofy, party animals, have done as parents in a challenging world to raise such well-adjusted, independent, respectful & loving children. God Bless them all.
Not a day goes by I don't think of my dad & how important he was in my life. I still miss our hour-plus phone calls every Sunday morning after I got home from work in Las Vegas at 4 AM. It was six o'clock in the central time zone & he'd already walked the dog & had his breakfast by then. Our conversations were a little current events, sprinkled with politics, his weekly golf report(besides his family & his dog, golf was the single most important thing to him for decades. He lost his life driving home from the golf course) & just about every phone call had some football in them. Dad was a very passionate Kansas City Chiefs fan, a long-time season ticket holder & the Mizzou Tigers were very important to him as well. My first recollection of watching football was in 1958 when dad & I watched the NFL Championship game, the overtime classic between the New York Giants & Baltimore Colts. In the following years, whenever we watched a game on Saturday or Sunday, dad always taught me a little more about the game. It was always important to him & it became important to me.
My step-granddad took me to my first pro football game in Kansas City. In my teens I had Chiefs' season tickets even before I could drive. Lawn mowing money coupled with working in a bowling alley & a couple of weeks working at my dad's store paid the freight. Me & a friend would ride a city bus to the game at old Municipal Stadium & before every kickoff, we'd stroll over 2 sections to where my dad, Dick & Betty were seated & handshakes, hugs & kisses would ensue. At halftime we would meet up again to celebrate or complain, depending on how the Chiefs were playing. When my now brother-in-law played in the Missouri State High School Championship game played on the Mizzou campus, dad took my buddy Mike, his late brother Bill & me to the game. Breakfast on the way down & supper on the way home on him. Though our alma mater narrowly lost the game, it was still a very special memory.
Dad was his high school's football star, a running back who scored nearly 3/4's of his team's touchdowns. He was the second leading scorer on his basketball team. He never mentioned those facts to me, my grandmother showed me a scrapbook she kept of his athletic exploits. He never mentioned he was the most decorated soldier from Independence, Missouri during World War II. Many people in town spoke of it, but he never did. I remember during his visitation service, the night before his funeral, his next door neighbor & member of his golf foursome for over 20-years said to me "I had no idea your dad won all those medals" after reading his obituary. That's the way he was, like so many others from the "Greatest Generation".
I played football, basketball, baseball & threw the discus on the track team. Most of those teams were pretty bad, but dad believed that lessons could be learned from every game, win or lose. He was right. Later, as I played on the championship PACAF(Pacific Air Force) baseball team, I was sorry that I was half a world away, finally playing on a winner & he couldn't be there to share in it with me. If it hadn't been so far away, he would've been there, in all the games & meets I was in, he was always there, even when I wasn't starting. I could always look up into the stands before kickoff, tipoff or before the first pitch was thrown & I'd see my dad. I could write from now until next Father's Day & not be able to convey just what that meant to me, that he was always there, because he never missed a game.
Happy Father's Day to all the grandfathers, fathers, fathers-in-law, stepdads & mentors who have made someone's life better because they were a part of it.
I lost my dad in 1998 & tho my wife & I were never blessed with children, the day remains very important to me. I think of my own father, grandfathers, uncles, in-laws, stepdads & of course, friends I've been close to, as sons, now as fathers & granddads. Many had similar relationships with their dads & some are lucky enough to perpetuate those bonds with their kids. As a non-dad, I've watched with great interest how they've loved, taught & cared for their children. I've always respected them, because being a mom or dad has never been easy, but it seems to be getting more & more difficult as time goes by. Some stepdads are amazing as well in a very delicate transition for both him & his new family. My mom & dad were divorced when I was in the sixth grade & way back then we didn't know anybody who had divorced parents, it was hard on both my sisters & myself. But we knew we were loved & our parents always cared about whatever we were involved in.
Nowadays we attend the bat mitzvahs, graduations, weddings & christenings for the children of our families & friends. We've watched these kids from their birth to actually having to their own children & in the immortal words of Jerry Garcia, "what a long, strange trip it's been". We respect what these friends, many of them former semi-goofy, party animals, have done as parents in a challenging world to raise such well-adjusted, independent, respectful & loving children. God Bless them all.
Not a day goes by I don't think of my dad & how important he was in my life. I still miss our hour-plus phone calls every Sunday morning after I got home from work in Las Vegas at 4 AM. It was six o'clock in the central time zone & he'd already walked the dog & had his breakfast by then. Our conversations were a little current events, sprinkled with politics, his weekly golf report(besides his family & his dog, golf was the single most important thing to him for decades. He lost his life driving home from the golf course) & just about every phone call had some football in them. Dad was a very passionate Kansas City Chiefs fan, a long-time season ticket holder & the Mizzou Tigers were very important to him as well. My first recollection of watching football was in 1958 when dad & I watched the NFL Championship game, the overtime classic between the New York Giants & Baltimore Colts. In the following years, whenever we watched a game on Saturday or Sunday, dad always taught me a little more about the game. It was always important to him & it became important to me.
My step-granddad took me to my first pro football game in Kansas City. In my teens I had Chiefs' season tickets even before I could drive. Lawn mowing money coupled with working in a bowling alley & a couple of weeks working at my dad's store paid the freight. Me & a friend would ride a city bus to the game at old Municipal Stadium & before every kickoff, we'd stroll over 2 sections to where my dad, Dick & Betty were seated & handshakes, hugs & kisses would ensue. At halftime we would meet up again to celebrate or complain, depending on how the Chiefs were playing. When my now brother-in-law played in the Missouri State High School Championship game played on the Mizzou campus, dad took my buddy Mike, his late brother Bill & me to the game. Breakfast on the way down & supper on the way home on him. Though our alma mater narrowly lost the game, it was still a very special memory.
Dad was his high school's football star, a running back who scored nearly 3/4's of his team's touchdowns. He was the second leading scorer on his basketball team. He never mentioned those facts to me, my grandmother showed me a scrapbook she kept of his athletic exploits. He never mentioned he was the most decorated soldier from Independence, Missouri during World War II. Many people in town spoke of it, but he never did. I remember during his visitation service, the night before his funeral, his next door neighbor & member of his golf foursome for over 20-years said to me "I had no idea your dad won all those medals" after reading his obituary. That's the way he was, like so many others from the "Greatest Generation".
I played football, basketball, baseball & threw the discus on the track team. Most of those teams were pretty bad, but dad believed that lessons could be learned from every game, win or lose. He was right. Later, as I played on the championship PACAF(Pacific Air Force) baseball team, I was sorry that I was half a world away, finally playing on a winner & he couldn't be there to share in it with me. If it hadn't been so far away, he would've been there, in all the games & meets I was in, he was always there, even when I wasn't starting. I could always look up into the stands before kickoff, tipoff or before the first pitch was thrown & I'd see my dad. I could write from now until next Father's Day & not be able to convey just what that meant to me, that he was always there, because he never missed a game.
Happy Father's Day to all the grandfathers, fathers, fathers-in-law, stepdads & mentors who have made someone's life better because they were a part of it.
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