Papa Was A Good Man

My Dad was born in 1913 in Chicago, Illinois. He came from a dysfunctional family full of drunkards and scoundrels. He made sure his family wasn’t any part of ours when I was growing up.

He joined the army before WWII because he wanted to learn to fly (and, I would assume, escape his family). He stayed on through The Big One and came home afterwards with a Purple Heart in his kit bag.

He fell in love with my Mom, got married and started adopting kids when the Lord made it clear they weren’t going to be blessed with any of their own.

My Dad gave me a name, all the love his emotionally-tightfisted upbringing allowed him to show, and a life. My Dad was a soft touch who would give a stranger (or a con man) the shirt off his back. What made him a failure in business made him a hero in my eyes. They tell me his politics were old-school conservative, but his example was pure Jesus-delivering-the-sermon-on-the-mount.

He’s been gone for ten years now. I miss the old guy, and among the regrets I have are that I never reached out to him to get to know him as a person when I had the chance. I never asked him about his childhood or the war. We never shared a cocktail or talked about girls. Mostly though, I regret that his Grandson will never get to know him, will never benefit from the example of his simple kindness and generosity the way I did.

If I can be one-tenth the role model for The Man Cub that my Dad was for me, maybe I’ll earn the right to wear my “World’s Greatest Dad” t-shirt without feeling like them are fightin’ words.