Peter H. Curran Sr.
July 1921 - Jan 2004
(Now those Hawaiian Shirts I favor make sense)
Kenneth Royal Wheeler
Sept 1913 - Nov 1962
(Also pictured are Pam and Pam's Mother Alva)
One of the unintended or perhaps unrealized effects of age is that holidays become less a cause for celebration and more an occasion for remembrance. Perhaps, for Pam and I none more bittersweet than Mother's and Father's Day as both sets of our parents have passed on, leaving us to carry on in a manner we hope they would be proud of.
With Father's day rapidly approaching my thoughts have turned to my father and Pam's to hers. We lost my father in 2004. I was lucky enough to have him around for a big part of my adult life. Pam did not share my luck as she lost her father when she was 11. He died of cancer in 1962.
With that brief introduction the title probably is self apparent but none the less this post is giving credit to our fathers and the role they played in both our childhood and the role those lessons played in our adult lives.
I never had a chance to meet or get to know Pam's father but I feel I know him well from my now almost 36 year relationship with my wife and her family. I understand the values that were important to him because I see it in her daily. A value set with a very close congruence to my fathers.
These days I find myself channeling my father more and more, or perhaps I just have come to realize it more as my vision is less clouded with where I am going and how to get there and more focused on how to enjoy what that journey has afforded us, and some consideration of how all of our journeys end and what that means for those around us.
With the luxury of hindsight and the perspective of age I am constantly amazed by my parents (not to mention Pam's) and what they were able to accomplish. Not in the monetary sense but in the bigger picture of family. I find myself looking to my father's impact on my thinking and world view to understand this phase of my life. I now understand the changes he weathered as he transitioned from father to grandfather, from the world of work to the uncertainty of retirement.
My father was in my younger years a bit of a puzzle to me. Raised by his mother with no real interaction with his father (a far more complex story that I would attempt to tell here) how did he learn to be a father. I have obliquely inferred I learned from him, so let me be clear I realize as a parent I was my father with the edges softened by my mother's impact. Just as Pam was her mother with shadings of her father. I get we are formed in large part by our parents. Perhaps that is why I am so dismayed as I look at many family's today (Again a topic far to complex to insert in this discussion).
My father was an interesting individual and that was not just my opinion. My father could hold his own in any discussion and could walk up to a complete stranger and in a matter of minutes they would be laughing and carrying on as if they had know each other for years. I never saw my father be intimidated by anyone yet he himself was not intimidating. He was more inclined to teach with humor that with volume. Here was a man who shunned the corporate world for the life of an educator. Who as an educator obviously had an effect on his students. It was rare for us to go anywhere in Corpus and not see at least one of his old students most in their fifties who still vividly remembered him. I have tried to come up with a list of my old teachers and you know I can only remember a very few. There is obviously more to say on the subject than I have the ability to articulate. To that end here is my attempt:
Things I Learned From My Father
(Without Realizing He Was Teaching Them To Me)
There is only one way to do anything, The Right Way!
Family is the most important thing.
There is never a reason to be cruel (to a person or any living thing).
If you are going to do something commit to it or don't do it at all.
Your name is all you have, never compromise it.
Faith is not a crutch you lean on, it is the foundation you build on.
Don't be afraid to take ownership of your actions.
Don't do anything you have to apologize for but if an apology is needed make it sincere.
Never tell a lie then you don't have to try to remember them. (More correctly "The truth is best in any situation")
Action is louder than words. Having done it accept responsibility for the outcome.
You can never go wrong when you do the right thing. (Perhaps we need to teach our politicians this one).
Everyone and everything has value or God wouldn't have put them here. (This one is so hard)
It's Family, God, Country, then Self and the order never changes. ( I know, realize to my father Family and God were the same thing as he accepted God as the head of his family).
A top ten list it is not. There are no zingers here, just the absolute truth as my Father saw it. ( besides there are more than ten) Is the list definitive, by no means. I could make it much longer but I think I have made my point and so I will follow perhaps one of his most important lessons:
Say what you have to say then shut up ( Won't say I have mastered this one).
Happy Fathers Day
Bruce and Pam
