My Father

In 2006 Tim Russert edited a book titled, "Wisdom of Our Fathers." This is my story in that book.

My Father 

My father would have loved my children. He was born in 1889, and some of his eight older siblings were born while the family still lived in a sod hut on their Dakota Territory homestead. His world was very different from mine, but my father would have loved my children. 

This may not seem like such a remarkable statement. Most people love their grandchildren. But some do not, especially when their beloved daughter marries a man of a different race and has children with tan skin and curly afros. 

My teenage son currently looks like he just escaped from a rap video, with baggy pants and a big crystal in his ear. But my father would have gotten a huge kick out of him. He would have loved that my son inherited his gift from math. He would have loved his sense of humor. And he would have loved him because he was mine. 

He would have loved my daughter because she is such a great listener and would sit attentively as he told stories of graduating from high school at 14 because he read through all the books in his one room schoolhouse. He would have told her about managing a classic old hotel in Rapid City, South Dakota, and having President Roosevelt visit and the man who carved Mount Rushmore living there. He would have been impressed that she could put anything together, even without the directions. 

I won't deny that a racially mixed marriage might have been a little difficult for him to get used to. After all, I grew up in the fifties in a town where a mixed marriage was one between a Lutheran and a Catholic. And even back then, people asked, “But what about the children?”

 But he would have gotten used to the idea pretty quickly. And he would have loved my children. 

My father was a man of some dignity, but he was very direct with his language. He never hesitated to call someone an SOB if he was one, or identify BS when he heard it. But the only way I ever heard him describe a black man was as a “colored gentleman.”  This was long before I ever met anyone who wasn't white. What he cared about in all situations was a person's character. 

His health began to fail when I was in high school. Some days, when I came home from school, I would find him sitting in his big wing back chair facing the bookshelves. On the shelves were pictures of each of his children. He once told me that he went from picture to picture much of the day stopping at each of the five and saying a prayer, because that was now his only way of taking care of us. He thought we were the best. My father died a few years after that, but if he had known my children, he would have thought they were the best too.