Reflections on Father’s Day

SOUL FOOD

On April 26, a photo above the fold of the front page of the Los

Angeles Times grabbed my attention. A sailor, John Reeder, clutched

his small son in a feet-off-the-ground bear hug.

Reeder had just returned home with the missile cruiser Shiloh.

Both father and son wore sailor’s hats. A blue balloon on a red

ribbon bobbed above their heads. Reeder’s smile said far more than

the photo’s caption.

After that there were a lot of photos of fathers returning home,

some embracing a son or daughter for the very first time. Some did it

with tears of joy, others with smiles as wide as Reeder’s or smiles

that, even seen in a snapshot, had clearly segued into laughter.

Every one of them reminded me of the joyful days when my own

father returned home from military duty. Like all of these children

in front page photos, I was fortunate, I was blessed: Even from war,

my father came home alive.

Father’s Day can’t help but be a treasured day for them this year.

I wish it could be for every child and father.

It’s easy to get glib about a holiday like Father’s Day. It can

seem like one more greeting card holiday, and excuse for retailer to

push ties and golf tees.

But, like Mother’s Day, it started out as a way to pay homage to

the profound influence a devoted parent can have on the quality of

life and the character of children.

A Washington woman, Mrs. Bruce John Dodd, prompted the campaign to

designate a day to honor fathers. Her own father was a Civil War

veteran whose wife had died young, leaving him to raise his daughter

Sonora and her five siblings on his own.

The idea came out of Dodd’s desire to show her gratitude for the

selflessness or her single-parent father, William Smart. In 1909, she

asked the minister of her church and other ministers in Spokane where

she lived, to dedicate a Sunday service in June to fathers.

Dodd intended the service to be on the anniversary of her father’s

birthday, but it took the ministers so long to plan and organize the

service it was, in the end, held on June 19. In later years, in

Washington, the third Sunday in June was set aside for what became an

annual observance.

In 1924, president Calvin Coolidge set the day as a national

observance and in 1972, Richard Nixon established Father’s Day as a

permanent national observance on the third Sunday of June.

Coolidge is said to have regarded the day as a day to “establish

more intimate relations between fathers and their children and to

impress upon fathers the full measure of their obligations,” and I

wish as a nation we still saw the purpose of the day that way. But

I’m not sure we do.

We often say that our future rests with our children, but it’s

just as true that much our children’s future rests in the principles

and values instilled in them by their parents.

Proverbs 22:6 puts it like this: “Teach a child how he should live

and he will remember it all his life.”

A contemporary author, Fred G. Gosman, said it this way:

“Occasionally, remind children tactfully that the oven is the only

self-cleaning appliance.”

Gosman wrote a book titled, “Spoiled Rotten: Today’s Children and

How to Change Them,” though, I think he may have written it a bit too

late.Another book in this year’s collection of gifts for fathers

looked like so much fun, it quickly chased that curmudgeon idea from

my head.

If you’re looking for a book for Dad, this is my first pick: “101

Secrets A Good Dad Knows,” written by Walter Browder and Sue Ellin

Browder.

It’s a book of 101 simple, and delightful things to do. It

reminded me of many of the very best times I had with my father.

The book tells you how to carve a whistle; how to tell time by the

stars; how to tell how tall a tree is; how to photograph lighting;

how to whistle with a blade of grass; how to use rare letters in

Scrabble; and, well, 95 other swell things.

Happy Father’s Day to you all.

* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer. Reach her at

[email protected].