Opinion: Hope you're enjoying Father's Day

It’s Father’s Day and I hope you’re having a great time barbecuing and playing catch with your dad today. If your father is no longer living, I hope reflection gives you happy memories of the old boy.

As part of a Bible class in 2009, I wrote a letter to my dad. Here’s an excerpt of the less personal parts of that letter. It might strike a chord with a few of you.

June 17, 2009

Dear Dad:

This year will be the fifth Father’s Day without you here on Earth in your physical body. Some days it seems like your memory is everywhere around me, other times it seems hard just to remember your voice and bring your face into focus in my mind.

I moved back to your hometown and mine, Portales, later in the year you died. I’m still not sure why I’m back. I wanted stability for Carol and I after the health problems she’s experienced and all the adversity she’s had to overcome. My family seemed like the natural place to run to find that thanks to the love you and Mom gave your children.

I’m sure you probably thought that nothing, or very little, you ever taught me applied to the life I chose for myself. Nothing could be further from the truth though. You gave me a lot of practical “common sense” teaching that I used all of my life.

Checking my oil and tires might have been the most practical things you taught me. It might have been about the end of your patience with actually showing me how to do something too.

You were never a patient man. You always had something you needed to get done or somewhere else you needed to be. You left it up to us to watch closely and pick it up that way or to grasp what you wanted us to do through a series of hand motions and shouted instructions coming from atop a tractor, loader or truck.

It could be pretty frustrating sometimes, and I resented your never taking the time to stop and show or tell us plainly what you wanted or expected of us. Mom always said because you were apparently born behind a steering wheel you expected all of us to be able to automatically do the things you could do without anyone telling us how.

But besides learning much of the practical side of life from you through osmosis there was something else I got from you that you never consciously taught — good character.

Even though you had a reputation as a trader I never ran into anyone who had a harsh word about you. I think that is because you treated everyone squarely and by the time the dickering was done both sides usually came out feeling pretty good.

It must have been that way because people actually sought you out to trade with most of the time. That ability of yours modeled the type of character I should have.

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

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