The Incredible Influence of Dad

This weekend finds me back home, in North Dakota, where my dad is being honored for his nearly 40 years of service as a coach at the local high school; sort of a big honor in a small town. About a year and a half ago, his career was similarly recognized at the state level. It was at that time that I wrote an essay called "The Incredible Influence of Dad", parts of which I've excerpted this week, below.



Of course the thing about Halls of Fame or honorary banquets or tributes or toasts or awards presentations is that they are momentary, and they are one-dimensional. If you want to know who a person really is, it can only be pieced together from the firsthand knowledge of those who've spent lots of time at their side. I suspect any kid whose parent has ever done anything noteworthy knows this: awards recognize what someone has done, but only begin to scratch the surface of who they are.

I recount this because I imagine there are parents reading this right now who are wrapped up in a rat race, gunning for some promotion or leveraging their own advancement or trying to cement a big deal or hoping to impress some power broker. Let me assure you: where you go professionally, as important as it is to you, won't matter nearly as much to your kids. They already know how great you are.

Dad decided early what he wanted to do with his life, and he followed through with a steadfastness that is rare and admirable. His three kids - myself and two sisters - have already proven unable to do what he did, which is to hold down the same position at the same school and do it well for 39 years. (We have each moved in and out of (and in one case, back into) education.) Teaching is tiring - physically and mentally. Coaching at any level is emotional. It helps to have a winning team, but Dad's teams didn't always win. They were occasionally great, often average, and sometimes terrible. The most we ever felt this was some weekend grumpiness now and then, but by Sunday night he'd bounce back to his normal self and when you heard him whistling and grading papers you knew all was well again. And when, in 2006, it was time to be done, he was done. There was nothing sentimental or magic to him about reaching the 40-year plateau.

I'm not one who happens to believe that we can fairly evaluate ourselves: who we think we are and who others perceive us to be are usually quite different, and the truth is usually closer to what others see (I find that we tend to be too harsh or too charitable towards ourselves). So as to how much of my dad I carry in me, you'd have to ask someone else. I can, however, readily recognize his influence on my sisters.

All three of us siblings are pretty pragmatic. That comes straight from Dad. If it didn't work, he'd try to fix it, and if he couldn't fix it, well, you'd have to live without it. "It's easier to get forgiveness than permission" was his motto, and it was rare that he couldn't get one or the other. His tastes are simple (so are each of ours) and he never displayed an appetite for wealth. He fought for the underdog. Wrestling sometimes attracted kids who were rough around the edges, and he welcomed the chance to give them something constructive to do - "Maybe this will change them," he'd say. When we played softball with the neighborhood kids, he developed a rotation system that constantly circulated players from batting to fielding and as a result there were no teams and no losers and no score - just fun, which was all anyone wanted. As the head of the teacher's union he advocated for fair pay, and in later years, when he himself was near the top of the salary scale, he pushed for pay increases to go to starting teachers rather than veterans, saying, "They need it more than we do." He felt strongly about that. My sisters have carried that seed of justice into their own lives. As the only boy in the family, I was the only one to wrestle for him (girls didn't wrestle, not in his world; he felt especially strongly about that!). While Mom ran the day-to-day operations of our house - the meals, the school shopping, the scheduling - and also much of the discipline, when Dad spoke up to discipline, you knew it was serious and that was it.

Men, especially great men, are driven by vision. They imagine what could be and set out to achieve or establish it. Sometimes the task takes precedence over the people involved, and the product is a damaging ambition. But it's also that doggedness in men that suits them to be good dads. Men - and dads - dream big. They're wired to lead and conquer. The effect of such vision on kids can be powerful. For my dad and I, this played out in the realm of academic science competitions, another passion of his that started 23 years ago and continues to this day. Spurred by what we saw at the national level, our creations got each year better and ever-more complex, and we did in fact win national awards for them. What I learned from this was to set my sights high, to seek out the best and then better it.

What would happen if every man pursued the future and the health and the reputation of his kids as doggedly as he pursued achievement in his own life? What if dads turned the power of their vision onto the direction of their sons and daughters? Some of us fear the answer, based on our experience with dads who vicariously lived through their kids, pushing them in directions and at speeds they didn't want to go. But what if, at the same time a dad was training his vision on the future of his kids, he was equipped with the qualities of empathy and compassion and tenderness - in a word, his humanity - so that he developed a keen sense of when to push and when to hold back? The answer is, you'd have a really great dad; but not only that, you'd have a really great kid.

We need more dads like that, and the church has a role in calling men to that level of responsibility. Honestly, we can imagine and build great cities, industrial plants, robotic technology, and space travel; can we not also cast a vision for kids that lifts them above despair, boredom, self-debasement, and a future as pawns in this consumerist melee?