Thanks, Dad ...

At the health club the other day--soaking wet after about twenty-five minutes on the exercise bike--I mumbled to my father, "Thanks, Dad."

Dad, you see, perspired heavily. I remember him back in Enid, Oklahoma. He was in the Air Force Reserves and now and then had to go out to Enid's Vance AFB for meetings or whatever. I remember him in his summer khaki uniform, returning home, with "certain areas" of it dark with sweat.

And that dark, soggy gene he gleefully passed along to me--and I have passed it on to our son and grandsons.

When I was growing up, there were other of my dad's traits that I wished he had passed along. He had been a high-school sprint star in Oregon; I didn't get that gene. When I was in high school, at the "peak" of my athletic prowess (such as it was), I couldn't catch Dad in our little football games out in the side yard--not unless he let me. Which he sometimes did. Which annoyed me even more than when he sprinted away from me toward the goal line.

Dad was also about six feet tall. I peaked at 5'8". In high school, I was sure that if Dad had been more generous, genetically speaking, with his height (and speed), I could have played in the Majors, in the NBA. (Shows what I knew!)

Dad also was muscular--bulging biceps, etc. (Not I.) (See pic atop this post.)

Dad also had curly hair--and did so until the day he died. (Not I. I do still have most of my hair, but it's straight--and very very white now--Santa-Claus white.)

Dad also had a very slow fuse. Was generally genial and amiable and loved to talk with people. I remember, near the end of his life, I rode with him in an ambulance from the hospital to his new "home" in a rehab place. Within thirty seconds he was talking with the young attendant in the ambulance, who'd also been in the military--and on and on they talked until we arrived.

My fuse is shorter; I'm far less ... sociable.

Dad was a ferocious worker. From a large farm family in Oregon. His own father died when Dad was a teen--and Dad went to work to help support the family, survived the Depression, World War II, Korea (though, fortunately for us, he didn't get shipped overseas--just to Amarillo AFB in the Texas Panhandle). He became an ordained minister (Disciples of Christ), and even when he changed his profession to Professor of Education, he still often preached on Sundays, here and there, bringing in a little extra income to help support his wife and three so-grateful sons.

So ... during my boyhood ... he was in the Air Force Reserves, taught at Phillips University, preached on Sundays ...

... and I ...? Never mind.

But, of course, I do want to thank my father for so many things despite his failure to pass along to me his speed, his build, his height, his curly hair, his personality ...

He greeted everyone as an equal--he urged my mom to return to school for a master's degree, for a Ph.D.--he accepted his three very different sons for who they were--he displayed a devotion to his family--he laughed and joked and sang (oh, what a fabulous tenor voice! which, of course, I did not inherit) and teased and loved and loved and loved and loved.

He died on November 30, 1999. He was 86. And oh do I miss him. Even when the perspiration is pouring from me after some mild health-club exertions. Maybe especially then ...

Thanks, Dad ...