I grew up on the heels of the generation that saw many of the nation’s fathers head off to World War II; the deadliest military conflict in history in terms of total casualties.
As Tom Brokaw so aptly depicts in his book, The Greatest Generation: “At a time in their lives when their days and nights should have been filled with innocent adventure, love, and the lessons of the workaday world, they were fighting, often hand to hand, in the most primitive conditions possible, across the bloodied landscape of France, Belgium, Italy, Austria.”
My Dad was among those who set sail as a member of the Merchant Marines, leaving his young wife—and as Brokaw chronicles—“ fought their way up a necklace of South Pacific islands few had ever heard of before and made them a fixed part of American history–islands with names like Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal, Okinawa. They were in the air every day, in skies filled with terror, and they went to sea on hostile waters far removed from the shores of their homeland.”
Hundreds of thousands (2.5 percent) of the nation’s 16.3 million U.S. Armed Forces were killed during the war–many of them fathers.
After the conflict, my father considered himself fortunate to have lived out his life following service to his country. He would often contemplate, “The faces I would have never seen, the experiences I would have never shared, the lessons I would have never learned, the perspectives and values I would have never come to treasure so dearly, had my life ended in the Pacific. I remain grateful to God and to those who gave their lives that I might live mine.”
My siblings and I are the benefactors, blessed to grow up in a home with a father. Many of the sons and daughters of that generation were not as lucky.
I came into this world nearly a year after my father’s tour of duty. I am thankful the months of hostilities didn’t embitter my Dad, despite the unrelenting angst and uncertainty. Rather, the lessons of war strengthened his faith; enlarged his heart and his capacity to love unconditionally; deepened his appreciation for people and the things that had been distant nautical miles away during the war. His character and moral integrity endeared him to shipmates and superiors alike. Reading his letters to Mom and his parents, bear witness to who this young man had become.
I am grateful for a father who was kindhearted, loving, affirming, gracious, giving, not willful . . . but willing; not so preoccupied with “getting” in this life, that he missed countless opportunities to “give” of himself.
I am grateful for a father who instilled in his children a great sense of right and wrong founded on a clear understanding of God’s Word.
I am grateful he was present; that our home included our father.
His imprints will continue to last my lifetime.
So how significant is this fact?
Contrast my providential reality with these recent U.S. Census Bureau statistics: 24 million children in America—one out of three—live without their biological dad in the home.
Wayne Parker, writing in a 2018 article titled “Statistics on Fatherless Children in America,” points out, “Children who grow up in fatherless homes have a greater risk of major challenges in life than those who grow up with a father at home. We might want to believe otherwise and there are many children who overcome the hardships associated with an absent father, but the truth is in the data.”
Does this make me “privileged”?
No. Blessed!
I stood last Saturday in a small church sheltered in the woods near St. Croix State Park and gave the eulogy as we gathered as family and friends to celebrate Dad’s life before spreading his ashes with Mom’s– his helpmate in this life for 75 years–who had passed from this life to the next nearly one year ago. Family huddled arm in arm, in the penetrating winds, at the base of the folk’s “praying tree,” located on their homestead east of the park, and prayed our final goodbyes.
As I said before . . .
“I know that I’ve been blessed, again, and over again . . .”
From the song by Ysaye Barnwel, “Wanting Memories.” 1992
Former Cook County Commissioner Garry Gamble is writing this ongoing column about the various ways government works, as well as other topics.
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