America’s Real Problem Isn’t Failure. It’s No Consequences

I was listening to a talk by Thomas Sowell yesterday. He noted that when businesses make poor quality or useless products that no one wants, they lose money and either learn something or go out of business. But when a government program fails, no lessons get learned. It isn't their money, it's the taxpayers. Instead, they ask for more money and do more of the same. 

One of the saddest failures today is our American education system. For years we've seen articles about the decline of education, including not only outcomes but expectations and standards as well.  

Here's just one example of how far we've fallen, a 2024 article in The Atlantic titled "The Elite College Students Who Can't Read Books," by Rose Horowitch. The subtitle sinks home her message: "To read a book in college, it helps to have read a book in high school."

Horowitch examines how many students at elite colleges (e.g., Columbia, UVA) arrive unprepared to read full books—often due to high school practices favoring short excerpts, standardized testing, smartphones, and shorter attention spans. Professors note students struggling with long-form reading, getting overwhelmed by novels or multiple books per semester, and sometimes shutting down when facing unfamiliar or challenging ideas.

This feels shocking to me. I remember reading Dickens freshman year (A Tale of Two Cities) and having an "Aha!" moment my sophomore year while reading Cyrano de Bergerac. I have a hard time imagining an education without reading being a fundmental practice. 

Over the past decade, according to Idress Kahloon, staff writer for The Atlantic, American students’ academic skills have sharply declined, regressing to levels not seen in 25 years. Test scores have fallen to record lows, while the percentage of students reading at a “below basic” level has reached record highs. As staff writer Rose Horowitch has reported, a shocking number of American college students say they didn’t read an entire book in middle or high school. What exactly went wrong?

Some believe Covid is partly to blame, along with smartphones. But Kahloon believes there is aother factor a play: low expectations.“Schools have demanded less and less from students,” he writes, “who have responded, predictably, by giving less and less.”

When I read this I wondered if this is one of a primary issue is our country today: low expectations. When people fail to find a job, or simply make poor decisions, we

When I read this I wondered if this is one of the primary issues in our country today: low expectations. When people fail to find a job, or simply make poor decisions, we look for someone or something else to blame. The system. The economy. The curriculum.  

But rarely do we ask: What was expected? And was it enough?

Expectations shape behavior. When standards are high, people stretch. When standards fall, people settle. That’s not cruelty—it’s human nature. 

In my case it was expected that I would get good grades and I got them. My parents also expected me to go to college. In short, they set me on a trajectory. (There was also an incentive when I was in grade school. I'd get a dime for every A and yes, incentives matter.

Somewhere along the way, society began confusing compassion with the removal of standards. We didn’t want students to feel discouraged, so we made the work easier. We didn’t want failure to sting, so we softened the consequences. We didn’t want anyone left behind, so we lowered the bar.

But lowering the bar doesn’t lift people up. It simply changes what “success” means.

And over time, that redefinition spreads. If a student can graduate without reading a book, what else can be bypassed? If effort is optional, what happens to discipline? If discomfort is avoided, what happens to growth? Failure is painful, but it's also a prod that goads us to figure out the why. 

I once knew a publisher who had previously been a high school football coach in Texas. If you know Texas, football was a big deal for small towns there. He was recruited to coach a team in another town that had never won a game in several years, and frequently they were spanked quite badly. When he arrived, he quickly saw the problem. There were kids with talent, and heart, who loved playing foorball. But they were in the wrong division. It would be like college kids playing the Seattle Seahawks. By spearheading the division change, his team was suddenly competitive.  

The point here: failure is an opportunity to learn. And sometimes the solution involves thinking outside the box.

This is not just an education problem. It’s a cultural one. Thomas Sowell’s point lingers here. In the private sector, failure teaches. In public systems, failure can be absorbed, explained away, or funded again. The feedback loop breaks. And when that happens, decline can continue for a long time before anyone is forced to reckon with it.

The irony is that most people—especially young people—are capable of far more than we ask of them. The question is whether we still believe that. Because if we don’t expect much, we shouldn’t be surprised when we don’t get much.

"Eddie Did It"

Me with 2 of my 3 brothers. L to R: Don, Ed, Ron

It's been said, and oft repeated, that the weakest ink is stronger than the strongest memory. For this reason, countless people keep journals, genealogical and legal records as well as baby books. Our diaries, and photos, preserve our memories. 

According to our family's baby book, where (among other things) my mother recorded my our first words, my brother Ron's very first sentence was “Eddie did it.” 

I was his older brother by two years. With this utterance of “Eddie did it,” he was simply proving that at a very early age he had entered the “Adam and Eve Blame Game," the age-old drama of finding creative ways to avoid responsibility and shift the blame to someone else.  

When we dislike the negative consequences of poor choices we make, we let others take he rap. How hilarous that this was my brother's first sentence! 

It's a profound insight when we finally learn that we are responsible for the things we say and do. This truth runs contrary to the Freud-based pop culture assumption that my parents or circumstances or society made me the way I am, that I have no choice but to be this way, to behave badly or whatever.

Politicians are especially good at this blame game. When an initiative fails, it was not their fault. "I inherited an impossible situation," they often say. Or maybe, "Don't blame me. My intentions were good." This is why the public lost respect for their elected officials.

In many work environments, the blame game can make it almost impossible to learn from previous mistakes because rather than get a proper diagnosis of what happened, all the players become more concerned about covering their tracks. In his book On Advertising, David Ogilvy stated that when we have autopsies without blame, only then will we discover what killed the patient.

Mistakes are inevitable in life, and in business. Some decisions in business are simply educated guesses. New product introductions do not always find welcoming arms to greet them. For example, the Polaroid Camera required a very long runway before it got off the ground. It took a lot of faith and persistence to stick with that one. Many other products, however, were doomed before they left the lab. Does this mean we should simply stop trying? No, each failure is an opportunity to learn.

The real tragedy is not that we fail; it’s that we waste the failure by refusing to own it and learn from it.

When a company launches a product that bombs, the first instinct is rarely “What did we miss?” Instead people say, “Who can we pin this on?” Marketing blames engineering for a buggy prototype. Engineering blames sales for overselling features. Sales blames the customer for being too stupid to “get it.” The corpse lies on the table, but instead of an honest autopsy, everyone reaches for the makeup kit. In the next launch, thecompany is doomed to repeat the same mistakes, only with better PowerPoint excuses.

Healthy cultures—whether families, teams, or communities—grow precisely because they replace the question “Whose fault is this?” with “What really happened, and how do we keep it from happening again?” NASA’s turnaround after the Challenger disaster is a classic example. The Rogers Commission didn’t hunt for a scapegoat; it hunted for the truth. O-rings, cold weather, and a broken safety culture were laid bare without finger-pointing. The result? Painful reforms, yes, but also the safest space program in history for the next 17 years.

Owning our part makes us uncomfortable because it strips away the anesthesia of blame. But it is also the only door to real understanding. The moment we stop saying “Eddie did it” and start saying “I did it, and here’s what I’m going to do differently,” we step out of childhood—personal, corporate, or political—and into maturity.  

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Feel free to comment. Was there too much moralizing tacked on to what was essentially a personal anecdote? I was aiming for an Aesop-style insight. If I got carried away, I blame no one but myself.

Are You Too Busy for New Connections?

Still friends after all these years.

When my wife Susie and I returned from Mexico after the second year of our marriage, a friend suggested we visit Bethel Temple in St. Paul. He raved about the good people, solid pastoral care, and vibrant worship. It was a very special place, he said, in the heart of the Twin Cities. I believe he even repeated “good people” for emphasis, which stuck with me. 

After the service on the first Sunday we went, a friendly, blonde-haired man greeted us with a warmth that felt genuine. His name was Henry, and our conversation flowed effortlessly. He was on a wavelength I instantly connected with—thoughtful, engaging, and genuine.

I could tell Henry was someone I wanted to know better, but I also sensed he had a very busy life. The way he moved through the crowd, balancing greetings and tasks, I could tell this was a role he played here, making a conscious effort to welcome visitors and get them connected to the fellowship. 

As we were talking later I blurted out, in my somewhat direct way, “Is your life too busy to have another friend?” It was a bold ask, but after a pause in which he no dubt did a quick internal inventory of his commitments, Henry’s gracious smile said it all. Despite his packed schedule, he and his wife Lisa welcomed Susie and I into their lives. That openness changed us, and we remain deeply grateful for their friendship.

From tme to time I've reflected on that moment and have had to ask myself Are you too busy to allow another person or new experience into your life? It’s a question worth pondering. Life moves fast—work, family, errands, and endless to-do lists can fill every crevice of our days. It’s easy to say, “I don’t have time for new friends” or “I’ll try that new hobby later.” But what if “later” never comes? What if the cost of busyness is missing out on connections and experiences that could enrich us?

Henry could’ve brushed us off. He had every excuse—his plate was full. Yet, he chose to make space, and that choice sparked a meaningful, lifelong friendship. It’s a reminder that life’s best moments often come when we pause and say “yes” to something new. Whether it’s a conversation with a stranger, a spontaneous adventure, or signing up for that class you’ve been eyeing, opening the door to new possibilities takes courage. It means prioritizing connection over convenience and growth over routine.

So, here’s the challenge: take stock of your life. Are you too busy to let someone new in? Too swamped to try something different? If so, maybe it’s time to carve out a little space. Say hello to that coworker you’ve never really talked to. Book that weekend hike. Invite someone to coffee. Like Henry, you might find that making room for others—or for new experiences—brings unexpected joy. Life’s too short to let busyness block the beauty of what’s waiting. 

Related Link

Henry is a professional pianist and founder of Quiet Heart Music.

www.quietheartmusic.com

 

Insights from Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet

Of all my books just a few are indispensable to me, and two even are always among my things wherever I am. They are about me here too: the Bible, and the books of the great Danish writer Jens Peter Jacobsen. I wonder whether you know his works.
--Rainer Maria Rilke

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote a series of letters to a young officer cadet, with advice about writing, love, the embrace of passion, the shadowed realms of suffering, and the nature of advice itself. The letters were later assembled and published in a book titled "Letters to a Young Poet." Though directed to one, it is rich with wisdom and advice for all who aspire to be creative spirits, especially poets.

My first brush with this small gem took place when I downloaded it to my Kindle perhaps a dozen years ago.

When speaking of creativity and the artistic life, Rilke offered these suggestions.

1) Trust your inner voice. Focus on your own unique experience and expression, not external validation or imitation.

2) Be patient and cultivate solitude. Artistic development takes time and introspection. Avoid rushing or seeking immediate recognition.

3) Observe and connect with the world. Deeply experience life, nature, and people to enrich your creative wellspring.

4) Embrace uncertainty and doubt. Artistic creation is a journey of exploration and self-discovery, not a pursuit of definitive answers.

5) Don't compare yourself to others. Each artist has a unique path, and comparisons can be paralyzing. Trust your own trajectory.

As I read these, I can imagine a young Bob Dylan internalizing these pearls from the experienced pen of a master poet.

Rilke had much to say about other topics beyond writing, including love, relationships, life and existence. What makes these letters thought-provoking and potent is their candor. They are filled with observations drawn from experience. Here is an excerpt:

You ask whether your verses are good. You ask me. You have asked others before. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are disturbed when certain editors reject your efforts. Now (since you have allowed me to advise you) I beg you to give up all that. You are looking outward, and that above all you should not do now. Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody. There is only one single way. Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write. This above all---ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write? Delve into yourself for a deep answer.

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Related Links I discovered Rilke later in life via the amazing 1990 film Awakenings, starring Robert DeNiro and Robin Williams. (Better late than never.) Here is a link to that first encounter. And here is a link to another favorite Rilke poem.

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Character Matters. The Johnny Manziel Fiasco

In college Johnny Manziel was a superstar.

Cleveland baseball and football fans have had a pretty rough go of it during the past sixty years. The city's bad luck in baseball was so legendary that a book was written about it: Terry Pluto's The Curse of Rocky Colavito. Cleveland Browns fans haven't fared much better. In fact, the last bit of really good news for Browns fans was when owner Art Modell moved the team to Baltimore but allowed Cleveland to retain the Browns name and uniforms. 

Bill Bellicek was head coach at that time, with an outstanding record in the works when, mid-season, Modell announced the move. Things quickly unravelled and have never been the same.

One good thing about a losing record in the NFL is that you get top draft picks. The worst teams become first in line for the annual crop of college stars on the auction block.

In 2014 the Browns selected Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Manziel to lead them back to becoming a contender. The kid had talent, they said. The moment he was drafted, however, it became apparent he was missing something. Flaunting his mega-millions contract, it seemed plain that this was not going to be the hero who would carry this team. It's truly a shame because the opportunity was right there in front of him. Instead, he derailed his career with a combination of poor decisions and personal issues. 

Here's a short list of reasons Johnny boy failed in Cleveland and was unable to get a gig with any other NFL team afterwards.

His off-field behavior was a constant issue. He faced legal troubles, including allegations of domestic violence, bar fights, and reckless driving. These incidents tarnished his reputation and led to disciplinary actions from the NFL and his team.

Substance abuse was another issue, primarily alcohol and partying, which negatively impacted his performance and behavior. His partying lifestyle was well-documented in the media, and it raised concerns about his commitment to football.

His lack of preparation was similarly indicative of his lack of commitment to Cleveland success. Leaders lead by example. Tom Brady's preparation for games was legendary. There were reports that Manziel did not put in the necessary effort to prepare for games and improve his skills as a quarterback. This lack of dedication and focus on his career hindered his development as a professional player.

By his inconsistent performance on the field it became apparent to all that he was in over his head at the pro level. Combined with the distractions of his personal life, legal issues and public disputes, it's easy to see why Manziel stumbled. Add to this his unwillingness to assume responsibility for his own behavior and you have the kind of player who becomes odious to fans. He disrespected his team mates as well as the Browns organization that had recruited him. After two years his NFL career was over. 

Such a shame.

Moral of the Story: Pride goes before a fall. 

Character counts. It doesn't matter how smart or talented you are, if you lack character you will very likely undermine your dreams of future success. 

Manziel photo is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0

Reach for the Stars...

And the world will be better for this

that one man, scorned and covered with scars,
still strove with his last ounce of courage
to reach the unreachable stars.
~ Dale Wasserman, Man of La Mancha

How high do you want to go? How much difference do you want to make? Go big. That is the only way to find out how far you can reach.

In today's cynical and suspicious world, you may appear a fool in the eyes of many. People will tell you that to believe you can make a mark that lasts, can make a difference is a wild goose chase, a waste of time, a lost cause.

You will be swimming upstream, but do not give up. Quit swimming and the current will carry you backwards. Are you tired? Hold on to something firm, catch your breath, then continue. There are rewards for those who make such an effort... Keep on keepin' on. Even if you don't reach the stars, over the course of a lifetime you will accomplish more than you ever thought possible. 

Planet Sandtrap: Distractions and the Challenge of Living Purposefully

Photo by Justin Aikin on Unsplash

In the 90s Susie and I befriended a homeless man who became a friend for about ten years. It happened like this. Susie was doing pottery at the Duluth Depot at the time. The kiln for firing and the workspace designated for potters was located on the first floor. Just outside is where the train museum is located. 

There was a man named Robert who loved trains and did volunteer work there once a week. He was a big man, tall and somewhat overweight, unkempt but gentle. Often he would come into the pottery studio and sit there, sometimes engaging in conversation. Susie suggested that I take him to dinner sometime, that he was an especially insightful person and I might enjoy getting to know him. I went along with the idea, made a plan and we followed through. I had no idea this would develop into a ten year friendship with our family or that we would be at his side when he was unplugged on his deathbed at the hospital.

Robert lived in the Seaway Hotel at the time. Located in Duluth's West End it had a seedy reputation, but was affordable for down-and-outers. In that first hour together over dinner I discovered what an unusual and interesting man he was. 

We later began calling him Train Man because of the similarities between himself and the savant Dustin Hoffman played in Rain Man. We soon learned about his obsession with trains, that he had watched every single movie in the library and rated them on the accuracy and qality of their train scenes.

One of the observations he made in that first encounter, though, was how the Seaway was a microcosm of the culture at large. He called it Planet Sandtrap.

He proceeded to name the various traps there: drugs, booze, hookers, porn and gambling were preeminent. 

Do you have life goals that are being thwarted by your own sand traps? In golf, there are other hazards as well. Lakes and ponds, forests and trees can all interfere with your golf score. While golfing in Florida once I not only had my ball end up in a small pond, there was an alligator in there as well, two hazards in one.

Those who aspire to be the best they can be in any field of endeavor reach that height by avoiding sand traps and making other sacrifices as well. 

Even when you play your cards right, however, things don't always work out. As stated in Ecclesiastes 9:11, "I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all."

Nevertheless, if you have something to aspire to, you'll generally get much closer to your goal by avoiding the sand traps. You'll have higher self regard and fewer regrets as well.

The Four Kinds of Regrets

Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes has been made into at least three Hollywood films. The first, in 1972, was so mediocre that a second effort was filmed in 1983 starring Jason Robards. This was a better effort but it failed to make half its money back. In 2018 Hollywood made another go of it and this one got worse ratings than either of the previous efforts. Perhaps the theme is too dark. I myself found the 1962 novel to be both vivid and disturbing. Perhaps Hollywood just can't compete with the images a good creates when mingled with our imaginations.

The story is about Mr. Dark's traveling Pandemonium Circus that upends Green Town, Illinois like a furious funnel cloud. The tag line for the film sums up the main point of the story: "After he fulfills your deepest, lifelong dream... he'll tell you the price you have to pay."

For me, I have no memories of the film at all except one. Jason Robards, the father, gets lost in a Hall of Mirrors where he is weeping because it is a hall of regrets.

AND SO when I stumbled across the title of an article on The 4 Major Kinds of Regrets, it grabbed my attention because like many people I have carried with me regrets from my past.  It never occurred to me that there could be different kinds of regret, so I was curious. Here are the categories, according to this article in Psychology Today.

Foundation Regrets
These regrets pertain to a failure to be responsible, conscientious or prudent. Things like getting old without having saved for retirement. Or regrets about having neglected your health. Or your teeth. 

Boldness Regrets
I'm guessing that this one pairs up with the proverb about good intentions. For example, an opportunity that came our way passed us by because of our inaction. Why didn't we say something, or do something? Why were we so passive?

Moral Regrets
This is when we choose the low road rather than the high road. There are a hundred ways we can fail ourselves and our ideals.

Connection Regrets
This, researchers say, is the largest category of regret. It happens when we neglect people who are important to us, when we allow fractured relationships to remain fractured.

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Some of my biggest regrets revolve around things I've said. I'm ashamed to admit that there were a few times when I deliberately said something hurtful. And there were other times I unintentionally hurt people by stupid things I'd said carelessly. What's painful is that there is often no second chance.

The article goes on to examine how people respond to their regrets. Some say, "I have no regrets." Others, and I count myself among these, say, "I  have regrets but I have learned from them."

Life is for learning, through all our experiences, good, bad and ugly. 

My Dad Called Me Stupid In Front of My Friends and I Wasn't Scarred for Life

The event took place in the evening of a lovely summer day. Mr. McAvoy was driving a carload of boys home from a Little League game in his gold convertible with the top down. This was the 60's and no one had seatbelts. Some of us were seated across the top of the back seat with our team T-shirts and hats. I was one of these, on the driver's side, the lazy breeze whooshing across our faces. 

I can still picture my dad in the middle of the Christianson's front lawn, arms folded, feet planted shoulder width as he chatted with the neighbors. Off to the right of the driveway Robin Christianson, a girl I liked, looking our way with a couple of friends. 

As the car slowed to make a right hand turn onto Cambridge Lane, I noticed the speedometer slow to about ten miles per hour. Somehow I got it into my head that if I leapt from the car and started moving my legs I could actually hit the ground running and run right up to Robin and her friends. 

Wrong.

I will mention here that though the road was paved with asphalt there was also a lot of large limestone gravel scattered in the gutter area of the road bed. As my body slammed into the pavement, the limestone tore my finger and gouged my forearm. Stunned, it seemed that everything was silent for a second. Time had stopped, as did Mr. McAvoy's car. 

It was then that I heard my dad's voice thunder through the air as he came running across the yard: "You stupid!"

I didn't feel any pain in my body at that moment as he lifted me up and began walking me across the street to our house. We went into the family room bathroom and he cleaned my wounds, but the humiliation was harder to clean. 

He was right, of course. Eventually, years later, I recognized that I needed to forgive him for making me feel small in front of my friends. And I did. 

For the record, if you ever feel tempted to leap from a moving car, don't. Generally it only works in the movies. I got lucky. Some people get killed.

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I have written about this story before in a blog post about the Darwin Awards. If interested, you can read that here.

In passing I mention the story here as well: Seven Quotes About Stupidity

ALTERNATE TITLE: My Dad Called Me Stupid in Front of My Friends and I Lived to Tell About It.

Florida Condo Collapse Has Lessons for Us All: Don't Ignore the Signs

When the 136-unit  Champlain Towers South collapses on June 24, the news media announced the incident as a death with an unknown, but large, number of people unaccounted for. A few days later the Washington Post and other media reported that there were now 4 dead and 159 unaccounted for. Today that confirmed death toll is 12 with 149 missing, and most people are already fearing the worst.

A major part of this unfolding story has revolved around the question, "How did this happen?" along with the corollary, "How many other seaside properties are at risk?"

Many news outlets have been noting that there were all kinds of warning signals being flashed these past few years. The condo owners, when informed, were not made to feel endangered. As we often do, we put things off and distract ourselves with "more urgent" concerns.

Today's Wall Street Journal has a story titled, "Miami-Area Condo Failure: Years of Warnings, but Mixed Signals." It notes how that an engineer's report states that "the building's design was flawed from the start." This is probably something not readily observable from a layperson's perspective.

The title of the piece notes that the signals were there but unclear. When leads me to the thought I had after reading about this tragic event during the past week. 

My first thought had to do with a publisher who suddenly found himself in the hospital for nine days and recovering for weeks from a health issue. I saw him at a writer's workshop shortly after he was recovered and asked what he learned from his experience. He said, "Don't ignore the signs."

Those words have rattled through my head for two years now. The applications are many. In my case, I think of my health. And most interestingly, the WSJ article compared this building collapse exactly to that. Or rather, someone they interviewed did. 

Jiann-Wen Ju, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles who specializes in construction defects, likened it to someone who has a slow-moving, underlying chronic condition, that then suddenly manifests as something serious, such as a heart attack.

“That person at some point just collapses,” he said.*

I believe the event has still broader applications. Marriages, cars, businesses and even nations flash signals for years before the singular moment that makes the doom permanent. Collapse doesn't happen overnight.

How's your health? Have you been ignoring signs that you might need to look into? 

How about the health of our nation? Solzhenitsyn's massive multi-volume series The Red Wheel details the decline and fall of the Russian empire from which the Soviet Union emerged. The two decades preceding WWI revealed a foundation with plenty of cracks. 

Events in recent years have been flashing warning signs about the health of our own nation today. How alarmed ought we to be? 

Such were my thoughts this past week. And so it goes. 

* Miami-Area Condo Failure: Years of Warnings, but Mixed Signals, Jon Kamp, Scott Calvert and Deborah Acosta, Wall Street Journal, June 30, 2021.

A Father's Day Anecdote About Generosity

Dad in rocker, with my son Micah, 1987

My father was born in a temporary coal mining town in West Virginia the day after Christmas in 1929, two months after the stock market crash that preceded the Great Depression. Four months later the family moved to Cincinnati and eventually to Hamilton 20 minutes north, where many of my kin live to this day. 

Dad grew up skinny, poor, smart. Grandma, who had been a teacher in a one room schoolhouse before she married my grandfather, was religious and grandpa was anti-religious. Grandma attended the legalistic Nazarene church a few blocks up the hill. Because their home was across the street from a Pentecostal church, Grandpa would call the police on the church when it got loud, which was regularly. 

The neighborhood was dirt poor. My grandfather was harsh with his daughters and my dad’s older sister Fonda ran off to marry Oscar, who would become the town drunk. My dad’s sister Carol ran off to marry at 15 because of grandpa. (She hopped the fence when Grandpa said, “If I catch you talking to that boy again you won’t be able to sit down for a week.) 

EdNote: When Grandpa died, my father gave me the leather razor strop that grandpa used to whoop the kids to keep them in line. 

His brother Cecil was mentally ill, brain damage from high fever at age six during a measles epidemic. Cecil would sometimes take his clothes off and run off down the street. Dad would have to catch him and bring him home (if dad was around). One time they couldn’t find him for hours. Then they found him stuck up to his neck in the outhouse sludge.  (They had no running water so they could not hose him down. They had a pump house 20 feet from the back door. You can imagine that this must have been awful for everyone.)

Dad as a high school grad.

Despite all these hardships my father was valedictorian when he graduated high school. The next day he joined the army. After basic training he was sent to the Philippines and Korea. The war had officially ended but there was an 18-month post-war buffer in which you received the benefits of service even if you did not see combat. Upon his return from Korea he went to Hiram College on the G.I. bill. 

Dad got a degree in chemistry. His first job out of college was at Sherwin-Williams in Cleveland. He became involved in the development of latex paints, which he continued to be involved with throughout his career. (Trivia: Arnold Palmer worked as a salesman for Sherwin-Williams out of that Cleveland plant, till he became a full-time golf pro and PGA champion. My dad was also a lifelong golfer and became part of Arnie’s Army throughout his career.)

Before my father passed away in March 2006 he requested that there be no flowers at his funeral. Instead he asked that friends an family give to the Heifer Foundation, the funding arm of Heifer International, an organization now in 21 countries dedicated to ending poverty by empowering, providing training and assistance to individuals and communities. No offense to florists, but in my father's estimation some things are more important things than flowers.

All of this is a lead in to an anecdote I'd like to share, which says something about my father. Through growing up poor he learned frugality. One of his hobbies, if you can call it that, was going to house auctions and looking for bargains. I was aware of this, but never fully aware of the extent to which he took this.

There's a Proverb that says, "If a man shuts his ears to the cry of the poor, he too will cry and not be answered." (Prov. 21:13) It ties directly to this story, which I only learned about after he passed.

Dad would go to these house auctions to buy up blankets and clothing items which he brought to an Allentown center that distributed such items to those in need, something like our Damiano Center here in Duluth. He had been doing this for quite some time till one day he showed up and was told to stop bringing them stuff. He was bringing it in faster than they could give away. 

Nevertheless, he continued to be generous, and never made a big deal about it. On this Father's Day I have much to be grateful for as a father, but also for having a father who served as a role model in so many ways. Sadly, I took some of this for granted when I was young.

If your dad is still alive, let him know you appreciate him today.  

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Do you have an anecdote you'd like to share about your dad? Feel free to leave it in the comments.

Related Links

Heifer International

Sharing Comfort (Personalized muscial memorial pages for loved ones.)