February 6, 2004

  • The following poem is one that I wrote a couple days after my dad died, the day before the funeral.  It wasn’t planned and I don’t think I had written a poem since high school.  I needed an outlet, my mother’s house was full of people, so I went into the spare bedroom where the computer was located, shut the door, and started typing.


     


    To understand the poem, one must know a little about my dad.  He grew up on a farm in a poor area of southern Ohio.  He had five brothers and two sisters.  Hard work is how you got by.  He was a young teenager during the depression years.  Coming out of the depression years he was one of the Fabulous Five Waterloo Wonders, a high school basketball team that won the state championship two years in a row (this is another story).  He went on to college, took time out for the war, finished college, and married.  Dad’s primary career was teaching Industrial Arts at the Junior High level.  He took educating young “boys” very seriously.  He held that it was important for boys to learn to use their hands and to learn how things are made.  In the latter part of his career, when the gender gap was being closed in all aspects of our culture, he embraced the notion that girls needed to learn these things too.  His love of sports mixed well with his dedication to young people in his work as a coach.  He devoted many hours to coaching football, basketball, and track.  The value he saw in sports had many facets.  He viewed sports as a teaching tool for young people, lessons that it is difficult to learn by other means.


     


    His family was the center of his life.  His three boys and his extended family were everything to him.  Regular visits back to the farm for large family gatherings were the highlights of life.  Nothing made dad happier than being amongst his family.


     


    Another significant aspect of dad’s life was his craftsmanship and his ability to labor through long hours and days.  To support his family in the manner that he thought necessary, he would take on carpentry, painting, and construction jobs.  He built several homes in our home town and worked as part of a crew on many others.  By the time he retired from teaching he had gained the reputation in our town as the go-to guy if you wanted a difficult job done right.


     


    To put my dad in perspective, I will tell one final short story:  At the end of his life, he had suffered from colon cancer which was fixed with a colostomy, lung cancer which was fixed with removal of half of a lung, and arthritis.  Yet, invariably when I would stop by to see my parents, he would be standing in the garden with a shovel in his hand or standing over a pile of rubble that he had just busted up with the sledge hammer; “never liked where they put that walk”.  Ten days before he died I had been telling him that I was having trouble with our spring water cistern and thought that I might have a leak that was letting mud get into the system.  The next day, when I came home from work and pulled up the driveway something out-of-the-norm caught my eye.  There was a large pile of dirt next to the cistern cap and a head sticking out of the ground.  I walked up to the hole and peered in.  My dad was standing in a pit that he had dug so that we could get to the piping.  The pit was 6-8 feet long, 3 feet wide, and all that was sticking out was his head.  It is the grin that I still remember.  That was my dad.


      


    Dad


    Go with peace dad


    The foundation is laid


    And it is sound


    The beam is set


    And it is true


     


    Go with peace dad


    The seed is planted


    And the ground is well tilled


    The trees will stand firm


    Against the wind


     


    Go with peace dad


    Students prosper


    Their foundations sound


    Players thrive


    Lessons holding true


     


    Go with peace dad


    Your children are safe


    The way is clear


    Love grows from the labors


    Strength binds us together


     


    Go with peace dad


    Your work is finished


    Your home will stand


    Against wind and time


    Well done, dad, well done

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