Happy Father's Day to my Dad

And my other dad...

I wrote this many years ago, long before dad passed away. But I think it’s a fitting tribute.

My gift to my Dad is a list.  These days, we focus on the failures of parents all too often.  So I want to write a list, for everyone to read, of a few of the things my father, Rev. Keith Leap, did right.

Now that I’m a father, I am constantly shaken with doubt and anxiety, wondering if I’m doing OK.  I try to see the future and think on the past, and to use every day with my children as well as I can.  Now that I’m a father, I see how time slips through our hands like water.  For fathers who care, it moves almost too fast to comprehend.  And in the process, we look and watch and hope that we’re doing it right.  When they tell us we’re doing well, when it comes from our children, it is an enormous validation and relief.
Dad raised my brother Steve and I well.   He wasn’t from a hovering generation and never felt the need to be our best friends. But he did some things right.

Heck, neither of us ever went to jail (that Dad knows about).  Neither of us are angry, frustrated or cruel men.  Neither of us are violent or profane.  Neither of us have dysfunctional lives or habits.  Both of us love our children and our wives more than life.

If a father can convey that, can have sons who hold those things dear, then he has done something incredible; for we live in a world of checked-out, absent, wounded fathers who are little more than the initiators of a biological process.

So here’s a list of some of Dad’s great accomplishments:

Brought us into the world.

Never struck us, or our mother, in anger.

Never taught us that alcohol was a solace or answer to anything.

Taught us that a man can profess faith in Christ and still be a ‘real’ man. 

Taught us to follow where God calls.  Dad went to seminary when I was a pre-teen and my brother Steve was just being born.

Dad served in the Army in Vietnam. He survived and demonstrated to us that a man can come back from war and go on with a normal life.  Patriotism was not deforming but defining for him.

Taught me to shoot a rifle and took me hunting; a thing that made a young boy feel masculine and properly dangerous. We were terrible hunters, but it was fun.

Taught me about my extended family and the value of heritage. We visited many a family grave.

Took me hiking and fishing and bicycle riding.

Let me have a dog and cats.  Let me have goats and rabbits.

Let me play in the woods to my heart’s content, and catch whatever I could find in the creek.

Allowed me to ride in the back of the old purple (really, I’m serious) F-150 truck, and go with him on errands.

Showed me how to work in a garden, to set a row, to plow and hoe and plant and harvest from the rich bottom-land where we lived.

Kept me occupied by making me straighten corn after rainstorms.  I don’t know if it was really necessary (was it?), but it gave me something to do in the summer so that I wasn’t lying around the house being annoying but was instead up to my knees in mud.

Refused to let me roam the highways at night when I was a teen.  As an emergency physician I now see how dangerous the world is.  Dad clearly knew this, though at the time I felt the average teen angst at being bored at home. He didn’t care that I was bored.

Told me to do whatever I wanted to do with my life.  He was proud that I was a physician.

Watched Bugs Bunny and Foghorn Leghorn and Roadrunner and Coyote with me, and laughed out loud.  Laughter is something we had in common. (Of the many things I miss about him, it was his true, deep, heart-felt laugh.)

Read books all the time, so that I saw how important that was.  It has been passed along, and now my children read voraciously. They also love having his old books.

Took me to Myrtle Beach and Pigeon Forge, surely the two places most like paradise to a young West Virginia kid. (Geography aside, they’re really the same place I suppose.)

Spoke to me like an adult when I was a child, and let me listen to him speaking to his brothers and other adults, rather than shooing me away. I spent many an evening listening to dad and my uncles telling stories or discussing books.

Let me be a child while I was a child, with no pressure to grow up.  Let me become an adult when it was time.

Continues to be a part of my life (even outside of time).

So Dad, there’s part of it.  A few of the things you did right.  There are many more.

Happy Father’s Day! 

Love,

Edwin

Part II:

But before I go, I realized that my father-in-law Len Mahon deserves mention. Because for the forty years that his daughter has been in my life, he has been a rock solid man and always my advocate. Many times when we dated and argued, he (and his wife Carma of blessed memory), would ask Jan ‘what did you do?’ To which she would respond, ‘you know, I’m your daughter!’

What has Len done well?

Raised a kind, Godly daughter with a heart full of love. Jan would give anyone whatever they needed, just like her dad did.

Taught her that family is first, shaping her into an unimaginably wonderful wife and mother.

Welcomed a scared, skinny, nerdy kid into his family. Even before we married I had many a meal in their living room, eating stuffed potatoes and watching movies with the family on weekend breaks from college.

Took me on vacations over the years, during which I learned that I am not the kind of competitor that the Mahons are, whether the game is cards or miniature golf or anything else. (Taught me to watch who is dealing the cards and how.)

Never drank a drop of alcohol in his life and modeled that kind of dedicated abstinence.

Told me great stories from his time working in the Hoover FBI, where he met his wife. (Both were recruited out of high school as support staff.)

Worked as hard as any man ever to support his wife and children; they didn’t have luxuries but never lacked anything they needed.

Always encouraged education in his kids and grandkids.

Taught me the struggles of those who worked in the mines.

Showed me dedication to kids and grandkids when he and my mother-in-law Carma moved close to all of their twelve grandchildren just to be there for everything from soccer games to graduations.

Demonstrated the power of faith in his life, and shows his deep desire to share it with his family.

Managed to forge an unbreakable bond with his children and grandchildren which goes on to this day.

Survived illness after illness (including two weeks on the ventilator with COVID) and keeps going back to the gym to life weights in hopes of still playing golf.

That’s a partial list.

The point being, Happy Father’s Day Len. You’re awesome and I love you.

Thanks for everything!