I was thinking about “the chief” the other day. That is the title that I have always called my father since his days as the Police Chief of the Village of Bethalto. Louie Dreith has always been a major influence in my life. I always would smile when he would get bothered at someone or something-----“Sheeeit,” was his favorite word. I’ve learned tons of things that I value and practice myself that I trace directly back to him. And I learned a few things from him that I’d never do.
The Chief was a good athlete by most accounts and played football at Alton High when, in his teens, he was afflicted with polio in both his right arm and left leg. He spent the better part of a year in a hospital and knew his life had changed in a blink of an eye. The polio robbed him of the use of his arm to the extent that he could only use his fingers. And his leg was locked in place, thus making it impossible for him to run. When he graduated from high school he was an insurance man…sold furniture in downtown Alton and finally got into the family business of cement finishing. It was backbreaking work but by that time he had married my mother and had me to worry about.
He was pouring the floor in the basement of a house in Bethalto in about 1962 when the owners, an elderly couple, offered to sell him the property. Racial tension was palatable in his native Alton, and young Mike was about to go to school for the first time. He bought the house.
And shortly thereafter he saw an ad in the newspaper about how Bethalto, a sleepy little town of 2300, was looking to add a night cop to their two-man police force. Louie applied. How he talked the village board into hiring him, which his physical liabilities, to this day is remarkable to me.
My father’s drive to succeed was very much passed on to me, his only son. He constantly worked to improve himself and as Bethalto started to grow, he became the chief of police. He appeared to be a very skilled leader.
As a father, he took incredible interest in my athletic endeavors. I always believed he lived some part of his life through me. When the polio struck, the torch got handed off years later to me. And despite the fact that I ended up being a mediocre athlete, he was never anything but encouraging and proud of my attempts.
Dad was always very interested in my pursuit of media and clearly had a keen interest in broadcasting, my first career. An interest that would eventually come to the forefront in his life.
Pop and I didn’t speak to one another for a decade after his divorce from my mother. One day as I prepared a Sunday School lesson about “forgiveness,” I was convicted by the good Lord to stop the silence. We reached for one another, and now we speak weekly and I never miss a visit when I am in Bunker Hill where he has his own radio studio and produces a Sunday morning music program heard on stations in Indiana and Illinois.
I have many gifts…and I know many of them came from Lewis L. Dreith.
He never let a debilitating disease stop him from doing anything…..law enforcement, broadcasting…..or just entertaining a crowd around the local bar. He can be quite funny.
Louie lives alone now—if you don’t count the dozen or so stray cats that he feeds or the hundreds of birds that collect on his porch.
The other day I looked up in the mirror when I woke up to get ready for work and there he was ----staring back at me----from the mirror in front of me. At that moment….almost in an act of total heredity I said it.
“Sheeeit.”
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