Fatherhood 101: No Whining Allowed

My sons are grown. In fact, one of them is about to experience the complexities of being a father.

On this Father’s Day, I am left to contemplate: What kind of father have I been…..?

Juggling a couple of jobs and going to grad school sometimes made me less than accessible. I often worry that I did not do enough to model a spiritual life for my sons to follow. And, I wonder what they will take from my parenting style when they have their own.

I know there are many things that I stole from my old man.

To name a few------I have always had a work ethic. I think my ambitious traits certainly came from the Chief (a title that has stuck in referring to my Dad, the former Bethalto Police Chief). I think using humor as a coping device is also something that was learned in my upbringing.

But the greatest gift I got from Lewis L. Dreith was-----in a word------perseverance. The ability to take a shot and move on. The lack of excuse-making that some people fall back to when they fail.

Louie grew up in a full house in Alton, Illinois and fashioned himself an athlete. But he had to work after school and could only participate in one sport. For him, it was football. By most accounts, he was pretty good as a sophomore quarterback when one morning he awoke with extreme pain in his right arm….and left leg. The scourge of polio had come to rest in his body.

He spent almost a year in a hospital…..and faced the specter of a life of immobility.

It didn’t stop him.

After I was born and entering kindergarten in Bethalto….he applied for a police patrolman position in the village. Physically, there is no way he should have been able to compete for the job. Bethalto was a very small community in those days……and somehow……someway……he was hired. Louie grew into the job as the community went through a growth surge and he ascended to the rank of Chief.

The message was clear. No excuses. You can be what you want to be if you dedicate yourself to succeed.

Decades later, I remember driving one of my sons home after an indoor soccer game where he had lost 1-0 on a questionable call by an official.

He was in the back seat and started jawing about how “the ref lost that game for us.”

I pulled the family van to the side of the road.

“Maybe if you had played better, your team would have won,” I remember saying.

“No whining. We don’t whine in this family. And we don’t blame others for our losses.”

I learned that from Dad.

Hopefully I successfully transmitted it along the genetic code to the next generation.

If I did……then I wasn’t that bad a father……