Life Stories: My Dad and the Unwelcome Stranger

Dad has been afflicted with MS and physically challenged for over twenty-three years. During this time, he has ALWAYS been there for me. He was the one who taught me how to throw a baseball. He would sit in the lawn chair in our driveway and show me how it was done. As I got older, Dad taught me how to SAFELY work with power tools. This is especially true with a power saw. Whenever I would use it, he would always yell out "FINGERS!" This is his way of reminding me to be careful and not cut my fingers off.

Dad also taught me about being courteous i.e. always saying Please, Thank You and Excuse me. He was always big on vocabulary (especially those "$5.00" and "$10.00" words). Dad always taught me how to speak to people. He would always say, "When you speak to someone, you look the other person square in the eyes; let him know that 'I am here and you can talk to me.' Always be self-assertive."

The greatest thing that Dad taught me was the meaning of the word COURAGE. He always considered himself to be a "student" of survivors i.e. individuals who exemplify and illustrate the true meaning of the word COURAGE. He would look at his Mom (my Grandmother) who successfully fought off breast cancer. He would point to people such as Robert R. Ingram, a former Navy Corpsman (medic) who received The Congressional Medal of Honor from President Clinton in 1998 for keeping a platoon of Marines alive during the course of an ambush in Viet Nam in March, 1966. Ingram was courageous enough to do this while being shot four times in the ensuing fire-fight. One of those bullets entered under his right eye, passed through his sinuses and emerged from the left side of his face.

In some way, all of Dad's mentors taught him about the true meaning of the word COURAGE. My Grandmother taught him that, "...courage is the ability not to give in to any problem with which you are faced with in life." Robert Ingram taught him that, "...courage is putting your mind to something and doing it." Dad also met a former Marine who was captured by the Viet Cong in Viet Nam. The man escaped from the "VC" after twenty days as a POW. He taught Dad that "...courage is doing what ya' gotta' do when ya' gotta' do it."

The problem with Dad is that he has never seen himself as I see him. He's a man who taught ME the true meaning of the word COURAGE by successfully going on with his life each and every day despite the presence of a physical challenge.

People just like Dad can certainly teach each and every one of us a "thing or two" about COURAGE. I know because he certainly has taught me more than a "thing or two" about it. My hat's off to you Dad! Thank you for teaching me a very valuable lesson about life