Similar thoughts extolling the virtues of paternal love assuredly have been spoken by inspiring speakers before magnificent audiences or printed within the bold lettering of the most popular of family novels. Regardless of where or how, such terms of endearment toward fathers are priceless.
Likewise they are timely because today is Father’s Day, a special moment of the year when our attention is diverted — and deservingly so — to the man of the house, he whose heart for his children and grandchildren thumps just as loudly and whose passion for his sons and daughters, and grandsons and granddaughters, treads just as deeply as the family matriarch.
On this day, just as on Mother’s Day of a month ago, men are being taken to lunch or dinner, most are opening brightly bundled packages wrapped in big bows and even bigger love, and the really fortunate are being assigned “Honorary Days Off.”
These HDOs are a blessed time among American males because they constitute rare occasions when dads are waived from such routine occurrences as mowing the lawn, taxiing the kids to ball practice, completing a list of errands seemingly longer than the notepads on which they are scribbled, paying the bills, washing the car and other notables that over the years have fed the imagination of talents like Norman Rockwell.
To honor such an occasion as Father’s Day is to understand how others feel. This is done best by reading their words.
They, like Anne Geddes, have capably summed up the miracle of fatherhood and the magic behind the wisdom of those we call “Dad” or “Pop.” Consider their words:
“Fathers, like mothers, are not born. Men grow into fathers, and fathering is a very important stage in their development.” — David M. Gottesman
“I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father’s protection.” — Sigmund Freud
“I talk and talk and talk, and I haven’t taught people in 50 years what my father taught by example in one week.” — Mario Cuomo
“A father is a guy who has snapshots in his wallet where his money used to be.” — Unknown
“You don’t have to deserve your mother’s love. You have to deserve your father’s. He’s more particular.” — Robert Frost
“One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters.” — George Herbert
“My father died many years ago, and yet when something special happens to me, I talk to him secretly not really knowing whether he hears, but it makes me feel better to half believe it.” — Natasha Josefowitz
“My father didn’t tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.” — Clarence Budington Kelland
“People see Archie Bunker everywhere — particularly girls. Poor girls, rich girls, all kinds of girls are always coming up to me and telling me that Archie is just like their dad.” — Carroll O’Connor
“Sometimes the poorest man leaves his children the richest inheritance.” — Ruth E. Renkel
“A truly rich man is one whose children run into his arms when his hands are empty.” — Unknown
“Small boy’s definition of Father’s Day: ‘It’s just like Mother’s Day, only you don’t spend so much.’” — Unknown
Children whose fortunes dwell within their mothers’ hearts are among the most gifted; those whose fathers hold a true and unconditional love for their mothers are the most blessed.
It is Father’s Day, a time when real men are best counted in the greatest number of ways.
We salute our dads of the Cleveland and Bradley County area community.
Today you are household legends.
Every day you are our hometown heroes.
