Jun 17
My Father’s Voice
categories: Cocktail Hour
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This piece was recently published in WM On-Line, the lit magazine for Wabash College. I thought I’d link to it for Fathers’ Day.
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My Father’s Voice
My Father died more than 15 years ago, but I hear his voice every day.
I don’t mean that I hear its exact tone or timbre, of course. But I do hear, echoing in my own mind and voice, his bluntness, his way of not pussyfooting around but going directly at a thing. “No more bullshit” and the even shorter “Enough bullshit” were two of his favorite phrases.
In appearance he was a no-nonsense, balding bulldog of a man with full cheeks and hanging jowls, and when I first saw a picture of Churchill in my schoolbook, I momentarily believed that my father and the Allied leader were one and the same. (Not that it would have surprised me to find out that the man I sat next to at dinner had also led Great Britain through the war.) When I, as a young writer, whined to him once about the difficulties of my chosen profession, he spelled out this single word of advice: “W-O-R-K.” Of course this infuriated me at the time, though it aptly summarizes my attitude toward my own job today.
To Read the rest in WM Online please click HERE.
Later days: spreading the ashes with my father, as usual, at the helm.
Younger Days
