In this week’s column, can I divert from my usual agenda of politics and current events? If he were still living, my Father would have reached the ripe age of 110 this week.
In his work The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud describes the death of a father, as “the most important event, the most potent loss, of a man’s life.” This is true in my case. What I have discovered is that the older I get, the better I understand my Father, because I find more and more of him in me.
My Father was kind and gentle, and rarely raised his voice to me. One of the things I remember most was his sound advice and his continuing presence. Even though he traveled a good deal as a vice president for the Kansas City Southern Railroad, he rarely missed any of my hundreds of ball games and track meets. In the spring of 1962, I was contending to be the hurdles champion at the Atlantic Coast Conference track meet in Raleigh, North Carolina. As the race was about to begin, I happened to look up into the stands. There was my Dad standing up and ready to watch me run. He had traveled two days by train and over 1000 miles unannounced to cheer me on.
