Dad's Day The Long Way Home 6.19.26

A Father Is Biology. A Dad Is Something More

Sitting down to write this column, I waded through some potential topics that readers might appreciate. I considered a dive into how so-called Private Equity was tearing apart businesses built by real entrepreneurs. Or maybe a look at how all the glowing praise for private/public partnerships covers up the fact that the private benefits far more than the public. I’ve previously written about the warning signs of rising personal credit card debt, so not yet ripe to revisit that.

Maybe I could do some self-reflection about how my Minnesota Lutheran guilt has me in turmoil every time I hear Smokey the Bear say, “Only you can prevent forest fires.” Despite my best efforts for decades, there are still forest fires. It’s depressing.

Thumbing through my scrapbook of columns I’d written in 1996, my first year as a newspaper publisher/editor, I came across one with the headline “Checking in with dad.” Of course, Father’s Day is this weekend. So let's get sentimental.

Father’s Day became a recognized “holiday” in 1972, but its roots go back more than a century. During the Great Depression and World War II, retailers and tobacco companies aggressively promoted Father's Day to boost the economy and honor troops serving overseas, cementing the day in American culture in a truly American way.

Not to make a big deal of it, but I think we’d all be much happier if the name were changed to “Dads Day.” The act of becoming a father is a biological event lasting a few minutes (or less). To make a difference in another person’s life, one must become a dad. Let priests keep the honorific “Father.” 

My dad and I didn’t have many issues when I was a youngun. We didn’t always see eye to eye over the years, but there was never a deep division in our relationship. We liked each other and weren’t afraid to talk, even if we were just shooting the breeze. 

My cousins all loved my dad. He was a perfect uncle. My friends in the 17th Avenue hood loved him too, especially those who had to get haircuts from him.

Despite my low self-esteem, I knew that my old man was proud of me. He nurtured my love of baseball, coaching my Little League teams, taking me to Twins games, and spending countless hours playing catch in the yard with a skinny wannabe Major Leaguer. When he wasn’t tossing pop-ups and shooting grounders, he played catcher to my pitching dreams. I fondly remember him showing off the bruise in the palm of his hand and bragging that my fastest pitches hit him hard. 

In my adult years, we lived in the same metro area as my parents. Before my time in the newspaper business, my career was in freight transportation, the same industry that was my dad’s lifework. He expressed how proud he was of me again after an annual banquet of the Transportation Club of Minneapolis in St. Paul, where he’d been one of more than a thousand guests, and I dined at the long head table in a Monkey Suit, sitting alongside the owner of the company Dad worked for.  

I still think of my old man almost every day, and he’s been gone 31 years.

That column I penned 30 years ago told some of the reasons I loved my dad so much. The Bohunk and I were heading to “the Cities’ so I could attend a company Board of Directors meeting, see family and friends, and visit Ft. Snelling Cemetery to see my dad’s grave. 

The previous Spring, we were in the pandemonium of selling the family home in Bloomington, holding two weekend garage sales, and hosting daughter Jess’s high school graduation open house. That Father’s Day, though, we made a point of visiting Dad in Richfield. The entire family was there that day. Mom, of course, my sister and her family, and the Bohunk and I with our four kids. 

Dad had been on oxygen full-time since the summer of 1992. A lifetime of cigarette smoking led to emphysema that haunted his last decade, robbing his lungs of the ability to process the air he breathed. According to the old man’s doctor, the supplemental oxygen, combined with a cocktail of pharmaceuticals, added the last three years to his time as dad and grandpa. On that Father’s Day, it was apparent that he was rapidly going downhill. He died soon after, just before we moved to Grand Marais.

I hope you’ll honor the dads in your life on Sunday.  Whether they are biological fathers or just father figures in your life, they’re much more important than a biological event lasting a few minutes.