[Vision2020] Belated Tribute to My Dad

[Nicholas Gier]

Good Morning Visionaries,

Our Unitarian minister confessed that she was "calendar challenged" when
she failed to schedule the annual Fathers Day service on June 15.  That
means that I had an additional week to prepare my remarks, which wish to
share with you'all.  (Did I spell that right?  I don't speak Southern very
well.)

A PDF file is attached.

Nick

*A Tribute to My Dad: Fathers Day, 2014*

By Nick Gier

             It is said that people do not appreciate the fullness of their
parents' love until they have children of their own.  That is certainly
true in my case. In my teenage years and early adult years I rebelled
against my parents.  I developed my liberal views quite early, and I became
a student leader against the War in Vietnam at Oregon State.

            My father was a staunch Democrat during the 30s, 40s, and 50s,
but the dramatic changes of 60s were deeply unsettling to him, just as it
was for many others in his generation.  My mother worked on the Barry
Goldwater campaign of 1964, but my dad still voted for LBJ.  They both
voted for George Wallace in 1968.  As you can well imagine,  there was lots
of political tension in our home.

Instead of trying to understand my parents, I wrote nasty letter after
nasty letter chastising them for what I perceived to be their political
ignorance and moral rigidity.  No matter how strong my criticisms, however,
my parents always expressed their love for me. It seemed that the more I
rebelled, the more they accepted me. That didn't make any sense to me.  I
didn't deserve their love. I even thought that I didn't want it.

When I went to Denmark as a Rotary Fellow in 1966, I vowed that I would
never return to a country that made war on defenseless Asians, and a people
who did not want their own children to be free of strict religious and
conservative ideologies.  I did come back, however, and savored the first
cheeseburger and shake I’d had in over a year, but my political views
remained the same.

            One reason that I didn't appreciate my dad is that he did not
conform to the image of a 1950s male.  My maternal grandmother came to live
with us in Medford, Oregon when I was three old.  She had an apartment
house and my father helped her collect delinquent rent. I'll never forget
one summer evening in the 1950s when my dad came back to the car
empty-handed and frustrated about a deadbeat tenant.  From the backseat my
brother and I offered our advice in unison: “Why don't you go beat him up?”

            We were devastated by his response: “Sons, I could not beat my
way out of wet paper back.”  Little did I know that in the depths of my
initial disappointment that the seeds of the man that was to become was
planted by a father who was always a farmer at heart.  A little more than a
decade later I would be chanting “Make Love not War,” would be studying
Asian religions,  would later be a fellow at the Martin Peace Institute at
the University of Idaho, and would write a book on Gandhi.

            When my brother and I were born, my dad was a train master on
the Union Pacific.  He would be out on assignment for a week at a time.
When he came home, his boys would run away from him. We did not know who
this strange man was.

            This broke his heart, and he decided to give a very good job
and even better pension for his sons.  My parents sold everything that they
could not pack in a 1947 Mercury Coup and moved to Eagle Point, Oregon,
where my father bought a dairy farm.  Just his luck, milk prices tanked and
within a year and half we moved to Medford, where my brother and I received
excellent educations and my father made a fairly good living selling cars.

            At the age of 27 I would become a father to a daughter who has
become the female version of my father: all sweetness and light—the
embodiment of goodness.  I'm a combination of my dad and my mother, who was
not always so sweet.  (My mother’s feistiness comes out in my public
persona.) For some mysterious reason there is a straight line of goodness
descending from my father directly to my daughter.

            My mother was a strict disciplinarian and the refrigerator
calendar was covered with daily demerit marks.  She warned us that if we
ever reached a certain number of those black marks, our dad would give us a
whipping.  My mother often raised her voice but she never raised her hand
against us.  One day our demerits had increased so much that, when my dad
came home that evening, my mom told him that his sons had to be punished.
I can still remember my dad standing over us with his belt: he simply could
not do it, and it certainly didn't help that both my brother and I were
laughing at him. He was still not credible as what we believed to be a
“real” man.

            Even under the influence of this good, loving, and sensitive
man, I still felt uncomfortable about my dad when he sent me off to Denmark
for my Rotary fellowship. My mom gave me a warm hug, but my dad shook my
hand and cried.  Only when I was in my 50s and my dad was in his 70s did
we, at his initiation, say that we loved each other.  In 1996 my dad died
in a car accident on Interstate 10 outside of Palm Springs.  I miss him
every day.

            Nick Gier taught philosophy and religion at the University of
Idaho for 31 years.  He broadcasts at the Palouse Pundit every other
Wednesday on KRFP (FM 90.3) and uses the same handle as a biweekly
columnist for the *Moscow-Pullman Daily News.*
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