<div dir="ltr">Good Morning Visionaries,<div><br></div><div>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.)</div>
<div><br></div><div>A PDF file is attached.</div><div><br></div><div>Nick</div><div><br></div><div><p class="" align="center" style="text-align:center;line-height:115%"><b><span style="font-family:Georgia,serif">A
Tribute to My Dad: Fathers Day, 2014</span></b><span style="font-family:Georgia,serif;line-height:115%"> </span></p>
<p class="" align="center" style="text-align:center;line-height:115%"><span style="font-family:Georgia,serif">By Nick Gier</span></p>
<p class="" style="text-align:left;line-height:115%"><span style="font-family:Georgia,serif"> </span><span style="font-family:Georgia,serif;line-height:115%"> </span><span style="font-family:Georgia,serif;line-height:115%">It is said that people do not
appreciate the fullness of their parents' love until they have children of
their own.</span><span style="font-family:Georgia,serif;line-height:115%"> </span><span style="font-family:Georgia,serif;line-height:115%">That is certainly true in my
case. In my teenage years and early adult years I rebelled against my
parents.</span><span style="font-family:Georgia,serif;line-height:115%"> </span><span style="font-family:Georgia,serif;line-height:115%">I developed my liberal views
quite early, and I became a student leader against the War in Vietnam at Oregon
State.</span></p>
<p class="" style="line-height:115%"><span style="font-family:Georgia,serif"> 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.</span></p>
<p class="" style="text-indent:35.45pt;line-height:115%"><span style="font-family:Georgia,serif">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. </span></p>
<p class="" style="text-indent:35.45pt;line-height:115%"><span style="font-family:Georgia,serif">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.</span></p>
<p class="" style="line-height:115%"><span style="font-family:Georgia,serif"> 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?”</span></p>
<p class="" style="line-height:115%"><span style="font-family:Georgia,serif"> 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.</span></p>
<p class="" style="line-height:115%"><span style="font-family:Georgia,serif"> 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. </span></p>
<p class="" style="line-height:115%"><span style="font-family:Georgia,serif"> 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.</span></p>
<p class="" style="line-height:115%"><span style="font-family:Georgia,serif"> 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.</span></p>
<p class="" style="line-height:115%"><span style="font-family:Georgia,serif"> 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. </span><span style="font-family:Georgia,serif;line-height:115%">He
was still not credible as what we believed to be a “real” man.</span></p><p class="" style="line-height:115%"><span style="font-family:Georgia,serif"></span></p>
<p class="" style="line-height:115%"><span style="font-family:Georgia,serif"> 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.</span></p>
<p class="" style="line-height:115%"><span style="font-family:Georgia,serif"> 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 <i>Moscow-Pullman Daily News.</i></span></p></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div>