1. He really is a Superman. He work

1. He really is a Superman. He worked for the same school for 42 years, and during many of those years he was a leader without a title. And of course the pay was low. But he persisted and positively impacted the lives of hundreds of students. In his retirement he is as busy as ever.

2. He was faithful. This year would have been his 59th wedding anniversary. He lost his wife to cancer in 2002. He nursed her through the last year of her life as she slipped away, and never complained.

3. He is wise. The older I get, the wiser he seems to be. He doesn’t pretend to have all the answers and listens far more than he speaks. And if something difficult needs to be said, he can say it without putting an edge on it. There’s no spin or agenda, just reality plainly spoken.

4. He cares. I know he suffers when his children suffer. I can hear it in his voice. He cried with me when I failed to get into graduate school, and laughed harder than I when our home repair projects blew up in our faces. I know he worries about me every day as I am currently unemployed.

5. He has the right priorities. He frequently reminds me that the point of our life on earth is not building wealth or competing with the neighbors who always seem to have more of something. The point is to be useful, to take the long view of hard times, to do your duty even when it’s inconvenient, and to not quit.

6. He is human and not ashamed of it. He’s real. There’s no pretending, no fluff and no-nonsense. He has nothing to hide and is not afraid of what others might think. He does what he believes is right no matter what, and lets the consequences be what they will be.

So there are a few of my Dad’s qualities that I will honor this Father’s Day. I hope you will do something similar for you Dad.