Ask Linda Anything!

What is a Great Dad!
Submitted By Anonymous

I was 12 years old, playing basketball, barefoot on the driveway when my dad drove in from work. He got out of the car, saw I had no shoes on and said in one breath, “Linda, put something on your feet now or you’ll step on a nail, get tetanus and die and you won’t be able to go to the shore!” WOW! I put shoes on immediately because that magical week at the beach was the thing that my siblings and I lived for the entire fifty one leading up to it.

Dad is 76 now, in great health, and still has a way with words. Some, like the ones above I will kid him about to eternity! Others like, “the three bones of success are the backbone, the funny bone and the wishbone,” I will remember and repeat to others to inspire them like he inspires me.

Dad is a surgeon with a small town philosophy who built his medical practice in a big city. He has saved more lives for a tin of cookies than for money and that had an enormous positive impact on his 5 children. Growing up, we did our chores, we got soap in our mouths if we talked back; God forbid we uttered anything resembling a curse word, and we were required to do community service. He instilled discipline and purpose in all of us and maybe we complained then but we are thankful now.

My husband is as equally devoted to our children as was my Dad to us. In fact, as an Aussie, the only thing he loves more than being on any kind of boat in the water is his family, and that is devotion!

It has become so obvious to me, how important is a father’s role in their children’s lives as our own kids have reached their teens. Our boys rely on Ian to show them how to be men and our girls learn from him how they should be treated by men.

There are great Dads raising kids on their own and they deserve much praise this Father’s Day and every day.

I hear from many more single moms who are trying to raise young men and women without the father’s support. I believe it is a crisis in our society that is the root of so many other problems our communities face.

I continually drill my boys on the subject that no matter what happens to the relationship with the future mother of their children, they have to be loyal fathers to their kids, financially, emotionally and in every way they are able for the rest of their lives. Hopefully, this will stick.

Happy Fathers Day to all the wonderful Dads! And, to the single moms who have to be both mom and dad; I pray you have the strength and help you need to raise future great dads.


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