Not all stories are the same although many bear striking similarities. Here are some memories of fathers. Some are good. Some are not so good. All of them point out the necessity of healing and love.
“He’d take me out and get to drinking. We'd go to a joint called the Jackson Bar. He’d sit me up on the stool and start throwing back V.O. like it was water. Get all loud and rowdy and ready to destroy Detroit. Funny, he liked to fight with his friends.
“Daddy,” I’d say, “we better go.”
“And that’d be it. He’d chill, just ‘cause I told him to.”
Smoky Robinson
“I remember thinking when they first told me he had died, if he only dropped by once to say hello. Surely, he must have seen me on TV. Everyone else in the country did. I never was angry about Pop leaving us. I figured there must be something between him and Mom that I didn’t know about. He was always okay with me. He had a great sense of humor, that I do remember.
If he had just dropped by once. Just once.”
Jackie Gleason
“I keep wondering what Dad must be feeling, what he must be thinking, sitting there in his wheelchair. I hope he’s thinking, ‘I am the man whose two sons won more big-league games than any brothers in baseball history.”
Pitcher, Phil Niekro
“I used to fight back all the time. My father was one tough son-of-a-gun. My father respects me because I stood up to him.”
Donald Trump
“I can’t even imagine a father who is nice or kind or good. Whenever I think of a child, I always think of somebody afraid. Whenever think of a wife, I think of somebody afraid…. Once you’ve had a childhood like mine, I don’t think you quite get over it.”
Writer, Pat Conroy
“There are those who say they never really knew their father very well, and to them I say I am truly sorry.”
Osgood Perkins, son of Anthony Perkins
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