What Fathers Do Best

[thedrifter]

What Fathers Do Best
Hint: Not the same things as mothers.
by Steven E. Rhoads
06/20/2005, Volume 010, Issue 38





FATHER'S DAY NO LONGER ARRIVES without the national media highlighting Mr. Moms. The year before last, for example, Lisa Belkin of the New York Times described the life of one Michael Zorek, whose only job was taking care of his 14-month-old son Jeremy. Zorek, whose wife brought home a good salary as a corporate lawyer, felt he had become "remarkably good" at shopping, at cooking, and at entertaining his energetic toddler. He was angry at a parents' magazine whose essay contest was open only to mothers. "I'm the one who does the shopping, and I'm the one who does the cooking," he reasoned. "Why is it only sexist when women are excluded?"

This year the homemaking fathers even got to horn in on Mother's Day. On May 8, the Washington Post's Sunday Outlook section featured William McGee, a single dad who "couldn't help feeling excluded" by all the ads for products that "moms and kids" would both love. He mentioned, for example, the classic peanut butter ad, "Choosy Moms Choose Jif." McGee wanted advertisers to know that he is "one of many caring dads" who are choosy, too.

Brace yourselves for an onslaught of such features this week, even though, in the real world, there are still 58 moms staying home with minor children for every dad who does so. This is not just an accidental social arrangement, to be overcome once the media have sufficiently raised our consciousness about the joys of stay-at-home fatherhood. Mothers are loaded with estrogen and oxytocin, which draw them to young children and help induce them to tend to infants. And the babies themselves make it clear that they prefer their mothers. Even in families where fathers have taken a four-month-long paid parental leave to tend to their newborns, the fathers report that the babies prefer to be comforted by their mothers.

The problem with honoring fathers who do what mothers usually do--what used to be called "mothering"--is this: It suggests that fathers who do what most fathers do aren't contributing to their children's well-being. Yet we know this can't be true. Children who grow up in fatherless families are poorer, less healthy, less educated. They die much earlier, commit more crimes, and give birth to more babies out of wedlock.

What do most real-world dads do? When the kids get old enough, they teach them how to build and fix things and how to play sports. They are better than moms at teaching children how to deal with novelty and frustration, perhaps because they are more likely than mothers to encourage children to work out problems and address challenges themselves--from putting on their shoes to operating a new toy.

When the kids become older still, Dad is usually better than Mom at controlling unruly boys. Jennifer Roback Morse notes that all the surveys of who does what around the house never mention one of her husband's most important functions--he is responsible for glaring. When their son acts up, his glares just seem to have more effect than hers do.

Similarly, a fascinating study in the journal Criminology finds that female social ties in a neighborhood--borrowing food, helping with problems, having lunch together--are associated with much lower crime rates. Male social ties in the neighborhood have no effect on crime rates. But the beneficial effect of female ties almost completely disappears in communities dominated by fatherless families! You need husbands and fathers--what the authors call "family rooted men"--if the crime-fighting female ties are really to be effective. Perhaps mothers still say, "Just you wait until your father gets home," or its 21st-century equivalent.

Sometimes moms worry that their roughhousing husbands are making their boys more aggressive. But, in fact, fathers are teaching their sons how to play fight--don't bite, don't kick, stay away from the eyes--a form of play enjoyed by most boys around the world. On the playground, boys without fathers in the home are unpopular because they respond in a truly aggressive manner when other boys try to initiate rough-and-tumble play. A committee brought together by the Board on Children, Youth, and Families of the National Research Council has concluded that "fathers, in effect, give children practice in regulating their own emotions and recognizing others' emotional cues."

Of course, dads do a lot for their daughters as well. For example, by providing a model of love for and fidelity to their wives, dads give teenage girls confidence that they can expect men to be interested in them for reasons beyond sex.

We could begin to do dads justice if we realized that their nature makes it unlikely that they will like intensive nurturing in the way that most mothers do. Testosterone inhibits nurturing. In both men and women high levels of testosterone are associated with less interest in babies. Low levels of testosterone are associated with a stronger than average interest in nurturing. If you inject a monkey mother with testosterone, she becomes less interested in her baby. And men have much more testosterone than women. Thus, in those two-career families where husband and wife are determined to share domestic and paid work equally, a common argument ensues because dads typically suggest that they get more paid child-care help; moms typically want less paid help and more time with their children.

If dads were as tormented as moms by prolonged absence from their children, we'd have more unhappiness and more fights over who gets to spend time with the children. By faithfully working at often boring jobs to provide for their families, dads make possible moms who can do less paid work and thereby produce less stressed and happier households. Dads deserve a lot of credit for simply making moms' nurturing of children possible.


Ellie

[thedrifter]

Given to my by my Mark the Fontman
http://p089.ezboard.com/bthefontmanscommunity


Father’s Day
June 15, 2005


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by Michael P. Tremoglie

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Approximately ten years ago, I was the Director of Managed Care for Temple University Health Sciences Center (TUHSC). The institution was one of the largest hospitals in Pennsylvania – indeed the country – and was a well-regarded academic medical center nationally.

Then TUHSC’s Department of Obstetric, Gynecology and Reproductive Services operated, and I believe still does, the Temple Infant Parent Support Services (TIPSS) program. The purpose of TIPSS was to address the issue of infant mortality in the impoverished North Philadelphia neighborhood where TUHSC was located. TIPSS was a good program, which provided prenatal and postnatal care for local mothers who were primarily single.

As the Managed Care Director, I asked to tour the facility and learn more about the program to determine if there was someway to integrate it with prenatal programs operated by HMO’s. I met with the TIPSS program director and learned more about what they did and how they did it.

One thing that impressed me was the postnatal care they provided for the mothers. They did everything they could to ensure that these mothers - who were mostly poor, young, and unmarried – became productive citizens and good parents.

The other thing that impressed me was the total lack of similar considerations for the fathers. Being the single parent I then was, I asked what was being done to encourage fathers to be a part of the parenting process. The reply can be summed as basically - not much.

This is not to condemn TIPSS. It is to illustrate that when it comes to parenting and the problem of illegitimacy, society considers the issue to be the sole province of mothers.

I recently read an excerpt of the biography of the Italian actress Sophia Loren. She was born illegitimately. Her father – if you can really call him that – gave Sophia his last name, which meant she could attend school in Italy. Without this imprimatur, she could not.

When Loren’s mother had another baby out of wedlock by this same cretin who fathered Sophia, she was beginning her acting career. This scoundrel asked for money from Sophia so that he would sign the documents to give her sister his name as he did Sophia. She did so willingly so that her sister would not be an outcast.

It seems that the Italians considered illegitimacy a function of motherhood not parenthood. Yet, it takes two to make an illegitimate baby. However, for years most of the stigma of having illegitimacy was attached to the mother. The father – other than the shotgun wedding or paternity suits- seemed to be absolved.

Now, while here in America there is no longer a stigma attached to mothers having babies without being married, the responsibility for parenting the illegitimate still seems to be theirs alone. This is deleterious for two reasons. First, two parents are a necessity. Although one parent can do it alone, it is incredibly arduous task.

Second, fathers are a necessity. Despite the fact that the American intelligentsia only recently acknowledged this salient fact, it is a common sense concept that has always been recognized by everybody who was not a social scientist or a corporate executive.

Fatherhood is an important role in society. Unfortunately, for years society considered being a husband and father as being solely a provider with little responsibility other than working outside the home, taking out the trash once a week, paying the bills on Saturday, and doing minor repairs around the house (and gardening if you lived in the suburbs). Mothers were the glue of the family and the primary parent.

This specialization of labor may work well for an industrial economy – it does not for parenting. Both parents need to be involved. While one spouse may be better suited to parenting then the other they both need to be engaged.

This is a concept that makes the feminazis want to jump from a bridge.

There is no better example of this then divorced couples. Until recently, the courts behaved with Pavlovian predictability and almost always awarded kids to the mother. This has changed somewhat. Joint custody is fairly normal today.

This was not the case for me twenty years ago when I was advised by my attorney – and knew from experience – that there was not a snowball’s chance for me to obtain custody.

Yet, while things have changed, parenting is still considered the mothers domain.

The change that is needed now is more cultural than legal. Men have to realize that their primary responsibility, once they become fathers, is no longer their careers. Corporate America has to realize that fatherhood is an important aspect of the society within which they exist.

It is inherent for corporate managers that they not only value their male employees for their business contributions. The model must not be business at the expense of disrupting the family. If the next generation is dysfunctional, there will be no labor or consumers for the goods and services produced.

Ironically, our society must recall the words of Mario Puzo’s Don Corleone, who asked Johnny Fontane if he spent time with his kids. He told him that a man who does not spend time with his kids can never truly be a man.

Sage advice for our captains of industry, our judiciary, and our social scientists to remember.

Michael Tremoglie

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Fathers keep society safe
June 15th, 2005


For the last couple of weeks, lefties in Britain have been leaping to the defense of the three teenaged sisters, aged 16, 14, and 12, who have each recently brought a little bundle of joy into the world. These brand-new single parents live with their single-parent mother, Julie Atkins, in public housing - at a weekly cost to the state of about $1,200, or $60,000 per year.

“There have always been women like Yeats’s Crazy Jane whose gardens grow ‘nothing but babies and washing,’” huffed Germaine Greer from a bunker on the feminist senior circuit.

“They live in an alternative society that is matrilineal, matrifocal, and matrilocal, a society that the patriarchy has always feared and hated.”

And old lefty Roy Hattersley spluttered in The Guardian that “they’re being treated like characters in a Victorian morality play!”

But the absent father of two of the young mothers had another opinion.

Reading about their new status in the papers he declared that it was all the fault of the schools.

It’s appropriate that our lefty friends should be leaping to the defense of single moms right now. What better time to celebrate single motherhood than in the run-up to Fathers’ Day, celebrated this year on June 19th? Liberals seem to like nothing more than spoiling other peoples’ holidays.

But we mortal folk may as well go ahead and celebrate fatherhood anyway. If liberals are against it, then we must have good reasons to be for it. And indeed there are. Let us rehearse just three. Fathers promote the safety of children; fathers promote safety for society from feral children; and fathers protect society from feral government.

Children living with their fathers are safer than other children. The safest place for a child to live is with its biological married parents. The most dangerous place to live is with mother and a boy friend who is not the father of the child. Want to guess how dangerous? It is 33 times more dangerous for a child to live with mommie and her boy friend than to live with the child’s married biological mother and father, according to James Bartholomew in The Welfare State We’re In.

But, surely, most children are not subject to the predations of a live-in boy friend? That is true. A child is only 5 times more at risk when living with mother married to a stepfather than when living with its married, natural parents.
Children living with their fathers are safer not just from violence by others but also from becoming violent themselves. There are dozens of studies demonstrating the connection between juvenile crime and single parenthood. Here is a list of just a few. Children living with their natural, married parents are less likely to commit crimes; they are more likely to start having sex later, and they are more likely to finish school.

With this sort of evidence about fathers and child safety you’d think that liberal activists would be proposing legislation from coast to coast to promote traditional families and to end forever the social devastation of single parenthood, in fact nothing less than a War on Single Parenting. You would expect earnest academic social scientists and activists to be turning up on TV talk shows demanding that the government end the holocaust in at-risk teens by demanding a comprehensive and mandatory government program to protect at-risk children from the dangers of single parenthood.

But in fact you don’t see any such activity.

There’s another good thing about fathers. They lower the cost of government, and that’s a good thing because it increases freedom. Of course, it’s no secret that married people tend to vote Republican, and therefore for less government. And it’s no secret that the “marriage gap” has been increasing. According to USA Today:

In 1984, the difference in the presidential votes of married and unmarried women was 17 percentage points, according to surveys taken as voters left polling places. There was a 21-point marriage gap in 1992, a 29-point gap in 1996, a 32-point gap in 2000.

In 2004, the marriage gap was 44 points. Married women voted for Bush 57% to 42%, and single women voted for Kerry 64% to 35%. But add children into the mix, and the marriage gap expands even more. According to USA Today again:

“Married women with children are even more Republican [than] those who don’t have children; single women who have children are even more Democratic than those who don’t.”

The more married fathers you have, the less government you need to support women and children.

Every man learns soon enough that men are expendable. Whether it’s the War in the Pacific or the War on the Patriarchy, it is men that get sacrificed for the greater good of all. That’s as it should be.
But expendable or not, you sure wouldn’t like to live in a society without fathers.

Christopher Chantrill mailto:chrischantrill@msn.com


Ellie

[thedrifter]

Under a father's watchful eye

Today's dads are advising their daughters about dating and other sensitive issues.

By Kim Campbell | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

NEW YORK – As his daughter, Brooke, inches closer to dating, Bill Goodspeed is anticipating talking with her about boys. He knows all about them, of course, because he was 15 once, too. "I was a devil," he recalls. "Playing sports and looking for girls."
Like other dads, he hopes to help educate his daughter about the way teenage guys sometimes let hormones influence their thinking. Even though he trusts her, he plans to do a bit of fatherly posturing when would-be beaus come to the door. "I'll be nice, but there will be some intimidation," he explains.

Talks about dating and sex are typically left to mom. But these days, dads are getting more involved. Many are not yet comfortable enough to discuss what getting to "second base" means, but they are more actively acquiring information - quizzing family counselors and taking advantage of time in the car to ask kids questions and absorb back-seat chatter about who's cute.

"Dads are much more involved," says Susan Bartell, a child and adolescent psychologist on New York's Long Island, who says she has more fathers coming in to learn about modern courtship."One of [their] big concerns is that they don't understand what it is that kids are doing nowadays ... the nuts and bolts of the dating process," such as going out in groups and curfews, she explains.

Men today have more opportunities to bring up dating with their kids, as they spend more time parenting than dads of a generation ago. Some, like those who visit Dr. Bartell, say they are interested in offering advice to their kids because their dads did not do it for them.

Both sons and daughters benefit from hearing from dad, say parenting experts. Along with advising sons on how to respect girls, they can also provide daughters with insight into how nervous guys are about asking for dates, for example. And they can help reassure teens that they aren't alone in what they are experiencing. A dad or a stepdad sharing his teenage stories - first date, first kiss, first heartbreak - can make him more approachable and potentially open the door to an awkward topic, especially for daughters.

"Your daughter wants to have those conversations with you ... it's just who's going to go first and how are we going to get this started," says Linda Nielsen, a professor of psychology at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., who studies father-daughter relationships. Women in their early 20s have told her that they wish they knew more about their dads' teenage experiences with romantic relationships.

Professor Nielsen is not convinced that more time together equals more discussions about emotionally intimate issues. But she does point out that dads and their teens have both grown up in eras with similarly liberal attitudes about sex, which may give them more jumping-off points to talk about expectations. She recommends that fathers get out old high school yearbooks and prom photos, and talk about their early years one on one with their kids to get the conversation going about dating.

Finding the right balance can be difficult for dads, who sometimes aren't sure how far to push their teens to talk. It can be easier for some men to talk with their sons, for example. And some try to respect the boundaries of their children's privacy. "We're invited in," says Bob Stien, father of two teen girls and the leader of courses in fathering at the 92nd Street Y in New York. "They're not walls that we should be crashing through."

He's an advocate of nurturing a rapport with children from a young age. "[For] a lot of what goes on in those teen years, the stage is set much earlier on," he says. "You don't just sort of wake up with a 12-year-old and say, 'Oh, look what happened here.' "

Mr. Goodspeed, a widower, started a conversation with his daughter when he mentioned that he was surprised she didn't have a boyfriend. He learned she was, in fact, interested in having one - a change from previous talks when she'd said she was focused on her schoolwork rather than dating.

Some dads ask subtle questions to generate discussion about a boyfriend or girlfriend, says Mike Domitrz, an author and speaker on teen dating issues. These include: What do you think about his/her character? How would you describe him/her to me? How does he treat you around his friends versus when you're alone?

Still, some dads say conversing with teens - about anything, let alone a sensitive subject like dating - is often not easy. Questions are met with one-word answers, or responses that require more fleshing out. When Darrel Seife recently asked his daughter, a freshman in high school, if she liked being with a new boyfriend, he recalls her response as being very matter-of-fact: "Would I be with him if I didn't?"

"My wife tends to have more intimate conversations. But I don't push, as long as [Danielle] can talk with one of us," says Mr. Seife, who also has a 10-year-old son.

The new beau looks like more of aman than the schoolboys Danielle had datedpreviously."His shoes are my size," jokes her father, recalling his early impressions of the tall football player who now escorts Danielle to movies. Seife refrained from asking the young man's intentions at their first meeting. But he and his wife did want their desire to meet the boy to send a message that they care about their daughter and are there to protect her.

Finding the right way to send the "protection" message is something dads struggle with. Joe Kelly, cofounder of Dads and Daughters, an advocacy group, has heard many stories from men about how they plan to be intimidating - cleaning shotguns and the like - when a boy arrives for a date. He points out the confusion posturing like that can create.

As a teen, he remembers when he started seeing a girl in his church - a girl whose father he already knew and enjoyed talking with. When her dad became less friendly after the dating ensued, he couldn't understand why, especially when both had something very important in common: They both really liked his daughter.

"That's something I think we lose sight of as fathers," he says. The message young men get is that they are predators and one-dimensional, "which is not how we want our own sons treated. And, if we stop and think about it, it's not how we want other men's sons treated, either."

Some dads talk not only with their children, but with their kids' dates, too. That's what Michael Connor, who teaches a course on fathers and fathering at California State University at Long Beach, did when his now-grown daughters were dating. "I found that nobody talked to the sons," says Dr. Connor, a clinical psychologist. His girls were mortified by the interrogations and speeches on values and rules that their suitors got. Their dates were uncomfortable, too. But some have called years later to say thank you.

" 'I've got other plans for my kids, and being teenage moms is not part of my plan,' " Connor would tell the young men. "I didn't get any more specific than that," he explains, "but I did make it very clear where I was coming from. And then I changed the subject."

Goodspeed, who has a 12-year-old son in addition to his daughter, plans to talk with him about respecting girls when he starts dating in earnest. But for now, the Long Island dad is interested in making sure daughter Brooke makes smart choices in relationships. He lost his virginity at an early age, he says. "I don't want to see that happen to my daughter."

Ellie

[thedrifter]

June 17, 2005, 7:45 a.m.
Father Is the Best
Give dear old dad his due.



Dad is countercultural. If he is responsible, loving, and married, he might seem boring and a constant provocation to his eye-rolling teenage children, but he stands at the ramparts of a movement to save the country from the most destructive trend of the past 30 years: father absence.


The proportion of out-of-wedlock births rose 600 percent from 1960 to 2000, and the divorce rate more than doubled between 1965 and 1980. Roughly 24 million children now live in homes where the biological father is absent — about one out of every three children. This is a social disaster. Children need their fathers, and they need them in the home, which, as a practical matter, means their fathers have to be married to their mothers.

This is a thoroughly commonsensical notion, but so retrograde that almost no one dared utter it for a couple of decades. Not anymore. Even left-leaning intellectuals like Isabel Sawhill of The Brookings Institution and Bill Galston of the University of Maryland are forthright supporters of intact married families. But much of the Left still can't muster enthusiasm for fathers as anything other than the men who should, if circumstances warrant, be forced to make child-support payments.

The evidence for the importance of traditional fatherhood is overwhelming. "Children who grow up in father-absent homes are more likely to suffer from child abuse, poverty, low academic achievement, drug use, emotional and behavioral problems, and suicide," according to a report from the influential National Fatherhood Initiative (from which most of the data in this column is drawn).

As anyone who has ever had a father — i.e., all of us — should know, a father's love is irreplaceable. Research shows that withdrawal of love by either the father or mother is equally important in predicting a child's well-being. So much for only mothers being the "nurturing ones." And nothing so endangers a child's reliably receiving the love of a father than family breakup.

Twenty years after a divorce, one-quarter of girls and less than a third of boys say they are close with their fathers. In contrast, 70 percent of children of intact families say they have close relationships with their fathers. Half of children living without their fathers have never been in their fathers' homes. In one study, only 27 percent of children older than 4 saw their nonresident father at least once a week in the past year, and 31 percent had no contact whatsoever.

The rates of out-of-wedlock births and divorce have leveled off recently. But cohabitation — no substitute for marriage — has continued to climb. Children of cohabiting parents are closer in their indicators of well-being to the children of single parents than they are to children of two-parent families. Three-quarters of cohabiting parents split up before their children reach age 16.

So, promoting involved fatherhood means promoting marriage. That will require a broad-based effort of government and the private sector. Roughly half of unmarried mothers are living together with the father at the time of the child's birth, and another one-third are still romantically involved with him. The trick is to convert these relationships into marriage, which the Bush administration wants to attempt by including marriage-promotion measures in a new round of welfare reform. As welfare guru Robert Rector of The Heritage Foundation argues, two-thirds of black children are born out of wedlock — but it can't be that two-thirds of black men are, as critics of the Bush proposal sometimes suggest, "un-marriageable."

Middle-income couples are obviously part of the equation too. The culture should be attempting to reach them with the message that all marriages have problems and usually they are soluble. An activist named Mike McManus has been promoting pre-marriage counseling through churches for young couples. A public-interested philanthropist could do worse than pouring resources into an expanded version of his "Marriage Savers" program.

In the meantime, give dear old traditional dad his due. He might not be cool, but he's important. We need more of him.

Ellie

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY....

[thedrifter]

Fathers deserve more than a day
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Kathleen Parker
June 18, 2005

As a rule, I'm not a fan of Hallmark Days - those occasions when we're obligated to celebrate and tithe to the tinsel titans who compel us to compassion or guilt.

But Father's Day has always had a special spot on my calendar - not only because I like fathers, but because I'm partial to underdogs. The American father, maligned and marginalized the past several decades, makes underdogs feel smug.

Frankly, I don't know why Dad doesn't slam the door on his way out.

The reason he doesn't is because fathers, when they are true fathers, don't do that sort of thing. They don't act childishly, throw tantrums, pout and demand attention. They take the guff and keep on trucking. It's a very grown-up thing.

Before everyone who had a bad father or a lousy husband starts typing my name, allow me to disclaim: The world is full of good and bad men, some of whom have managed to procreate, as well as good and bad women. Ditto.

But none of our personal anecdotes changes the fact that fathers are critical to children's lives, just as mothers are, and that the diminution of Father in our culture may be the single stupidest turn in human history yet. The proof of our folly is all around us as measured in the pathologies afflicting our young, yet we persist in denial lest truth inconvenience our next act of self-affirmation.

Given what we've done to fathers in the span of a generation - demoting him from Father Knows Best, which in spite of all its hyperbolic dramatization hurt no one, to the Three-D Dad: dumb, dorky and dispensable - it's a wonder men still submit to the altar.

Put it this way: If we did to Motherhood what we have done to Fatherhood, we'd all be wearing riot gear.

Women are frankly better at defending themselves than men are, which may be a function of the fact that they were the underdogs for so many centuries. Under the heel of a boot, one learns to think creatively. Men are just beginning to feel the crunch of gravel pressing into their faces.

That a father revolt is inevitable seems a matter of cultural physics and human nature. Human beings can withstand only so much contravening pressure against what is in their interest or necessary to their survival. Men do not do well without families, as George Gilder wrote as long ago as 1973 in his landmark book, "Sexual Suicide," subsequently expanded to "Men and Marriage."

Gilder argued that men need marriage and the social unit of the traditional family as a means of channeling their inherent aggressiveness toward providing for family. Without it, they are vulnerable to mental and social problems and tend to be less successful. When men through divorce are deprived of their children, they become what in healthier circumstances we would wish them to be: ferocious in trying to gain access and protect them.

A time of reckoning can't be far off given that family courts have made divorced fathers visitors to their children's lives - 40 percent of children live in homes without their fathers - as society has embraced the "deadbeat dad" as a prototype rather than a deviation from the norm. Studies show that women file the majority of divorces, and that fathers (almost 80 percent) who have regular contact with their children pay their child support in full and on time.

Meanwhile, old-fashioned masculinity is demeaned as we celebrate "metrosexuals" and invite homosexual men to ridicule heterosexuals' fashion sense ("Queer Eye for the Straight Guy"). It's hard enough raising boys in homes without fathers, let alone in a world that finds traditional male characteristics boorish and passe.

To be blunt, raising boys and girls without their fathers is simply another, if mysteriously accepted, form of child neglect. Obviously some parents don't deserve their children; and some children, like me, lose a parent to death. We can't make the world perfect for everyone.

But purposely creating ways to keep fathers from their children - either because personal bitterness makes it preferable or because moving far away makes his participation impossible - is not forgivable. When hurt fathers contact me for advice, knowing my concern about the long-term effects of father absence on children and ultimately society, I urge them to keep to the high road.

To be patient and understanding, to be strong and reliable, to be fatherly - in other words - in the old ways. That so many try in spite of the forces arrayed against them is reason enough to celebrate this day. Even to give ol' dad a call.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

The Doofus Dad
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By JOHN TIERNEY
The New York Times
June 18, 2005

One evening, after watching Homer Simpson wreck the family car at a monster-truck rally and plunge on a skateboard into Springfield Gorge, my 6-year-old son asked me, "Why are dads on TV so dumb?"

Having grown up with the omniscient fathers on "Leave It to Beaver" and "My Three Sons," I wanted to give a bemused yet authoritative answer, chuckling wisely as I explained the ways of the world. But this question left me feeling more like Homer Simpson.

Where did we fathers go wrong? We spend twice as much time with our kids as we did two decades ago, but on television we're oblivious ("Jimmy Neutron"), troubled ("The Sopranos"), deranged ("Malcolm in the Middle") and generally incompetent ("Everybody Loves Raymond"). Even if Dad has a good job, like the star of "Home Improvement," at home he's forever making messes that must be straightened out by Mom.

There have always been some bumbling fathers like Dagwood Bumstead and Fred Flintstone, but now they're the norm. A study by the National Fatherhood Initiative found that fathers are eight times more likely than mothers to be portrayed negatively on network television.

Ward Cleaver has been replaced by a stock character known in the trade as Doofus Dad. Explaining this change isn't easy, but if Ward were still around, he could puff his pipe and offer several theories.

The most obvious is that the television audience has splintered along gender lines, and sitcoms are now a female domain. Four out of five viewers of network sitcoms are women, and they apparently like to see Mom smarter than Dad.

Another explanation is the rising number of mothers with paying jobs. Now that they have their own paychecks, the old bread-earning patriarch is less essential and therefore more mockable. And TV writers no longer have an easy stereotype of Mom to work with. Jokes about daffy middle-class housewives like Lucy Ricardo and Edith Bunker seem dated now that so many women work outside the home.

Fathers are still the same old targets, and they're even more tempting now that they've gotten a new image as shirkers thanks to widely reported findings about who does what at home. Even though more mothers have outside jobs, women still do about four more hours of child care and four more hours of housework per week, according to studies by the social scientists John Robinson and Geoffrey Godbey.

But it's not as if these women's husbands are out every night drinking at Moe's. The same studies show that men have increased their share of the child care and housework while still working 14 hours longer outside the home than mothers do each week. Overall, the men still have a little more free time - about a half-hour per day - but that gap has been shrinking, not growing, in recent decades.

Still, no matter how much Dad does in real life, I think he'll remain a doofus on television, and not just because he's a safe target and makes the female sitcom audience laugh. He makes men laugh, too - the men who watch him and the ones who create him. Three-quarters of sitcom scripts are written by men, and nine out of every 10 scripts submitted to "The Simpsons" are from men.

Homer has become the longest-running doofus on television by appealing to guys, who have made "The Simpsons" one of the few sitcoms with a predominantly male audience. I asked Al Jean, the show's head writer, why they keep watching.

"Homer is the father that no one will admit to being that many fathers are," Mr. Jean said. "He loves his kids, but there are a lot of times when he'd rather just go out for a beer."

Homer embodies a famous distinction made by Margaret Mead: motherhood comes naturally, but fatherhood must be learned. It's an awkward process. Before I became one, dads my own age often did look like doofuses as they struggled with drooling babies and their new domesticity - no more free time or disposable income, lots of chores to do and orders to take from wives ruling the home.

At the time, I saw Homer as the father's inner slob yearning to break free, but on this Father's Day I mainly see something else. Yes, he may want to duck out for a beer sometimes, but when he sits on that couch with his family he does not look like a man longing to escape. He is at peace. Fatherhood has created one more happy doofus.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Dad, we need you
Rebecca Hagelin

June 17, 2005


Dad, we need you.

It's a simple message, but one rarely heard in today’s culture. The sad reality is that we live in a society where the message to fathers is, “You’re irrelevant. You’re useless. You are a loser.” Just flip on the television: commercials and sitcoms portray fathers as wimpy and ignorant. Men are depicted as lazy, uninvolved, unwanted, and/or impotent.

Dads, I’ve got news. Your family needs you. Society needs you. Your sons and daughters need you. Good dads have been the backbone of strong families, the secret behind happy children, and the zing in the step of satisfied wives throughout history.

So dear dads, this Father's Day, I honor all of you who have rejected the messages of a crazy culture that seeks to devalue you. I applaud those of you who, despite the hysterical screams of raging feminists, still open the doors for women. I extol men who protect your daughters and sons from those who seek to rob them of their innocence and their best futures. Thank you for your strong character, your courage, and for standing up for truth.

Along with the honor of being a father comes tremendous responsibility. In my newly released book, "Home Invasion: Protecting Your Family in a Culture That's Gone Stark Raving Mad", I dedicate an entire chapter to Dads, outlining a half a dozen virtues that are particularly important for fathers to model for their families. Included in my list are reverence, commitment, honesty, pleasantness and respect, fitness and communication. I’ve excerpted below the section on reverence:

Your child is more likely to be exposed to diphtheria than to any display of sincere reverence outside of church. Nothing in today's secular and godless society is recognized as sacred or holy. The concept of God, even the word itself (except used in profanity), is foreign to any kid that does not get it at home. Fathers, the impact you have on your own child if you are a man of faith will be immeasurable. In Chapter Four, I shared a personal story of my own father's faith that has served to guide me throughout my life. If you think long enough, you too probably have a vivid memory of your own father's faith - or sadly, his lack thereof - that still lives with you. Both images are powerful; one is a powerful force for good in our kids' lives, and the other, a powerful force for destruction.

Start by examining your own faith and deciding in what you believe. Once you have, practice living your faith in front of and with your children.

It's up to dads to eliminate the profane and irreverent form your home. This includes not only television programming and music that transmit the wrong messages but also your own language, and the books and magazines you read.

If you are truly going to fight the culture and raise children who will stand up for what is right, you must teach your sons and daughters that certain language and images are not acceptable.

I never - even once - heard my father utter a curse word. And my kids have never heard my husband utter one. Guess what? Even though I have three teenagers, I've never heard any of them curse either. The power of example cannot be overstated.

As far as magazines are concerned, let me blunt. If you're into girly magazines, throw them away. I once knew a woman whose husband was consumed by pornography. His wife knew it-and he knew she knew - but he didn't care. He was actually shocked when they got divorced and his wife explained, "Having all these magazines was like having a mistress in our bedroom." How heartbreaking.

Dads, when boys see their fathers reading girly magazines, they develop a warped view of women. When girls see their fathers reading girly magazines, they develop a warped view of themselves. What good father would intentionally implant these distorted messages in his children's minds?

In addition to having your own spiritual life in order, you dads need to add tangible spiritual elements to the family's life. Take your family to church. Being active in a congregation will ground all of you in faith; it will also help you identify others in your area that are likely to share your values. If you don't go regularly, why don't you commit to doing so? It's important that your family identify with a body and has a place of faith to call its own.

Bring spirituality into your home. This is easy to do. Include some spiritual music in the play list of background music that's on your home stereo. Incorporate grace into mealtimes. Better yet, institute regular family prayer and study. Many good study guides are available through religious publishers. Discussion of what you believe, why you believe it, and how it applies to your daily life enrich these opportunities for family sharing.

The foundation of the character we all desire for our children is laid at an early age within the sheltered environment of the home. Dads, a lot is riding on your shoulders, and little eyes are always watching. Go ahead, be the dad of your child’s dreams. You will be loved for it.


Rebecca Hagelin is a vice president of The Heritage Foundation, a Townhall.com member group.


Ellie

[thedrifter]

Cinderella Man
A Father’s Day Message

BreakPoint with Charles Colson

June 17, 2005

The children are huddled together in one bed, trying to keep warm. The gas and electricity have been turned off; the last of the milk is gone. What stands between these children and complete disaster? Their father.

That their dad would do almost anything to save his family is the ultimate message of Cinderella Man, a wonderful new film starring Russell Crowe. Based on the life of legendary boxer James J. Braddock, the film is a celebration of a man who models sacrificial love for his family.

Braddock was born into a blue-collar, Irish Catholic family in 1906. Like most Irish boys of that day, Braddock liked to fight—and he was good at it. By age twenty, he had turned pro, winning fight after fight, and becoming one of the best young boxers in the world.

But by 1929, Braddock’s injuries—especially a badly broken right hand—began mounting. And when the stock market crashed in October, Braddock found himself washed up—and wiped out.

Braddock then fought the worst opponent of his life: the Great Depression. To feed his family, he worked at the New Jerseydocks. But the work was irregular. One desperate winter, Braddock and his wife were forced to send their children to live with relatives.

In moments of despair, Braddock turned to the priests of St. Joseph of the Palisades in West New York. As sportswriter Jim Hague notes, “The priests at St. Joseph all told Jim to keep his faith; that God would provide him the strength to carry on.”

And God did, answering Braddock’s prayers in an unexpected way. The months out of the ring allowed Braddock’s battered body to heal. And his work on the docks had an unexpected benefit: It strengthened his left hand and arm.

Then in 1934, Braddock had a chance to substitute for an absent boxer. Incredibly, he beat powerful heavyweight opponent John Griffin. He then beat two more top heavyweight contenders: John Henry Lewis and Art Lasky.

Braddock then faced heavy-weight champion Max Baer—a womanizing show-off who had already killed two men in the ring. Braddock was listed as a ten-to-one underdog, and his wife feared he’d be killed by Baer.

By now, the story of the broken-down boxer who fought to feed his family had captured America’s imagination. In Braddock, Depression-weary Americans saw a family man who, like them, struggled against common enemies of unemployment and poverty, and he did it with grace and courage.

When the day came in June 1935, Americans walked for miles to pool halls and pubs to hear the fight on the radio. I am not going to spoil the ending, in case you’re planning to see CinderellaMan. But I will say this:

Today, our elites are fond of saying that fathers are unnecessary—even destructive in the lives of their children. Millions of fatherless kids are paying the price for this attitude—children starving for a father’s love and protection. Cinderella Man gives us a tremendous example of what a father ought to be.

As we celebrate Father’s Day this weekend, I pray that fathers and fathers-to-be will be inspired by this film to be the kind of man God intends: one who sacrificially puts his love for his family above all else.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

What Makes A Dad

God took the strength of a mountain,
The majesty of a tree,
The warmth of a summer sun,
The calm of a quiet sea,

The generous soul of nature,
The comforting arm of night,
The wisdom of the ages,
The power of the eagle's flight,

The joy of a morning in spring,
The faith of a mustard seed,
The patience of eternity,
The depth of a family need,

Then God combined these qualities,
When there was nothing more to add,
He knew His masterpiece was complete,
And so, He called it ... Dad.

Author unknown


Happy Fathers Day!

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Mentors Help Kids Whose Fathers Are at War By JEFF DONN, Associated Press Writer
Sat Jun 18, 7:21 PM ET



You rarely see Marines embrace. Yet Lynne Gilstrap, principal at the Mary Fay Pendleton School at this Marine base, has seen it happen when troops return from Iraq and Afghanistan. They have every reason to let their emotions flow after missions that were protracted and sometimes scary.

But there's more to it than that — they're greeting surrogate dads who stepped in to guide their kids while they were gone.

On this Father's Day, it should be noted that about 60 percent of military personnel — about 838,000 — are fathers, according to the Pentagon. More than 123,000 of these fathers are deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. The lives of their children, says Nancy Campbell, who works in Army family services, "are turned upside down."

"I've seen grown men actually ... giving each other a bear hug," the principal says.

Untold numbers of men and women — relatives, neighbors, other servicemen and women — have marched to the aid of these children as temporary mentors. They play softball and board games, help with homework, and try to ease childhood's troubles with a sympathetic ear until the return of the deployed dads — or, sometimes, moms.

Some join programs like the one run by Big Brothers Big Sisters inside three public schools at Camp Pendleton, the city-sized base south of Los Angeles. Other mentors step forward informally to help brighten a dark time for a child.

"I got to have some time with somebody," said Gage Black, a shivering 11-year-old wrapped in a towel after frolicking with other kids and their mentors at an end-of-school pool party at Camp Pendleton. "I'm not so lonely."

His father, who was away in Iraq, has now returned — but expects to ship out again soon.

Gage's mentor, Lt. Col. Sam Pelham, knows more than a little about comforting children: he is a father of three and, as a reservist, has worked in civilian life as an elementary school teacher. As mentor, Pelham would often ask the boy how his family was doing.

"If he was tightlipped, I'd let him be tightlipped," said Pelham. "It was his hour, and I didn't direct any of it. I was his running mate, basketball teammate, whatever he wanted."

Mentors have visited Mary Fay Pendleton School once a week. Principal Gilstrap says she has seen striking changes in the children: "They were so excited ... to tell the `bigs' what they had done during the week, that their whole attitude toward school and school work seemed to change."

Samuel Ryan did his mentoring this week on a Camp Pendleton basketball court. Jackson Robinson, 12, grabbed a basketball from the hefty Marine, who looked like Shaquille O'Neal opposite the gangly boy. Jackson's mother is in Iraq.

When Ryan looks at Jackson, he thinks of his own brother, now battling leukemia in Walton, Ky. "When I was being in the Marine Corps, I missed most of my little brother's important times — 16th birthday, 18th birthday," Ryan said. "So this is a chance for me to kind of make up for that and be there for somebody."

In Martinsburg, W. Va., Marty Kilmer was there for Christa Carr in her moment of automotive need. More than anything else, Christa needed a hand tuning up her car for the soapbox derby while her father was deployed with the Air National Guard. Kilmer, a retired guardsman in nearby Inwood who has flown with her father, helped the girl adjust the car's wheels, tighten the cables, and get ready to race.

"My mom probably wouldn't have been able to do it," says the 11-year-old girl.

Then came race day. Kilmer was there, watching from the sidelines like a proud dad. Of course, he wasn't her father, but he found the right words anyway. "I knew she wished her dad was there. I told her he was there in heart," says Kilmer.

In Wichita, Kan., Amanda Jallo, 10, had worked hard on her reading with her mentor, 16-year-old Monica Khurana, even before her father left. In April, he was finally sent to Qatar for a tour to last through the summer.

"The day he left, I just broke down crying," his daughter remembered. But her mentor was there. "She said, `He'll be back soon.'"

The mentors don't just give. They get too. "Amanda, she's just so kindhearted and genuine, every time I visit her she just lifts my spirits," says her mentor.

Some mentors mean to pay a debt of sorts to the deployed fathers. "I just wanted to do something for the military, and I can't serve anymore, so I did this," said Rich Alan, 67, of Vista, Calif., a former seaman who has mentored two boys.

Gilstrap, the principal, said many Marine mentors are themselves veterans of the war in Iraq. They often feel as though they are returning a favor to the Marine replacing them by giving their time to yet another Marine's child.

Often tutoring in their uniforms on break from other duties, these mentors sometimes find it easier to connect with the child. "They can identify with the child's life and military life," said Beverly Perna, a staffer at Big Brothers Big Sisters of San Diego County.

But Pelham, the reservist, thinks just about anyone can mentor these children.

"I think anybody who's willing to volunteer their time for a kid has got the right perspective," he said. "I was a big guy to play around with. I just wear the same uniform as his dad."

Ellie

[Ed Palmer]

Lets not forget these fathers
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v733/Ed15Palmer/cid_001a01c571e5063b5b900cefca44glen1a0354623e.jpg

[thedrifter]

Father's Day forever changed: Family of Camp Pendleton

By: DARRIN MORTENSON - Staff Writer

PFLUGERVILLE, Texas ---- A year ago Saturday, amid an anxious buzz in a hangar filled with Marines waiting to depart for Iraq, 25-year-old Sgt. Byron Norwood penned a simple Father's Day note to his dad in the small town of Pflugerville, Texas.

In the dizzying rush of preparing for his second deployment to Iraq, he had left the card he bought at a friend's barracks room on Camp Pendleton, and would have to entrust this handwritten letter to a civilian volunteer at the March Air Reserve Base hangar.

"Hey Dad, Happy Father's Day!" Byron began the one-page letter, written in very neat, careful printing.


"I'm not going to make this a long, sappy letter because you know that's just not me. I do, however, want to express to you my gratitude for what you have taught me and just for being Dad."

Acknowledging that they had sometimes pushed each other's buttons when he was a teen, Byron said that now, as an adult and as a Marine, those tests only seemed to make their bond stronger.

"So, on this special day," he continued near the end of the letter to his dad, "for you, Happy Father's Day, and know that no matter what happens I love you and Mom. I am so lucky to have parents like y'all."

A year later, Byron's father, 54-year-old Bill Norwood, carries that treasured letter from his son folded delicately and stowed safely in his briefcase.

It was the last Father's Day card he would receive from his son.

On Nov. 13, 2004, Sgt. Byron Norwood was killed by an Iraqi insurgent's bullets while trying to rescue seven wounded Marines in a house in Fallujah.

Bill Norwood and his wife, Janet Norwood, said last week in their home in Pflugerville that their lives will never be the same.

And as Bill faces his first Father's Day without his son today, he said he plans to have a quiet day at home, reflecting on how he and his family have lived up to Byron's memory.

"Holidays are hard," he said, Janet nodding in agreement, with painful memories of the recent Mother's Day still fresh. "The firsts are next to impossible."

The 'Byron test'

The Norwoods said they were floored by Byron's death, but that their son's character inspired them to get up and live their lives with a new sense of purpose.

They said Byron had told them in letters and phone calls that he felt he was following a calling and was doing what he believed was right in Iraq.

Now, they say, everything they do in life has to pass "the Byron test." They ask themselves, "Would Byron want this?" They said it boils down to honoring their son by supporting the beliefs he held dear and those of the Marines he died for.

"Byron didn't go in there like John Wayne," Janet said, speaking of Byron's final rush into that Iraqi house to help his comrades.

"He was part of a team. He was looking out for others," she said. "That's what our Byron was all about."

Town mourns in every corner

To reach the Norwoods' home some 30 miles north of Austin, Texas, one leaves a busy interstate highway at the Pflugerville exit and immediately passes the cemetery where Byron was buried Nov. 21, 2004.

The town, once dominated by cornfields and cotton gins, is now mostly a bedroom community of Austin with a growing population of nearly 25,000. Though it has lost most of its agricultural focus as it has grown, Pflugerville retains its small-town feel and strong sense of community.

Passing the Sonic Burger where Byron took his first job, the road into town curves past Pflugerville High School, where Byron and his four brothers and sisters played in the band. Byron played the trumpet. One of his former band members played taps at his funeral.

Near the high school, where Byron's memorial service was held in the auditorium, the road passes Pflugerville's post office, which may soon be renamed after Byron if some of the townsfolk get their way.

Past the old downtown, out where the grasses grow high and the main drag officially becomes a state "farm road," stands the Norwoods' spacious red-brick home, located in a new subdivision where green lawns and stone houses cover the grounds of a former dairy farm.

continued........

[thedrifter]

Signs of Byron

Sticking out from the double garage at the Norwoods' home, a large American flag flaps in the hot, dry air over Byron's shiny, gray 2001 Chevy Silverado pickup, which is still covered in Marine Corps stickers and cutouts of Texas longhorns in red, white and blue.

The decorations were all his, Janet Norwood said, except for the "Marine Mom" license-plate holder and the picture of Byron hidden beneath the visor.

She said she can't help pulling it down for a peek before she cranks up the truck.

During his second deployment, when Byron worked mostly from a base outside Fallujah, he was able to communicate through a computer in brief "instant message" sessions. When he wrote to them, they could see him through a Web camera.

"Anytime I heard from him," Bill said, "you couldn't screw up the rest of my day."

Janet said she remembers that as long as they could stay busy and feel connected, she and Bill didn't worry as much.

But there were dark times, like when the phone would ring late at night or the time Janet came home from the grocery store one day to find a dark blue van parked outside their home.

"I just melted," she said, holding her hand over her eyes as she remembered. "I sat there saying 'Oh my God! Oh my God! I can't do this alone.' "

While the van driver turned out to be a landscaper who soon drove off, Janet said it showed just how tightly fear gripped their family every day while their son was away.

"We'd shut the lights at about 10," she said, "and say, 'Another day. We escaped another day.' "

The knock

To make sure they never missed one of Byron's instant messages, which usually came late at night, they programmed their computer to emit a knocking sound when he would call with a Web message. Because the family computer was in the den and far from their bedroom, they installed a baby monitor so they could hear the knock from the other side of the house.

On Nov. 14, at about 1:45 a.m., they heard a knock.

"Good, it's him," said Bill, still half asleep, according to Janet.

But something was different about this knock, Janet remembered.

The knocking continued.

Realizing it was not the computer, Janet and Bill Norwood moved slowly toward the front door.

"Oh my God," Janet said she remembers saying.

"All I could see were the brass buttons. I couldn't open the door," she said. "It was like slow motion."

Two Marines in dress blue uniforms stood at the door to tell them Byron had been killed the day before.

"We're still asleep, Bill. We're still asleep," she remembers repeating over and over.

Janet and Bill said they had to touch the Marines to make sure they were real.

"I realized we weren't dreaming," she said. "It's the most amazing pain you can imagine."

A home, a shrine

It would be difficult to miss the fact that the Norwood family has been touched by war.

From the pecan tree in the yard that neighbors planted during a candlelight memorial ceremony in December to the "Gold Star" flag in the window signaling that a mother's Marine son has fallen, Byron's memory is kept alive everywhere at the Norwood home.

Bill and Janet said it has been this way since Byron first deployed with his infantry battalion for the invasion of Iraq in January 2003.

His death has only changed the theme of the decor and the focus of their daily lives, they said. The middle child, he remains the center of everything.

Janet wears his dog tags around her neck every day, and pins a Marine Corps globe and anchor emblem on her blouses next to the "blue star" pin she once promised Byron she would not remove till he returned.

Pictures of Byron ---- 5 foot 10, blonde, blue-eyed, square-jawed, handsome ---- hang on nearly every wall.

The dining room is arranged like a shrine of his effects, ranging from the flag presented to the family during his funeral and casings from rounds fired in his 21-gun salute, to combat medals and his Purple Heart.

Showing the display to some visitors recently, Bill pulled out one of their favorite pictures of him from Iraq. It shows Byron standing next to an Iraqi translator he had befriended while on special duty, training Iraqi special forces soldiers in Fallujah, a task his parents said Byron was especially proud of.

"Shoulder by shoulder we fight for a better world," the Iraqi had scrawled in English across the picture as a gift to Byron. The photo was returned with his effects after his death.

Bill said he spends a few quiet moments alone each morning before work looking at the museumlike display.

"I love that one," he said.

Friends like these

Janet and Bill Norwood said that over the last seven months their family has often been the center of media attention.

They were singled out before Congress and a national TV audience during President Bush's State of the Union speech in February and were featured in a recent Memorial Day special on the Military Channel on cable television.

The exposure ---- which they said is not always welcome ---- has garnered them overwhelming support from the military, their Texas community and ordinary people all across the country.

Inspired by their son, they said they have tried to use their celebrity status to turn the spotlight back on the Marines who fought in Iraq and who continue to serve, and the families of the deployed and the fallen.

"We didn't know where it was all going to go," Bill said. "But if it passed the 'Byron test,' we said we'd just roll with it."

They first reached out to Byron's friends, sending care packages to his fellow Marines from Pendleton's 3rd Battalion, 1st Regiment who were still in the fight.

"I couldn't believe it when they started sending us things," said Lt. Ryan Sparks, Byron's former platoon leader. "It's amazing to me how strong they were. All they wanted to do was put all of the light on the rest of the Marines out there."

Later, in February, they traveled to Camp Pendleton to welcome the Marines home.

They returned again with enough Texas beef to host a barbecue for Byron's Weapons Company in March.

They made a third trip in May to help memorialize the battalion's 33 Marines who were killed in the November battle that took their son.

"I think we were all nervous," Janet said of their first face-to-face encounter with Byron's buddies.

"But it was the right thing. It's what Byron would have wanted," she said. "We needed to let them know that Byron would have wanted them to be OK."

Bill said it is the relationship he has built with Byron's Marine friends and leaders that most keeps him close to his son. Even the two Marines who bore the news of Byron's death have been invited over for dinner and get a call or an e-mail from the Norwoods every now and then.

Bill said that when he visits Byron's grave site ---- of which he said, "I just go when I need to go" ---- he often finds things left by Marines, such as shots of Jack Daniel's whiskey or unopened cans of beer.

When he stopped by the site one day last week, he found a card from a local Marine recruiter who wrote, "You can always call me."

"We do the best around Marines," Bill said.

"Byron was where he was because of who he was," Bill said. "And we're just naturally drawn to the guys who were right there with him."

"They get it," Janet added. "We just want to adopt them all."

Memorials and reminders

At home in Pflugerville, the Norwoods said they have focused their energy on building a memorial to the eight Pflugerville residents who have been killed in foreign wars since World War II.

They said local residents started talking about putting a memorial in Pflugerville Park when they got together for Byron's funeral service. They formed a committee and asked Bill and Janet to join.

Bill and Janet liked the idea, they said, because Byron would have wanted to include all of the fallen, not just himself.

So far, Bill said, they have struggled to raise only about a third of the $100,000 they need to erect the life-size bronze sculptures. The sculptures will depict three service members, in era-specific uniforms from World War I through the Iraq war, passing an American flag on to the next generation.

"We needed something positive," Janet said.

But no matter how active they are, and how hard they try to be "positive," the war that took their son still holds them in its grip.

Cleaning up the kitchen after lunch Thursday, Janet received a call from Bill, who phoned from his office in Austin.

Answering in her nearly always bubbly tone, her voice suddenly broke.

"Oh no. Where were they from?" she asked, beginning to weep into the receiver.

Bill had called to say that five more Camp Pendleton Marines and a Navy corpsman had been killed in Iraq.

"Think of the families who just got that knock on the door," she said in tears after hanging up the phone. "More people are going through the same thing. It just breaks my heart.

"I wish I could just get away from it," she said. "Crawl up in a hole and get away from it all. ... I wish it would just stop."

In a few moments, the phone rang again.

This time, Janet's voice was shaky and guarded from the start.

Soon she brightened up, shaking her head as she hung up.

It was a woman from Florida, she said, a total stranger, asking for the Norwoods' address so that she could send them a quilt she'd made in Byron's memory.

"This is how it is every day," Janet said, looking exhausted after the manic crest and fall of emotions.

"This country is amazing," she said as she pulled out several other beautifully handmade quits with patriotic themes and messages about Byron ---- all sent by strangers or friends of the family.

"It's too bad we had to lose Byron to discover this grateful nation."

A sacrifice remembered

Later that day ---- after visiting the grave site amid the blooming purple crepe myrtle in the cemetery and standing amid the oak trees and blowing cottonwood blossoms near Gilliland Creek where the memorial will someday stand ---- Bill and Janet met a woman who had assembled a memorial collage for Byron that hangs in the town library.

She told them simply, "Thank you for your son."

Quiet and reflective at first, Bill climbed back into Byron's truck.

"I liked what she said," Bill remarked.

He stared out the window for a while as he drove through town and then summed up why he has chosen to keep his son's memory alive and public.

"Byron did make his own decision, and it was an honorable one," he said. "If his countrymen are grateful, then it validates what he did.

"Nothing is ever worth the loss of one of your children," he said. "But what's important to us is that Byron thought it was worth it."

continued........

[thedrifter]

A father's quiet journey

Bill Norwood said that as he faces Father's Day without his son, he is grateful to have had Byron for 25 years, grateful to have gotten to know him as he became a man, and grateful for the time they spent together sailing aboard a Navy ship from Hawaii back to Camp Pendleton.

It was during that trip that Bill realized how proud Byron was on being a Marine, he said.

Bill's blue eyes became ringed with red on a recent afternoon as he reread Byron's journal entries about how much he wanted a family someday.

The detailed journals, which were returned to the family after he died, recorded Byron's experiences and private thoughts. Bill said the journals added "depth" to what he already knew about his son, and are among his most prized possessions.

Opening one of them again, his eyes lit up as he discovered Byron's own recollections of their trip together on the Navy ship.

"It was the experience of a lifetime for him and me," Bill read softly, his finger tracing his son's words in the journal.

Now, said Bill, it is his turn to honor his son's lifetime and follow Byron's lead.

"In the end, I could not save him," he recently wrote to a friend as he contemplated his first Father's Day without his son.

"All my teaching riflery skills, comfort in and love of the outdoors, diligent research to know where 3/1 was and what he might be doing ---- none of it could overcome his courage and love for brother Marines," he wrote. "Nor would I ask that.

"Every day ...I prayed to trade this 53-year-old body with his strong 25-year-old one should someone need to depart this life. I should have known that is not how it works.

"And then, after just a little while, the father learns from the son.

"Byron had so many questions," Bill Norwood wrote, "Now, he has all the answers."

To donate to the Pflugerville Fallen Warriors Memorial Fund, call (512) 990-4363 or visit www.fallenwarriormemorial.org.

Contact staff writer Darrin Mortenson at (760) 740-5442 or dmortenson@nctimes.com.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Dad
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By John B. Dwyer
The American Thinker
June 19th, 2005

He was born on August 15, 1915, the youngest son in your typical large Irish Catholic family. Kevin had four brothers and four sisters. Their dear mother, Fanny Susannah, offered many a heartfelt prayer that her children would be talented. They were.

This is the entry under Dad's name for his senior year at Chaminade High School:

"Kev: musician, singer, student, football player - and can he wield a wicked pen! The beautiful artwork on the theme pages (of the yearbook) speaks for itself. Did you ever travel the 'Lonesome Road' with Kev and his guitar? If not, you have never been anywhere.The fact that he made the All-City Eleven for '29 demonstrates the football ability of this versatile young genius."

He was a handsome young man, a strapping 6'2" 190 lbs.

Dad made extra money singing at weddings. He sang to his beautiful wife-to-be, Mary Lou, on summer evenings on the porch. And I can still hear his light baritone voice rising above all others at Sunday mass thinking secretly and proudly to myself, "That's my dad."

Years later, Dad performed an updated version of the "Lonesome Road," entertaining his sons and their dates, playing a new guitar and singing folk songs.

After starting as an artist in the advertising department of Rike's, the major retail store here in Dayton for many years, Dad went on to become department head. It was a stressful job, and as I wrote in Saturdays On The River, Dad found relief and relaxation in his favorite pastime, fishing. On our way to whatever spot he'd selected, he sang for the sheer joy of it.

Dad was an athlete, artist, musician, singer, sculptor, fisherman, executive, the man who drew up the plans for our house on Nottingham; the man who was my father, a classic strict Irish Catholic father who loved his wife, his four sons and two daughters.

This is what I wrote when he died:

When my father died,
A voice died with him.

Wisdom under the stars,
Evenings on the patio,
He told me about life,
Describing thoughts with his cigarette,
Fluid red arcs in the night.

When my father died,
The tales ended.

A voice in the night,
That sounded like home,
Words never wrong,
Hard lessons to grasp.

When my father died,
A world died with him.

One cemented by his strength,
The firm grasp of his voice,
Carved like the wood,
He loved to shape,
Into ideas about love.
In a world malleable to moral equivalence,
He was a rock of integrity,
A light of direction,
On dark paths.

When my father died,
So did part of me.

The bitterness still rankles.
How could such a foundation
Be moved so finally?
How could such a voice be silenced?

When my father died,
The stars gave way to morning.

Those talks in the night,
With that man who was my father,
That voice in which I heard home,
That place no longer there,
A memory of stars.

B. Dwyer is a military historian

Ellie

[thedrifter]

A Father's Apology
By Joe O'Loughlin

It was more of a discussion than an argument. The exchange seemed like a normal disagreement that I had seen happen between my parents from time to time. Mom and Dad had then continued their discussion from the living room into the kitchen. A few minutes later Dad called for me to come in there.

"Joe, a few minutes ago when we were in the other room I didn't show your Mother the respect she deserves. That wasn't right for me to do and that's not the kind of example I should be giving. So I wanted to apologize to your Mom with you here," he said. Mom and I looked at each other quizzically. There really wasn't anything disrespectful or mean spirited in the way Dad had handled things. He seemed annoyed but it was a normal irritation from someone in the midst of a disagreement. Mom accepted the apology but insisted to Dad that he had not done anything wrong.
Even if he had been short tempered with Mom, a few weeks later we found out Dad had a legitimate reason for being out of sorts. He wound up in the hospital right before Father's Day. The diagnosis was lung cancer. Three months later, he would be gone.
Twenty-four years have gone by and the depth of Dad's decency epitomized by the episode with Mom still stands out in bold relief. Was he perfect? No. For example, he could brood so intently that you'd wonder if you did something wrong that caused him to silently withdraw.
Then again, he probably had a lot to ponder. Dad had lost his father when he was 11 and endured the Great Depression as his widowed Mom raised three sons. When World War II broke out, my peace loving Dad, who attended Mass and received Holy Communion every day of his life, volunteered for service even though he had three deferments: his age, working in a vital industry for the war effort and the sole support of his aged Mom. Mom told me that when questioned as to why he volunteered Dad simply said, "This evil must be stopped!"
That was how I found out most of Dad's exploits-through others. He never said a word about his military service. Dad's style was to never talk about or draw attention to himself. Doing your duty was just what was expected. After the war, he began work at the Federal Reserve Bank staying there until he retired. Another nice benefit of the job was that was where he met Mom (Mary). They raised my sister, Maureen and me with great love and passion.
As Father's Day approaches I think of this man of few words who said them softly but wound up speaking volumes that reverberate through the halls of time. I recall a good man, more at ease with gently handling rosary beads, but who held a weapon with an iron grip in order to stop evil. Although Dad had departed this world by the time I got married, his spirit was with me. "If I can be half the husband my Dad was to Mom then I will be a very successful husband" was what I said that special summer day. I remembered that apology to Mom and the countless ways Dad showed me how to be a man of faith, a man of love.
You are my inspiration still, Dad. You did a great job. No apologies needed.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

The Greatest Father’s Day Gift

June 19, 2005



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by David R. Usher
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Some of us will be sad for father’s day this year. Nobody knows the meaning of fatherhood more than divorced men, most of whom discovered too late that being a father is about a 50/50 proposition in this day of automated feminist divorce.

Hidden within this sadness is perhaps the greatest gift of all. Married men often take their place for granted, as their fathers did before. Many of us did that before we were served with divorces we did not expect, want or deserve.

We know better now. Fatherhood is an extremely important institution, one that we restore in our lifetimes. Why? Because there are so many of us now, and many second wives who are disgusted with the system too.

Folks often ask me how I can stand working in this movement for so long. They see it as being too painful to bear. Perhaps this was true until I realized this: This movement is an opportunity to grow, to learn how to play hardball politics, to organize, and to succeed.

Folks often ask my why I keep working on it eighteen years after my own unnecessary ejection from society. My resolve is as deep as ever, and my confidence far greater, because I have seen the changes that have taken place over the years.

The first time we testified in the Missouri Senate in 1989, they simply told us to go away. They couldn’t imagine why men would even be interested in social legislation. Today, they are disappointed if we don’t show up.

Here is the real reason I won’t ever retire: It is my duty to give to my children that which I could not have: the right to be a parent. And it is my duty to give to their children something children do not have now: the simple right to have a father.

Since my divorce left me with a lot of time on my hands, I have plenty of time to make sure this happens.

Misery is an optional illness on father’s day (and every other day too). Sure, we don’t like spending father’s day as non-fathers. Realize this: That you feel this way is proof that you are not one of those irresponsible bums that feminists howl about all the time. You are a good father, even if they won’t let you do it. Moral: take all that anger, energy, and free time, and turn it into the loving act of changing the system.

Some reading this article will be married men, or men who have not yet married. This article is perhaps the most important one you can read to prepare yourself for the future, and to change the future for yourself.

Most married men cannot imagine a divorce happening to them. The “D” word doesn’t register in their brains. Understand this: your chances of being turned into a childless father are nearly one in two. Do not make the mistake of thinking that you are the only good guy in the world and that divorce only happens to all those bad guys out there. Obviously, 50% of men are not bad guys -- perhaps 5% are. The other 45% are good fathers and husbands just like you who get a big surprise one day, and come screaming in the doors of the men’s movement wondering what happened – too late to change the future.

Here is what you can do if you are married or not yet married. Your future rests in restoring the value of marriage and fatherhood. The good groups in the men’s movement are there working to solidify your future.

The marriage movement is still predominantly run by RHINOS, such as David Blankenhorn and the Institute for American Values. These organizations say things that sound very pro-family, but in the end blame everything on men and push for more child support. This is what drives divorce and unmarried childbirth in the first place. This will change. Washington is realizing that these people have been hijacking healthy social progress for the past decade.

If you are a college student, get active on campus and secure equal rights for men by starting a men’s rights group. Call for establishment of a real men’s studies program which operates independently of the women’s studies program. Colleges should support equalitarian men’s rights groups, and allow them the same freedom of speech granted to women’s groups. It does not take many students to do this. All you have to do is be professional, be persistent, organize, and do it. If you want a real college education, there is no better education in political science, debate, psychology and law than to live it in-vivo.

If you have suitable economic resources, give all you can to credible men’s rights organizations. Men’s groups are severely hobbled because most divorced men don’t have one nickel to rub together. You can name any 501c3 men’s group on your United Way form, and allocate your gifts directly.

If you are a woman, you have a tremendous stake in the success of this movement. Divorce has left more women and children in poverty than any war in American history. Single mothers don’t “have it all”. They have to “do it all”. Many men helped women get the right to vote and to be in the workplace. Now, men need your help. Your dedicated work will make the lives of women and children happier, safer and securer in the future.

No matter what your status is, become active in politics. Work for candidates who support pro-family legislation, and oppose feminist candidates as if your children’s futures depended on it. Keep an eye on the legislature, and testify on at least two bills per session.

When government gets out of line, your best protection is in having someone with clout who will challenge the system on your behalf. The best protection of all is to change the law so you will not ever be put in the position already forced on about half of today’s fathers. Of course, the strongest form of advocacy is to be a member of the legislature and get your legislation passed.

Remember this: all men under the age of 45 were brought up in a feminist society which teaches men not to trust each other, but to trust only women. Feminism instilled perverse form of chivalry in men. Men used to open doors for women. Now they destroy other men for them, or at least look the other way while other men are being destroyed.

I did not invent this idea – it is part of feminist stratagem laid out 45 years ago to make it possible for women to undermine religion, deconstruct marriage and take over the family. Their goal was to destroy male kinship. They succeeded. We must extricate ourselves from these programmed instincts, and regain our trust in every man we know unless there is a clear reason not to trust him.

Priests, ministers, rabbis, and pastors must realize that we live in this relativist dark age because the major religions somehow turned their authority over marriage to feminists in government. The Church has primary authority over marriage and divorce, and should reclaim it both from the pulpit and at law.

Some are already working on this, and with some success. Others, such as Dr. James Dobson adamantly blame men for what feminists did to society and hold men responsible for it. This is the same false witness feminists have misused all along to take over marriage, family, and even religion, at the expense of men of faith. Let us urge Dr. Dobson to pray for an Awakening, or follow someone else who speaks with true wisdom.

Teachers of faith make a great mistake when they only offer comfort when a parishioner subject to a pending divorce comes for counseling. Each divorce is another opportunity for the Faiths to retake jurisdiction over marriage and protect it from the evil of secular meaninglessness. Each divorce is a call to social and religious action and teaching. Those who wish to restore the value of religion can do so by following the Words that make religion valuable.

Perhaps the greatest gift of father’s day is knowing that we all value of fatherhood, and that we each can do something to give this gift to someone else.

It is through giving that we receive. Let us realize the value of the gift of fatherhood, and do everything we can to pass it on for future generations.

David R. Usher

Ellie