As Father’s Day approaches, may we take the time to actually contemplate our fathers, their lives and the contribution they made to our lives and the lives of our children. I have often wished that my father would have written his history, and since he did not, I attempted to do it for him. In the process, I learned that there were many things that I did not know about him. Things I wished that he had shared with me while he was yet alive. I am sure that his life had many more stories than I was able to find, but they are all lost now because he never shared them. The saying is so true that “When a man dies they bury a book.” My father descended from pure-blooded Norwegians. Not that that is a bad thing, but there wasn’t much family warmth, neither taught nor practiced in his home. He was a good man and a good father in terms of providing and setting an example of honesty and hard work. But when it came to expressing love verbally and/or physically, that was just not him. I had never been hugged by my father nor had I given him a hug until I was older and had a family of my own. One summer, my young family and I visited my dad who was living in another state. We only had a short time with him, and when we were leaving to return home he put his hand out offering a handshake. That was not enough for me, I grabbed my father and gave him a big hug and told him that I loved him. He hesitantly returned the hug. I’m sure it was a surprise and maybe even embarrassing for him. It was just not his nature. Fortunately, I did not inherit that trait, whether it be Norwegian or not. I have six children and they know that they will never leave their dad without a hug and an “I love you!” Even if I were to see them every day. I was a 29- year-old man when my father died. When I received the news, I went into our bedroom and cried uncontrollably because even though he was never affectionate to me, I loved him—he was my dad! One of my older sons, who was just a four or five-year-old at the time recently confided in me that he remembered that time. He said that he felt bad for his dad (me) because I was so broken up about my dad’s passing. He had never before seen me cry.
To a child, mothers seem to be the most important person; that is a given, but dads are important, too. There was an interesting article in the paper recently that portrayed a father’s importance in a way that I had never even thought of. World War II has been over for seventy years, and those who succumbed during that terrible event in history are long buried and mostly forgotten. There are, however, many still living who are scarred and wounded— wounded emotionally, because of certain events that happened near the end of the war. The article was entitled, “War Kids Look for Soldier Dads.” Even after these many years since the war, there are 250 thousand Germans seeking answers about their heritage. The author, Kirsten Grieshaber, was herself one of these thousands depicted in the article. She tells of an elderly man living in Germany by the name of Paul Schmitz. When he was a little boy, he never understood why kids in his tiny German village taunted him as a “Yank” and beat him up. Schmitz was a teenager before he found out that his father was an American soldier who had a romance with his mother in the final days of the war. The mothers of these children were shamed and the U.S. military, still stationed in Germany, did not want anything to do with them. Schmitz was born about five months after the war was declared over. His life started as an outsider, a child of shame, a child of the enemy, even though it was the Americans who liberated them. Schmitz said, “All my life I had a yearning for my father.” His eyes welled up recalling the hardships of his youth while living in a small German village. Just recently, as an elderly man, he had an opportunity to solve the mystery of his unknown father. He, like many others who are seeking to find their fathers, are using the latest computer research tools to seek them out. Fortunately, Schmitz, with the help of a veterans group and archives in the United States, found out that his father was a John Kitzmiller, a physician from Pennsylvania. His father was no longer alive, but he was able to track down his two half sisters and meet them during a trip to the United States. The sisters gave him a watch that had belonged to their father and told him that in America the son inherits the father’s watch. Tearing up, he said, “Today I have a feeling of hap- piness when it comes to family.” We who are happily surrounded by loving family, with our mothers and fathers, can hardly relate to Schmitz’s yearning. We are hardly able to contemplate what it might be like not knowing who our fathers are.
Yes! Our fathers are important to each of us, and we may never really think about just how important until they pass away. Think for a moment how important your father’s written life story would be if you no longer had him in your life. Living fathers who have not written their life story are doing their children and all their descendants a disservice. Can you imagine how Paul Schmitz would have felt if his two half sisters could have presented him a book entitled The Life History of John Kitzmiller? Fathers who read this thought are challenged to write a brief experience that they have had and share it with their children. After all, the best life histories are merely a sequence of compiled experiences that influenced a person’s life. Yes, fathers are important. President Ezra Taft Benson said that “…a father’s calling is eternal, and its importance transcends time. It is a calling for both time and eternity.”