Honor and Dishonor

Fathers remembered and those possibly best forgotten are in the news on Memorial Day.

One of many honorable men remembered today is Joe Lippi, killed during the Battle of the Bulge, who left his days-old son behind. Lippi Jr. was the fortunate recipient of odd circumstances — an Army friend of his father was being treated by a nurse friend of the son 60-plus years and on an opposite coast from where Sr. last saw Jr. Thanks to that friend, Lippi Jr., along with his father's (now his, as well) friend Art Mahler, is spending the holiday visiting his dad's Belgium gravesite.

For reasons that should weigh on their conscience, executives at VH1 have done some counterprogramming to honor. The channel debuts Dad Camp this evening. Ostensibly it is all about the rehab and retracking of boys into the men capable of taking care of their baby mommas and offspring. In reality (as in reality tv) there are just six couples unprepared to do anything but be spectacle and a smarty pants whose job is to guide viewers into enjoying how much higher-planed their own lives are.

War Tales

War captures the imagination. The possibility of death, the spectacle of heroism rivets attention. There is no secret why people want to pose with the son of Alvin York, the most famous American WWI vet, as he tours them through his Tennessee home.

York was famously played by Gary Cooper in the film of the hero's life. And a film is also probably in the works as well for another vet with a compelling story, Rudy Contreras Jr., who recently returned from his time in Iraq to his daughters as well as his father. Contreras Sr. took a wrong turn in life and ended up a veteran of California gang wars, missing out on being the good father but trying desperately to make up for it as the good grandfather.

An unlikely film, but a book with a compelling story of how-it-came-to-be is Last Journey: A Father and Son in Wartime, by Darrell Griffin Sr. and Jr. [Earlier: Tear-Stained Pages] The Griffins began their work together while the son was a staff sergeant on his second tour of Iraq dury and before a sniper's bullet cut the collaboration short. It has been completed following his death and highlights the ongoing connection forged by war between father and son.

Don't Lose Out to the Gatekeeper

There will surely be much fufferloo about the timed-for-father's day announcement that moms are the gatekeepers who have been keeping dads from really connecting with their kids. But as often as not in those cases it is the man who isn't working hard enough to take control of the situation.

It has to be remembered that men overcome all sorts of things to connect. Space doesn't have to get in the way, as proven by the Pennsylvania soldier Justin Allenbaugh, who coached his wife through delivery of new daughter Gemma Rose from his posting in Iraq. And, somehow, a Washington, DC gent manages to find time for his kids even though he's pretty busy trying to listen to every voice in the world, as CBS TV will report Sunday morning in "Barack Obama: An American Dad." And, even after death, the good father can still connect with his son and even his granddaughters.

But, still, there are those too-numerous dads who let the moms get the best of us in making kids our own. Probably they're to blame for why dads have so much less spent on them for father's day than moms do for them on MD?

A Time for Tears

It is true there might be hope to be found in sorrow. It is not true it is easy when the sadness is as profound as a child's loss of a father, or a father's loss of a child.

The Boston Globe reports on a group of men whose strongest bond is their shared loss of a child and their need to keep on going on. Their body moves on earth, but for the fathers forever, a piece of their soul and many of their thoughts seem always to be in another place. The Salt Lake Tribune tells the tale from the other side, reporting on a 6-year-old who accepted his father's posthumously-awarded Silver Star for service in Afghanistan.

Finally, bringing both sides together and sparking a question of sad sad can be, The Toronto Star shares text and video of a child who lost his father and now struggles for his life. Five-year-old Justin, whose 31-year-old father passed from undetermined causes two years ago, is currently fighting a malignant cancer.

Hope? Hardly!

Arise In the Mourning

"I am ready to die 100 times to bring back my daughters," mourns Palestinian day laborer Anwar Balousha in mourning the five girls who lost their lives when the family's house was destroyed as collateral damage to the destruction of its neighbor, a Hamas controlled Mosque.

Noam Schalit, father of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit, will not speak at all as the fate of his son — a celebrity captive — is being decided by fatherswho have the bombs of their sworn enemies raining on their heads and those of their families.

Nizar Rayan, a top Hamas leader who had once sent his own son on a suicide mission to kill Israelis was killed along with nine of his 12 children, when a 2,000-pound bomb landed on his home.

Will the next step be the bombing of nuclear facilities?

Hate drinks fathers' tears.

'Nuff Taught

Sometimes you can never get enough and other times enough is enough. It is a father's job to teach his children which times are which and why.

No doubt former Bush administration (41 & 43) member Colin Powell will need to explain to son Michael his recent endorsement of the candidacy of Barack Obama. As of last month, the former FCC commissioner and John McCain adviser didn't think his father would be endorsing anyone. The senior Powell said his "change of mind" is the result of someone else's son being demonized.

Seeing a picture of a mom weeping at the gravestone of Cpl. Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, a Muslim who lost his life fighting for America, and having heard more than enough from one side of the politcal spectrum were what led to Powell's inserting a soldier into this year's political dialogue (one which has too often revolved around the inanities embodied in Plumber Joes). For which Khan's father can't thank Powell enough.

One of Powell's poinsts was that it wasn't enough for someone to say Barack Obama was not Muslim. It was American, it was just plain right to ask what would be wrong if he was and demand that the answer be that there would be nothing wrong. Similarly, as stay-at-home-dad Melton argues, it's not enough to admit that SAHDs and all dads can take care of children, it's time to recognize that it is plain stupidity to assume (as media and "common" wisdom does for the sake of lame jokes) that in general dads can't parent.

Listen up children, enough is enough.

From Afar

Nobody parents well from far away, but today no distance is too great a barrier to connection between father and child. And we're not just talking miles.

Dads incarcerated in Indiana are touching their kids' lives by reading bedtime stories (via DVD) to them. It is part of a process by which they both reenter society and the lives of their family.

Fathers serving in Iraq are attending four-year old birthdays and even the birth of their children via webcasting. Is that the same as being there? Obviously not. But presence (even when absent) is important.

If you don't think so, ask Christopher Rothko, son of the abstact-expressionist painter he lost when he was just six. The younger Rothko learned about his dad — a suicide — connected with his genius, his spirit and his humanity, via a manuscript given to him as executor of the estate. As he told a reporter for the Houston Chronicle, "...having the manuscript was really a much more direct interpersonal experience than looking at the artwork, simply because I could hear his voice so clearly in the writing."

From a void to a real connection. It's not perfect, but reaching out (from either side of the parent-child equation) is so much better than pulling away.

Love and War Song

It takes a bit of time to get to the point of squeezing a tear from the eye, but eventually, this week's Objet d'eBay does. The 1969 release, the Grammy-winning"Color Him Father" by The Winstons (a one-hit wonder band with a bit more back story) is a soulful ballad of love for a man by his son.

The father is a paragon of virtue, but about midway through, the lyrics offer the twist that opens the faucet:

My real old man he got killed in the war
And she knows she and seven kids couldn't of got very far
She said she thought that she could never love again
And then there he stood with that big wide grin
He married my mother and he took us in
And now we belong to the man with that big wide grin

Then it was a dad lost to Vietnam, now Iraq. Another day, another war. But ever a time for a song expressing the need for a man to be a father.

Remembering the Warrior with Secrets

The secrets of his war are inculcated into the veteran who served. The question for his child is whether it is better to let his or her father serve as a strainer for those secrets or to learn them to get closer to him.

Chicagoan Settimio Damiani's daughter Lee has had her father's war diary translated from the Italian as a way to get closer to her late father and the harrowing life he led under fire.

Gadsden's (Ala.) Bess Estis unpacked her late father's war souvenirs and came closer to understanding his wondrous sense of life and love: “Really, I think it came from the killing and knowing you could be gone at any second.”

While the good news in both those cases is that children grew closer to their late fathers, learning secrets of dad through war does not always lead to such fairy tale endings. For every secret gained through battle that children go looking for about their warrior dads, there are probably an equal number that come looking for them. Recently, a forensic psychologist discovered by poking at the bones of a WW II vet that it was a stepfather, not a father, who a son had worshiped.

And there is the promise/threat of more to come as the army now has the ability to use DNA testing on the remains of its fallen soldiers and there are estimates that from one to three percent of fathers are misidentified. In the (May 26, 2008) Boston Globe story, Deputy director of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command Johnie E. Webb Jr., is qutoed as saying, "You could really do a lot of damage to a family...We haven't totally come to grips with how we're going to handle it."

** Take heed and handle all of a father's secrets with care. **

SuperMen

Suppose they actually gave out capes and tights to dads so they could dress up to match their role as their son or daughter's hero?

The clothes would not make the man. Not like actions and living the life. So, while Pope Benedict VXI is the idol of many, the adulation might be better aimed at (or at least shared more equitably with) his father, Joseph Ratzinger Sr. who put much at risk for many years by expressing anti-Nazi sentiments during that group's rise to power.

And what else can be said about Gary Thompson, a 51-year-old father of five daughters, who left reserve service to set an example by service in Afghanistan. And who paid for that choice by losing earthly contact with his children. It is highly unlikely, of course, that he will have inspired papal dreams in his girls, but where they go, what they do, will surely reflect a hero's legacy.

** It's all about balancing the secret identify of ordinary working stiff with the superhero actions that determines a dad's legacy. **

War Daddy

It won't necessarily be fair, but John McCain will look bad. If he is elected president he will have to accept responsibility whether or not his sons fight in Iraq.

If they don't serve the Iraq rotation with their units — a la Prince Harry — his influence and integrity will be questioned. If they stay and fight, their presence (in theory, at least) causes the potential for greater harm to those around them. And as a dad he has to suffer the possibilities if they fight in a war that fighting alone is unlikely to end.

He served as his father did and brought great prestige home, although he survived horrific tortures to earn it. The fate awaiting a possible president's sons will be ...?

** Children often lose their fathers to war whether or not injury is involved. **

M&R for Dads

"In a sense," says Texan John King, "I'm grateful for [my father's] absence because it made me a better father."

King is president of a Christian mystery and author of "It's a Guy Thing," (one of a few books with that title). And he is calling for significant changes in the definition of fatherhood. As he told the El Pason Times, "Every revolution happens with a generation of martyrs, and we need a generation of men who will stand up and say, 'I am going to live for something beyond myself; I am going to live for my children.' "

Martyrdom is certainly not new to fathers, though not everyone shares King's perspective. Nor is their "loss" something that ever lets go of children. At 74, Moshe Bar-Yoda will finally find some peace regarding his lost father. The elder was killed by Nazi atrocities at Poland's Majdanek death camp six months after father and son were torn apart. Unsealed records revealed the truth and offer some peace. "Now I have a specific yahrtzeit [a commemorative day when a memorial candle is lit]" Bar-Yoda said to the Israeli paper Haaretz. "And while it doesn't comfort me or make me happy, there is a kind of satisfaction here, that I can move forward."

Killed in war (martyred in a different way) was the father that Rosalie Miles Francisco never knew. Howard Carl Miles left for war when his daughter was three months old. She never knew him in any way except through a scrapbook. But Miles has not been honored not just by his daughter's creation and memory; for his service in Italy, he has finally received via his daughter the Purple Heart, the Air Medal with an oak leaf cluster, a World War II Victory Medal, the Europe-Africa-Middle East Campaign Medal, the U.S. Army Campaign Medal and a Good Conduct Medal.

Martyrdom and revolution (lite) are probably the paths of most days, living life in their own ways.

** It's biblical: Every father is honored at least by memory. **

SAHDly

Thankfully, the daddytracker battles over the work/kid balance can be dealt with by talk not actual fighting. And both sides can claim to be doing their best for their children. Because when fathers actually go to war, sometimes they don't return. A tragedy now commemorated (?) with daddy dolls (now, "hug a heroes").

Not that a dad should necessarily stay at home once he returns. An experiment in SAHD credibility had a sad result. A pop who only has to go up or down his home's stairs to his office reduces his credibility unless he doesn't let anyone know.

** Everyday is a struggle, but mortality is not always a consequence. **

Veteran Secretkeepers

Every kid believes dad is a hero, but too few learn in time the secret truth of how or why that's true.

Teresa Irish of Saginaw, Mich., discovered her father's secret in his trunk after his death.

A month and a day following Aarol Irish's death his daughter lifted the lid of his "Army trunk" and found thousands of letters describing his soldiering experiences during WWII. He had promised his children that one day he would show and tell them about his baggage. The day, too late for him to tell, finally came and as proud as Irish is of her father — and even as she now knows what horror her father commemorated every year on April 9 — she still regrets she didn't get a chance to talk with him about this part of his life.

Charlie Watson's superpower secrets were kept in his lungs. Two years before cancer killed him — lung cancer traceable to the Army's "wheelbarrow-full" distribution of Camels and Luckies — he showed and explained the story of his Bronze medal and much else of his life to son Warren.

** If the child doesn't ask when the father wants to talk, both lose. **

Tear-Stained Pages

While reading the books will probably inspire hope, thinking about the two books by dads involved with their sons only brings (at least near) tears.

Norwegian literateur Halfdan W. Freihow wrote a book his son will probably never finish, although he did listen to half of it as an audio book. "Dear Gabriel: Letter From a Father" is the tack the father took to communicate what he couldn't to his autistic son. Amazingly, as he was writing the book, the then 9-year-old boy suddenly learned to read.

And a Los Angeles-area man is at work on the story he encouraged his son to start before a sniper's bullet ended the possibility of his finishing it. Darrell Griffin Sr. was recently visiting Iraq, trying to learn more about what his son went through there in order to give final shape to the journals of war his son kept as an infantryman in Sadr City.

Film rights have already been sold — with the proviso that it not be used either to support or denounce the war, only to tell the son's story — even as the Griffins' work continues. Says Sr., "I don't think you'll find a father and son closer than we were. He was the smartest man I ever met. I'm not writing this book, we're writing it."

** The father-child bond is most extraordinary when it combines both strength and distance. **

What Did You Do in The War, Daddy?

With some help from the government and his friends, the book has been closed (actually published) on how one daughter solved the mystery of her daddy at war. Another daughter continues to face government obstacles to learn about a man she barely knew fighting a war that the government still, apparently, wants to keep secret.

Jane Gardner Birch received the National Aviation Hall of Fame 2007 Coombs Gates Award for her first book, "They Flew Proud," the story of the World War II Civilian Pilot Training Program the research and writing of which helped her learn a bit about her warrior father.

At the other extreme is Charlotte Dennett, still stymied by government fears for secrecy in her search for who her dad — code named "carat" — was and what really happened when his plane crashed in Addis Ababa in 1947.

** Every dad has a hidden warrior, but some dads have more compelling tales to hide. **

Book Report

POTUS wannabe Christopher Dodd has published "Letters from Nuremberg," with which he hopes to convey lessons (about the Iraq war; about the twin towers as today, 9/11, is the official publication day; about why he should be president; about how much smarter father's used to be; etc...) from his father's correspondence with his mother while working on the trial of the Nazi war criminals.

One of the lessons arriving too late in history comes from Nawada, Indai. Although late it is important: always serve your son good food when he asks or he may axe you to death — and I don't mean the incessant "why daddy, why..." of a toddler.

** Axe me no questions . **

In Attendance

Your children are better off with you in prison than at war. Not that those should be your only choices.

An Australian study found that kids with dads doing time had problems, but not necessarily for lacking a housebound role model. The causes of their difficulties were more likely from "socio-economic status, marital disorder, an unstable family life, mothers who drink and smoke and have poor mental health."

That let's-blame-the-mom result segues nicely into the new study just published in the Journal of American Medicine on at-war families. With more moms than dads left behind, there is a 42 percent greater chance of a child's maltreatment during deployment than at other times.

While the results noted above suggest it's moms more than kids who suffer when a family is (temporarily) single parented, dadalones are still coming in for some "what are you thinking?" criticism. According to another new study, and all other things being equal, a single American father is less likely to have health insurance for himself and kids than a single mother.

Cultural, environmental and hereditary aspects do influence the decision. Both Thing 1 and Thing 2 have put on shows of stoicism, either out of fear of the doctor (they have learned how often an office visit confirms bad news) or in deference to my own preference not to see medical personnel to whom we are not related. And the study does confirm that an average man is less likely to go to the doctor for himself than an average woman ... and suggests — without actually judging — that gender tendencies influence when children see their pediatricians.

Still, it all ends up a very mixed result for the children.

** It is all well and good to know from studies and statistics what is going on with the average kid. But who has the average kid? **