Happy Birthday Dad!

The older I get, the more I appreciate how precious little time we have on this planet to spend with the ones we love. Fewer now are the opportunities to show those people what they mean to us. It would take me the rest of my life to adequately express the love and sacrifice my dad has shown me and our family over the last 40-plus years.

He was just 21 when he accepted the responsibility that was abdicated by another man whom I've never known, becoming a husband and father all at once — a choice that was very uncommon and certainly not lauded in the late-'60s, as it would be today.

Like George Bailey in It's A Wonderful Life, my dad made plans for great things, all of which he was fully capable of achieving. But he chose a less celebrated path. The majority of his life has been spent "married to the old building & loan," literally (in his case, Bank of America, SunTrust, Barnett, many, many others) leaving the house before the rest of us ever stirred to perform an often thankless and impossible job, and returning after dark just to get up and do it all over again the next day. ("Banker's hours" meant 12-hour days for him.) While the Sam Wainwrights of the world invited him to lavish golf outings and yammered on about their vacation homes, new cars and swimming pools, my dad was busy giving us a quality of life we could've never dreamed of apart from his unselfish dedication to his family. I suppose that's the reason I'm so sentimental about my childhood, because it was one that didn't want for anything I really needed, either in terms of material necessities or getting the 'OK' for my adventures.

Four decades later, my dad is still married to the same woman. He has never gone back on his word or defrauded anyone for his gain. Whether misunderstood or just plain mistreated, he's never spoken an unkind word in return. He has never complained about or even mentioned the innumerable comforts he's deferred or denied himself for our greater good. He has modeled an honesty, goodness, work ethic and consistency most men never achieve. And though his plans to retire, like so many other good things in his life, have been dangled just out of his reach, he uses this time to exercise his well-earned authority as a bank manager to override unjust bank fees and NSF charges that he knows would compound someone's misery. "I'll let them fire me for having low numbers before I'll let somebody go hungry or get evicted because the bank took their last dime," he says.



My birthday wish for my dad is to someday have a George Bailey ending, and to know all the lives he's touched and how very rich he is for all the things this world esteems so insignificant. I'm sure he would settle for hearing "Well done my good and faithful servant."