Seven Villages, Janet Joakim

The two books Tim Russert had recently published, Big Russ and Wisdom of our Fathers are both gone from the shelves at the local book stores, on this Father’s day.  Russert tells many stories about how he came to recognize that his father worked his fingers to the bone so that Tim and his sisters could have the opportunities he didn’t have. Tim speak openly about how devasting it was to not have his father in the stands watching his ball games, but in looking back he knew why his father couldn’t be there as he was working.

Here is an excerpt from Russert’s found in full on Border’s website:

Wisdom of Our Fathers

by Tim Russert  

Introduction

In the spring of 2004, I published a book about my father—about the lessons I have learned from him, the ways he has influenced me, and my enormous love and respect for this steady, hardworking, and modest man. Big Russ & Me came out in May, and my publisher sent me on a publicity tour in the hope that people around the country would see the book as an ideal Father’s Day gift.

Early in the tour I was in Chicago, where, to my great relief, customers were lining up to buy the book and have me autograph it. What happened next really surprised me.

“Make it out to Big Mike,” somebody told me, which was followed in rapid succession by:

“This is for Big Mario.”

“Please inscribe it to Big Manuel.”

“For Big Irv.”

“Big Willie.”

“Big Stan.”

I had expected that my book would appeal to readers in my hometown of Buffalo, New York, but I didn’t know whether the story of a young man coming of age in a blue-collar Irish-Catholic neighborhood, whose father was a truck driver and sanitation man, would strike a chord with a wider audience. As I soon discovered, there were many Big Russes out there—good, industrious, patriotic men who had a lot in common with my dad, even if they didn’t share his religion or heritage. By writing a book about my father, I was affirming not only his life but the lives of many other fathers as well.

“You could have been writing about my dad,” people told me. Or, “Your dad was just like mine—a man of few words but a lot of love.” Or, “Thank you for talking about your dad in such a positive way, because that was my experience too.”

Here and there, somebody would hand me a note and ask me to read it when I had a free moment. Later that day, I would learn a little about that dad: his favorite saying, or the lessons he taught them (sometimes by his words but more often by his actions), or the story of how hard he had worked to feed his family and educate his kids. During TV and radio interviews about the book, the hosts would begin by asking me about Big Russ but would soon go on to describe their own dads and how much they meant to them.

I realized early on that the book was resonating far beyond what I had anticipated. Without intending to, I had given many readers an opportunity—an invitation, really—to talk about their fathers. They had listened to my story, and now I was listening to theirs.

One other bookstore moment stays with me. I was seated at a table at a Barnes & Noble on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, where book signings are so common that the staff has developed a procedure for moving people along with great efficiency. Somebody opens the book to the title page and hands it to you along with a note, so you’ll know how to spell the name of the person for whom you will inscribe it.

When I read the name of Alfred Tanz, it rang a bell, although I couldn’t quite remember why. Looking up, I saw a small elderly man standing in front of me.

“You don’t recognize me, do you?” he asked. “I delivered your son Luke into the world.”

I stood up and hugged him. “Dr. Tanz! I can’t tell you what this means to me!”

“Well, I had to come. Your son was almost ten pounds!”

I hadn’t recognized him without the scrubs, and also because he had seemed like a giant to me then. We hadn’t seen each other since August 22, 1985, the happiest day of my life. Maureen had been going through a long and difficult labor, and at one point I left the hospital for a breath of air. Finding myself in front of a church, I went in and prayed for a healthy baby and a healthy mother. A few hours later, my prayers were answered.

I was overwhelmed to see this man again—especially here, especially now. There I was, celebrating my love for my father, and here was the man who, nineteen years earlier, had welcomed me into that very special club with seven unforgettable words: “Congratulations, Dad. You have a baby boy.” Dr. Tanz was the first person to call me Dad—the best name I have ever been called.

People often say that having a child changes your life, and of course they’re right, but it’s hard to understand what that really means until it happens to you. In my pre-father years, I was driven, a man in a hurry. I was the first member of my family to attend college, and from there I went on to law school. I served as counsel to New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, which led, eventually, to a similar position in the governor’s office in Albany, which was followed by an executive job at NBC. Now I was living in Manhattan, enjoying a fast-paced life that revolved around my career. Fatherhood was the farthest thing from my mind. When I saw someone bring an infant on an airplane and stuff all that baby equipment into the overhead bin, I saw it as an inconvenience. I would look at my watch and think, Come on, let’s get this plane in the air.

But when Luke was born, I suddenly understood the meaning of unconditional love. I knew exactly why my father had worked two full-time jobs for thirty years and why, when I was a boy, my mother had spent her days sitting next to me when I was sick, putting her hand on my forehead to measure my fever and placing warm teabags on my eyes to soothe the pain. My love for Luke was natural, complete, and instinctive.

Suddenly there were no more spontaneous happy hours after work, no more late-night movies, and you couldn’t have paid me to attend to a dinner party. My career became secondary to the blessing of being a father. I liked that—loved it, actually. I wanted to stay home to feed our baby. I wanted to watch him learn to crawl and say his first words. I wanted to coach his baseball and soccer games. I sometimes feel as if I can remember every day of my son’s life.

Of course, there have been some painful moments along the way. Not long ago, when I took Luke to Boston to begin his freshman year of college, I knew as the door to his dorm room closed that a major chapter in his life—and mine too—had just come to an end. He would never again be totally dependent on me. (Actually, that had been true for years, but as long as he lived at home while in high school, I could still pretend otherwise.) Before I drove off, I gave him some simple advice: “Study hard, laugh often, and keep your honor.” I hope I’ve taught him to make good decisions and that I’ve given him a strong moral foundation to do the right thing. When my life is over, I know that the most important thing I’ll be judged on is what kind of father I was.

I had hoped my book would connect with readers, but I certainly didn’t anticipate how it might affect members of my own family, including the man whose name is in the title. Luke, Maureen, and I always go to Buffalo for Thanksgiving, and in 2004, a few months after the book came out, we were loading up the car to drive to the airport when Big Russ came over to me to say goodbye. For as long as I can remember, Dad and I had always parted with a handshake and a half hug. But this time he gave me a huge bear hug and said softly, “I love you”—something I had never heard him say before. I was fifty-four years old, and all I could think was, Boy, I wish I had written this book thirty years earlier!

Dad needed to know it was all right to express his love to me, and my book had assured him that it was. Once I had declared my love for him—and in public—something between us changed forever. About a month later, Maureen, Luke, and I went back to Buffalo for Christmas Eve and then on to New York, where we attended midnight mass. When we returned to our apartment, Luke disappeared to take a shower. A few minutes later, I heard Maureen yelling, “My God, what have you done?” She ran into the room, horrified. “He has a tattoo!”

I jumped out of my chair and yelled, “Luke, come in here!” I was really mad. A few months earlier, when he had told me he wanted a tattoo, I brought up the possible health risks and pointed out the irreversibility of a youthful decision that he might some day regret. I had talked him out of it—or so I thought.

But here he was before me, with a towel around his waist and his arms firmly locked down.

“Let me see it.”

“No.”

“Let me see it!”

“No!”

“Luke, let me see it!”

He reluctantly raised his left arm, and there were the letters TJR. Those are my initials—and also my dad’s. Luke was misty-eyed. “After I read your book,” he said,” I wanted you and Grandpa to always be on my side.”
I collapsed back into the chair—speechless—and then sobbed. Luke came over and wrapped his arms around me. Laughing and crying at the same time, I pledged never to complain about Luke’s tattoo again. I was honored to be on his side . . . forever.

In November, my dad had reacted to my book by telling me flat out that he loved me. And now, just a month later, in a very different way, so had my son. Of all the things I have done in my professional career, nothing has been more rewarding than writing that book. I didn’t think I would write another one. But when I read the letters I received from readers, I realize I had no choice.

Some of them were personal reactions. “After reading your book,” one letter began, “I just knew I had to call my father.” Or, “Your book about your dad has caused me to see my own dad in a different light.” Most of the letters described a father’s sacrifice, fortitude, and perseverance; told of his advice and guidance; or gave examples of his kindness, generosity, love, and, yes, wisdom. Many of the letters were unforgettable. They deserved to be read—and remembered.

Early in 2005, when I decided to put together a collection of letters about other people’s fathers—not a sequel, exactly, but a book that grew directly out of the response to the first one—I called Bill Novak, my editor and writing partner, and asked him to work with me again. I didn’t know quite what this new book would look like, but there was one thing I was sure of—it wouldn’t be limited to sons.

Growing up, I could see that my three sisters had a relationship with Big Russ that was very different from mine, and I hoped by including stories from women to enhance the new book and give it more depth. And how! As you’ll see, the submissions from daughters tend to be more direct, open, and expressive, while the men’s letters (with some exceptions) are more measured. In the end, though, both groups arrive at the same conclusion: They owe an enormous debt to their dads, and they want the world to know it.

At the same time, many of our correspondents don’t need the world to know. As one man put it, “Whether this letter is included in your new book or not, I am grateful for the inspiration you’ve provided to write this piece about my dad.” Or, “Even if this story about my dad isn’t chosen, I want to thank you for making me finally write it down, so his great-grandchildren can read it some day and know the kind of man he was.”

I received close to sixty thousand letters and e-mails, and I read them all.

The submissions included in this book address many aspects of fatherhood, but they have a few things in common. First, they are overwhelmingly positive. I knew early on that I wanted to present a favorable picture of fathers—not because all fathers are good, which obviously isn’t the case, but because there has been so much talk in recent years about bad parents and dysfunctional families that I was hoping to redress the imbalance. Jennifer Kozlansky of Factoryville, Pennsylvania, brought up another reason. “It makes me cringe,” she wrote, “to see how they portray fathers on TV today: stupid, incapable when it comes to caretaking, insensitive, beer-drinking, sports-obsessed, and generally clueless. Every father I know is nothing like those TV dads, and my father was the complete opposite.”

Although the focus here is almost exclusively on good dads—and also because of that—it’s only fair to acknowledge a couple of dissenting voices. “My dad was a beast,” wrote a man in Oregon. “The one thing I learned from him was to stay out of his way…. I learned much more about love from my dogs than I ever did from my dad.” Most of the fathers you’ll read about in this book are not superdads. They are, by and large, ordinary men with the normal distribution of human flaws and shortcomings, regular dads who try hard and sometimes succeed. What you will read here are vivid accounts of their best moments. In many cases, these fathers would be surprised, and maybe even shocked, to discover that this is what their son or daughter has remembered. But you never really know how your words or your actions will affect your children. What will they say about you when you’re gone? What moment will they remember? What will they tell their children about you?

The second big theme in these letters is that the most precious things a father can provide are time, attention, and love. For about six months I read hundreds of e-mails and letters every day, but I can’t recall a single one that said, “My father gave me every material thing I wanted,” or, “What I remember most about my dad is the new TV he bought me.” What we remember about our fathers has little or nothing to do with material objects. We remember the time they gave us—whether indirectly (through hard work) or in more conventional ways—time spent providing advice, telling a bedtime story, or simply showing up for a recital, a spelling bee, or an athletic event. There’s a reason one of these chapters is called “Being There.”

As I was working on this book, I came across a remark from Michael Caine, the English actor who has appeared in Alfie, The Cider House Rules, and more than a hundred other movies. “My greatest conceit, and I am very conceited about it, is that I am a great father,” he said. “My daughters will tell you that. I was always involved with my children…. I always regarded the most valuable thing I could give to my children was time.” That’s quite a statement, coming from a man whose busy career would leave most people with very few hours even to think about their parental responsibilities. If real estate is about location, location, location, fatherhood is about time, time, time.

It’s been said a million times, but it’s so true: Time is the most precious commodity of all. You can shower a child with presents or money, but what do they really mean, compared to the most valuable gift of all—your time? Your time together doesn’t have to be programmed or planned. Vacations and special events are nice, but so often the best moments are the spontaneous ones, when nothing much is happening. You can’t create those moments, but you can encourage them, and the way to do that is simply by being there. Every moment you spend with your child could be the one that really matters. End of sermon.

The third theme I noticed was that many of the fathers you’ll read about are relatively silent and modest men. As I worked on this book, I read many war stories, which often depicted moments of bravery and great courage. But with remarkable frequency, even with stories about heroism, the son or the daughter recounting these events pointed out that their father spoke about them rarely—and sometimes not at all.

For the most part, the fathers in this book are not big talkers, and although their daughters and sons understand that this is, in part, a generational difference, there are times when a more talkative generation finds their fathers’ silence frustrating. By the same token, most of these fathers are not inclined to brag. They don’t take up much space in the world, but their impact on their children has been profound. “My dad wasn’t anyone special,” I heard time and time again, “but he sure was special to me.”

The fourth theme, which is related to the third one, is that sons and daughters who were born during and after the postwar baby boom are often acutely aware of how their fathers never said the words I love you—or said them only after an unexpected intervention, following years of being emotionally unexpressive. Some daughters and sons find these missing declarations of love to be painful, while others take it in stride. “My father never told us that he loved us,” somebody wrote, “but he never had to. It was clear in everything he did.”

Several people described the moment when everything changed. One young man had never heard his father express his love until the night before he left for basic training, when his dad gave him a watch and said, “I love you, son.” Another correspondent remembers when her father, in his seventies, broke into tears while talking about his own father. He told her that the biggest regret of his life was that he hadn’t told his father how much he loved him before he died. “As my father grew old,” she writes, “I told him all the time how much I loved him. When he died, I felt at peace because I had expressed my love.”

For Alan Thompson of Albany, Georgia, the turning point came while he was in the hospital for an operation. His father phoned when Alan was still groggy from anesthesia, and in his uninhibited state the patient blurted out, “I love you, Dad,” which he hadn’t said since elementary school. There was a pregnant silence on the line. Then, for the first time in Alan’s memory, his father said, “I love you, lad. Hang in there.” From then on, he writes, “Every time we had the chance to be together, he’d pour a couple of scotch and waters and we’d talk, man to man, about the good old days, about cars, women, and the military, and all the things I had always wished he would talk to me about. We knew we loved each other. We didn’t have to say it, but we said it anyway.”

Madeline Labriola, a retired teacher in upstate New York, had never felt close to her father, who seemed distant and unapproachable. When she went off to college, she was enormously homesick. One night, feeling despondent, she called home and her father answered. She doesn’t remember what they talked about, but at the end of the conversation, she surprised herself by blurting out, “Dad, I love you!”

“From that moment,” she writes, “our relationship changed. Those three little words pulled aside the curtain that had kept me from seeing my father for what he truly was—my protector, my provider, my cheerleader, my hero.”

There are many lessons in this book, and this, surely, is one of them: If you are a father, let your kids know, in plain English, that you love them. Yes, I know, it’s always implied, but even so, it’s a wonderful thing to hear—and to say. And if you are fortunate enough to have a father and he has never said those words, he may just need a little encouragement. It works in the other direction as well. One of the earliest letters I received came from Roger Howard, a real estate agent in Indianapolis.

A few years ago, his son, John, had planned to drive alone from Indianapolis to the West Coast after graduating from college. As the start of the trip approached, John began to understand the magnitude of the undertaking—the time, the distance, the unfamiliar roads, and (no small matter), the expense—and asked if his father could take three weeks and join him. As Roger put it, “Saying yes was one of the easiest and fastest decisions I’ve ever made.”

At the end of three wonderful weeks, John dropped his father at the San Francisco airport for his flight home. With time to kill before takeoff, Roger opened his shaving kit, where he found a note that John had written the night before, while his father slept, in which he told his father how important the trip and their relationship were.

“Long story short,” writes Roger, “I sat there in the middle of the airport, bawling my eyes out.”

Roger went on to offer a suggestion to me and other fathers. “Pick a destination somewhere in this country, and don’t fly,” he wrote.

“Drive there together. Camp some along the way. Find a great restaurant in each city you drive through and go in without a tie. Buy sandwiches and sodas for a cooler and eat at interstate rest areas or along state highways. Stop at local diners. Find a ballpark, whether it’s the major leagues, Little League, or the American Legion—and spend your evenings outdoors. Visit with the people you meet. You get the idea.”

I did get the idea, and I even took Roger’s advice, although it was a shorter trip in our case, and I compromised it to some extent by doing a few radio interviews during the drive, until Luke threatened to stop the truck unless I turned off the cell phone.

The fifth theme I noticed is that most of our correspondents are themselves fathers and mothers. That makes sense, when you think about it. A number of our contributors mentioned that it took them until adulthood—and sometimes well into adulthood—to fully appreciate what their father had given them or how he had shaped them.

More than one of our correspondents quoted or alluded to Mark Twain’s famous observation: “When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” The quote may be apocryphal— there is some doubt as to whether Twain actually wrote it—but the line still resonates.

I am enormously grateful to the many people who took the time and made the effort to send me a letter about their father. If yours was one of the overwhelming majority of submissions that I wasn’t able to include, I am truly sorry. There were so many wonderful stories that this book could easily have been issued as a multivolume set.

There is one contribution in particular that I want to mention. H. J. “Dutch” Bialke, who died in 2005, was a credit analyst in the small town of Park Rapids, Minnesota, about two hundred miles north of Minneapolis, where he and his wife raised eight children who adored their father. In 2001, on the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday, his children put together a booklet in which each of them listed seventy-five reasons why they loved him.

Barbara Bishop, a civil engineer in South Bend, Indiana, and one of Dutch Bialke’s eight children, told me that this was the best gift their father had ever received, and when I read it I could see why. Since then, she says, she has passed this concept on to other families, who have come up with one hundred reasons as a Valentine’s Day gift, fifty reasons for a golden wedding anniversary, and similar variations for notable birthdays, Mother’s Days, and Father’s Days. I can’t imagine a more meaningful gift.

I think of this book as a kind of full-voiced choir, a chorus of voices coming together from around the country, expressing their deep and well-deserved gratitude to the first man they ever really knew. For many years, fathers who have said or done things that may not always have made sense to their children have found themselves saying, or thinking, just as their fathers had, “Someday you’ll thank me.” For most of the fathers whose sons and daughters wrote the stories you are about to read, that day is finally here.