for the love of my fatherover the years, i never thought of my father as being very emotional, and he never was, at least not in front of me. even though he was 68 years old and only five-foot-nine, while i was six feet and 260 pounds, he seemed huge to me. i always saw him as being that staunch disciplinarian who rarely cracked a smile. my father never told me he loved me when i was a child, and i never held it against him. i think that all i really wanted was for my dad to be proud of me. in my youth, mom always showered me with “i love you’s” every day. so i really never thought about not hearing it from my dad. i guess deep down i knew that he loved me, he just never said it. come to think of it, i don’t think i ever told him that i loved him, either. i never really thought about it much until i faced the reality of death.
on november 9th, 1990, i received word that my national guard unit was being activated for operation desert shield. we would convoy to fort ben harrison, indiana, and then directly to saudi arabia. i had been in the guard for 10 years and never dreamed that we would be activated for a war, even though i knew it was what we trained for. i went to my father and gave him the news. i could sense he was uneasy about me going. we never discussed it much more, and eight days later i was gone.
i have several close relatives who have been in the military during war time. my father and uncle were in world war ii, and two brothers and a sister served in vietnam. while i was extremely uneasy about leaving my family to serve my country in a war zone, i knew it was what i had to do. i prayed that this would make my father proud of me. my father is very involved in the veterans of foreign wars organization and has always been for a strong military. i was not eligible to join the veterans of foreign wars because i had not been in a war zone—a fact that always made me feel like i didn’t measure up in my father’s eyes. but now here i was, his youngest son, being shipped off to a foreign land 9,000 miles away, to fight a war in a country we had barely heard of before.
on november 17, 1990, our convoy of military vehicles rolled out of rural greenville, michigan. the streets were filled with families and well-wishers to see us off. as we approached the edge of town, i looked out the window of my truck and saw my wife, kim, my children, and mom and dad. they were all waving and crying, except for my father. he just stood there, almost like a stone statue. he looked incredibly old at that moment. i don’t know why, he just did.