A Father’s Day Tribute

Sunday is Father’s Day, and in honor of the occasion, I’m sharing an article I wrote about Dad in 2005 when I was a columnist for a local newspaper.

In many ways it felt like Dad was a remote figure when I was growing up, in part because I was one of two girls in a family of many boys, but also because he was caught up in what had to have been the all-consuming responsibility of providing for us. He was always busy, whether with his job as a baker or in the evening in his garden or basement workshop.

When I do recall his presence at 828, it is of him sitting on the couch reading the newspaper, for he loved politics and the nightly news, or at the head of the dinner table, where we gathered daily for supper. There he would often share what he’d read in the newspaper, of a superhighway being built that would allow you to drive from Sidney to Dayton in less than an hour or of the launch of the most recent spaceship.

I remember my father as a quiet and unassuming man whose gentle nature has been passed along to his children. Dad died in 1981 when I was 31, and while he seemed on the periphery when I was a child, I feel his influence in my life today.

A Quiet Caring Man

It is Sunday morning, and as I cook breakfast for my family, I slip on a stained white apron that hangs in the pantry. There are other prettier aprons I could wear, one that my mother sewed for me, a colorful print with deep, sensible pockets and another from my sister, Nancy, with a rooster on the front. But I usually prefer the old white one because when I slip it over my head I am reminded of my father, who wore it in his job as a baker.

The apron always hung on a nail in a stairwell leading to the basement. You could always smell when Dad was home from work, as the floury lard that clung to it drifted into the kitchen whenever one of us kids came through the cellar door. When I wear it today, I am reminded of my father, a quiet simple man who died at the age of 66.

With twelve children to support, my father was a very busy man at work and in his backyard garden, where he grew vegetables to feed his family. He was also busy in his basement workshop, where he often went after supper. There he made lye soap from the bacon grease he got at work, mended metal screens ripped by wayward baseballs, or fixed broken toys or the handle of a frying pan, all projects that stretched the family dollar. It is also where he cut his ten sons’ hair. One by one, they’d descend the stairs to his workshop and sit on a step stool under the naked light bulb that hung from a floor joist.

Growing up, I never had much one-on-one time with my father, and because of that I may have minimized his influence in my life. When I remember my childhood, I usually think of my mother as the one in charge, setting the rules, shaping who I became. I know today that that is only part of the picture.

Last week when I was leaving work, I walked by our department’s conference room and saw that the light had been left on. Thinking I was the last person on the floor, I turned it off. While I waited by the elevator, my boss emerged from his office and headed toward the conference room. I hadn’t realized he’d been working there, so I apologized for turning off the light.

 “I didn’t know you were still using the conference room,” I said. “I have a habit of turning off lights that aren’t being used.”

 “That’s okay,” my boss replied as he flipped on the light. “I like light-turner-offers.”

With the approach of Father’s Day, I have been thinking a lot about Dad. Certainly it was he who made me the “light turner offer” that I am. But I have come to appreciate other areas in which he has influenced me, like in my love of gardening and my interest in politics. I also have his quiet sense of humor, chuckling as he once did when something amused him. And today, like him, many of his children are easily identified as Kerbers by their silvery white hair.

To all men who guide and nurture others, some in their own quiet way like my father, Happy Father’s Day.

—Linda