Thunder6 on Father's Day

None of my nonsense needed on this one.

One of my favorite pictures is of a laughing little boy lofted up on his father’s shoulders. Many years have passed since the camera captured that snippet of time - now I’m as old as my father was when the picture was snapped. But in many ways my father is still holding me up.
My father was born on the emerald green island of Java in the middle of World War II. As the war drew to a close my father’s family left the bloodied Pacific for the damp fields of the Netherlands. My dad spent the next few years struggling to adapt to the rigid educational system of post-WWII Holland. At the time the school system was a cold assembly line that used standardized tests to sort students into predestined futures. By the time he was fifteen his academic scores forever closed the door to his dreams.
But my father would not be so easily denied. Rather then numbly accept a future preordained by a few pen strokes my father joined the crew of a merchant marine cargo vessel. When he boarded that ship he left behind the only home he had ever known, and every person he had ever met. I am still awed at the courage it must have taken to simply walk away from everything familiar and leap into the unknown. But leap he did, and when he finally came to rest it was on the shores of the United States of America.
And in America my father finally found a place big enough to hold his dreams. Over the next decade he found a good job as an electronics technician, became a US citizen, and met my mother. His dreams had found fertile ground in the bright sun of southern California. A few years later I was born - the first child of eight. Although we never had a lot of money we were rich in all the ways that really matter. Every facet of my character was chiseled by his firm counsel, and by watching my father I learned what it meant to be a good man.
I learned strength of character is more enduring then any feats of physical aptitude. I learned to take a fall, but more importantly how to persevere. I learned to treat all men with dignity, and to see through the crippling illusions of class and creed. I learned the sanctity of hard work, but that family always comes first. And I learned that all the money in the world can’t buy back a man’s sacred honor.
I grew up around children with more money. Their father’s had bigger houses, faster cars, more prestigious jobs. But I never cared – I had a better dad. My father’s powerful blood courses through my veins and for that I am ever thankful. Happy Father’s Day Dad. Thanks for everything.