I had a nephew spending the summer working in town, and one of the best parts was telling him stories about his dad.
Apparently no one told him about when his dad played football -- and how in the last game of the season, between the only two undefeated teams left in the state, the other team tried three plays against Daniel's side of the field and ran every other play in the game the other way. Daniel's team won that game 32 to 0 with Dan stealing an interception out of the arms of a receiver in the end zone to stop the only score the other team almost made.
No one told him about the time Dan jumped into a fast running stream to save another kid's life (he was only eleven or so himself at the time). It was summer in Canada, so the water was at least forty degrees.
Or when Dan commuted to graduate school, how he carried a complete set of metric and english socket wrenches so that when he came upon people who were broken down he would be sure to have the tools he needed when he stopped to help.
Or the many hard and unfair things that both Dan and his first wife went through in their lives. They both overcame an awful lot.
Or that Daniel's profound dyslexia was not diagnosed until he was a senior in college. Academic support contacted him, hoping to help him before he flunked out. He sighed, explained it would have been nice if they had contacted him sooner, but he was about to graduate at the top of his class, so it was just a little late.
Seems his son did not know about his dad's undefeated regular season in wrestling either.
Anyway, there is an awful lot of good to say for Daniel, so I thought I'd say it, since it seems he never got around to saying it for himself.
6 comments:
Wow, that's quite a list! Daniel also has a really fantastic brother who blogs, by the way.
Great post. I wonder how many other Daniels there are out there- humble people who live lives of service that we just don't know about.
The thing that really amazed me is how little his kids knew about the wonderful brother I knew.
I couldn't figure out how to post a comment on your "torture not an option post," so, here instead. My take, Never. That's how often torture works. Why? Quite simple. For the torturee (terrible word, how about victim?) to get the torturer to stop, he/she must say something the torturer deems worthwile enough to cease and desist. What, exactly would that be? Whatever the torturer thinks is most important. So...torture reinforces whatever the torturer belives in the first place--the worst possible way to think you are gaining information.
This is pretty easy to prove. What has the "war on terror" complete with torture gotten us in the way of intelligence? Zip. Nada.
Stephen,
I can understand how little his kids knew about him. It was the same with my siblings regarding my father. We had no idea what he had sacrificed for my mother until a few years ago; we greatly underestimated him all the years we were growing up.
If you didn't read it when I posted it on T&S, you can read it on my blog. It's in the "Tribute" category - titled "My Niece Died This Morning".
Here is my comment to your post at your blog, Papa D.
Ray, I've read this before, but seeing your link to it on Mormon Matters I wanted to tell you that this is a great post and a great tribute to your father.
May 15, 2008 1:47 PM
It was a great tribute.
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