Remembering Dad on Father’s Day
Father’s Day is June 21.
If your father is still living, be sure to show him some attention and thankfulness. If you are a father, hopefully your children will spend some time with you away from the cell phone and other electronic devices.
For many of us, our fathers are just a memory, but Father’s Day is a good time to reflect on them and all they did for us as we grew up.
My father passed away in October 1980 at the age of 78, but I think of him often.
I have a much better appreciation of how he managed to raise six rambunctious boys.
I realize now that we were poor; we just didn’t know it because Dad always managed to provide for our basic needs. He was a truck driver for Texaco but at the same time had a magnificent garden as well as animals for food at our home in the country 11 miles west of Houma in Terrebonne Parish.
The sad thing for me is I was away from home during the last 14 years of his life. In 1966, I went to work in Washington, D.C., so the only time I got to see him was a couple of weeks a year when I took some vacation time. He and my Mom sacrificed a lot to get me there, paying for me to attend a Catholic high school and later providing what money they could when I was in college. Of course, I worked as much as I could to earn money to finance my education, knowing what a burden it was for them to find extra money for me.
I know now he was proud of me, even though he was never one to throw out compliments very often. Two proud moments for him stick out in my mind. When I flew into Belle Chasse with my boss Congressman F. Edward Hebert on a special jet provided by the Air Force, my older brother brought my Dad there, as I had asked, so he could meet the congressman. He was elated and talked about that forever.
The other moment came when I went with Congressman Hebert to the White House to meet with President Richard Nixon.
The picture of me with the two of them in the Oval Office ran on the front page of the Houma Courier with the headline, “Lou Burnett Meets the President.” He carried that issue of the paper with him everywhere he went. And since most people knew me because I had been sports editor at the paper while in college, they marveled to my Dad about me being in the Oval Office with the president.
He developed stomach cancer in the latter years of his life.
Every time I would drive away after spending my vacation with him, I had tears in my eyes as I headed up Highway 90 heading back to Washington. I wondered if I would ever get to see him alive one more time.
The call eventually came. My best friend from high school, Dickie Haydel, was his doctor, and Dickie called me and said I needed to come. Fortunately, I was able to fly down and get to the hospital while he was still able to converse with me. I held one hand and my Mom the other as he passed away.
While Mom made a few visits to Washington, Dad never did.
He always said he couldn’t leave the house and the dogs unattended. In our last conversation, he told me he was proud of me and if the Lord let him live just one more year, he wanted to make the trip to Washington. Later, we laughed about it, knowing that he would have found viable excuses not to make the trip. He did so, however, through home movies we showed him.
I think, too, about how times have changed.
Raising children these days is not an easy job in such a dangerous world. Permissiveness seems to be the order of the day. I often said that my Dad had the fastest belt in the parish. Whenever we misbehaved we got whipped with that infamous belt. Today, he would likely be put in jail for doing that. But the belt kept us out of trouble – most of the time.
Discipline by parents is needed more than ever these days, but it seems to be lacking with many children, who usually find themselves in serious trouble, which can affect them for the rest of their lives. It is taboo – and against the law – to physically discipline children in this day and age.
Fatherhood itself has changed as well. Fathers no longer are from a traditional marriage between a man and a woman.
Did you know that there are an estimated 8,000 same-sex couples in Louisiana? And 1,600 identified themselves as married in Census forms and an equal number are raising children.
I know Gov. Bobby Jindal would not approve, but I believe it is important for kids to have loving parents and a stable home environment, no matter who is raising them.
I am thankful I had that, and as often as I got mad at my Dad, I appreciate what he did for me under sometimes financial hardships – and with the belt.
Lou Gehrig Burnett, an award-winning journalist, has been involved with politics for 44 years and was a congressional aide in Washington, D.C., for 27 years. He also served as executive assistant to former Shreveport Mayor Bo Williams. Burnett is the publisher of the weekly “FaxNet Update” and can be reached at 861-0552 or louburnett@comcast.net.
