Happy Father's Day

Here's a blurb out of an essay i'm working on about the influences i had growing up that led me to public service:

While Mom was township clerk, Dad served as a volunteer fire fighter. From him, we learned never to let the gas gauge get below ¼ tank; you never knew where you might need to rush off to and running out of gas was unnecessary. We parked the car backed in, so he could take off in a hurry in the middle of the night. We made sure our piles of coats and boots and mittens and hats and scarves didn’t cover up his fire boots in the porch. We all learned as soon as we were old enough to dial the phone how the phone tree worked; we’d get a call from a fire fighter’s wife and send Dad off while we called down the line the numbers marked for Mom. It was important when we took the message to know whether the guys who lived closer to the fire hall got the trucks and if Dad needed to get a truck or just meet them at the fire. He’d grab the helmet and coat and boots from the porch and screech his way out of the driveway. Dad would come home exhausted hours later and tell us about the suspected arson or about the Christmas tree that had gotten too dry or about the chimney fire or about how unsafe trailer houses are once a fire gets started.



Dad also served as a minister, Sunday School teacher, sewer inspector, and grave digger, on top of being a father of ten and a full-time millwright in the mines. He ran for school board one year and was beaten badly but continued to serve on school committees to push his view that spending money on classroom instruction was more important than school athletics.

Thanks, Isa, for being a great role model!
 
e.