The Best Father’s Day Gift

After the nurse took my blood pressure and left the room, I waited alone for the arrival of my physician. At my age, this particular moment of an annual physical can bring some long thoughts. What if this was the visit where my doctor said, “Well, Jeff, I’m afraid I have some bad news”? I began planning how I would tell my children and friends of my impending demise.

As I paced the small room, I stopped by the magazine rack, where there were several copies of “People” and even a “New England Journal of Medicine.” There was also a Bible. As I opened it, my finger fell on Proverbs 17:6: “Children’s children are the crown of old men; and the glory of children are their fathers.”

These words seemed useless in divining my health and my future, but they still knocked me back a bit. Just a few days earlier, I had taken on an assignment to write an article about Father’s Day. With the deadline looming, finding an angle on that holiday was proving difficult; contemplating my own death was much easier by comparison. Yet here at my fingertips was my topic for Father’s Day.

In the days of the patriarchal Hebrews, children took great pride in a wise, strong, and loving father, and basked in the light he reflected. On the other hand, a father who was foolish, weak, or evil drove a wedge of shame between himself and his offspring.

In our time, circumstances have changed, but the basic truth of the proverb remains. Just as parents and grandparents take enormous pride in the achievements and virtues of their daughters and sons, so in turn do children respect and love the sacrifices and integrity of their parents.

The idea gained support from politicians as different as Woodrow Wilson and Calvin Coolidge. Later, in 1957, Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine introduced a bill formally recognizing Father’s Day, writing, “Either we honor both parents, mother and father, or let us desist from honoring either one.” In 1966, President Lyndon Johnson officially set aside the third Sunday of June as Father’s Day, and in 1972, Richard Nixon made that designation permanent.

Search online for “characteristics of a good father,” and we find plenty of information. Many of these lists are naturally repetitive, with high marks given to attributes ranging from setting a good example to working hard for his family to being present for his children. These are the same high marks for character espoused by the ancient Hebrews and throughout history.

Father’s Day, then, is not just a time to honor dads because they are dads. It’s even more than just a holiday celebrating our own particular fathers. It’s a day when we also pay honor to the ideals of fatherhood itself, whose meaning may be tweaked by different cultures, but whose foundations always remain the same. Every father worthy of that name has his own strengths and weaknesses as a dad, and Father’s Day is an excellent occasion for him to reflect on the question, “How can I become a better dad?”

The great news, as most grandfathers know, is that most of us with grandchildren can be more relaxed in setting that example. We’re no longer tethered so strongly to the demands that come with raising a child. We can slip some chewing gum to the kids, for instance, and be a hero—several of my grandkids doubtless think of me as “Grandpa Gum.”

Perhaps most importantly of all, we can tell them stories about their parents when they were younger, and of our own boyhood days. In his classic book about his own grandfather, “The Old Man and the Boy,” Robert Ruark wrote, “The thing I like best about the Old Man is that he’s willing to talk about what he knows, and he never talks down to a kid, which is me, who wants to know things.” Sharing your experiences and knowledge is one of the most important gifts you can hand on to your children’s children.

Ruark’s grandfather also taught him in the ways of guns and hunting. As Ruark notes in his book: “I’m big enough to cuss now, and I’ve seen a lot of silly [...] fools misusing guns and scaring the daylights out of careful people. But they never had the Old Man for a tutor. Some people ain’t as lucky as other people.”

But the real gifts are those flesh-and-blood offspring you’ve helped create and shape. All that time and energy you invested in them on this day shines as a gift given by you to yourself and to the world. “Children’s children are the crown of old men,” reads the proverb, and they are also the crown of fathers young and old.

Your children and your children’s children are the greatest gift any man can receive on Father’s Day.