Family Bios- My Dad

As you know from my previous post, I have recently moved halfway across the country. This is my first time living outside of my parent’s house and away from my brother and sisters. It has made me realize how dependent I have been on my family, and how much I miss them now. So, I decided to steal an idea from my wonderful and lovely sister, who did this exact same thing on her blog, bethanyerin.com. I will be creating a short bio for each of my family members. Starting with, as the title of this post indicates, my father.

My dad was born and raised in a small Texas town, even smaller than the small Texas town I was born and raised in. His parents divorced when he was in high school, if I remember correctly. I only mention this fact because lately I have realized how big of a role this must have played in my dad’s life. He and my mom have played the most influential roles in my life. I can’t imagine how it would affect me if they had divorced. Yet, my dad came through that and still has been able to have a marriage that has lasted over 35 years.

My parents were married when my dad was 19, he then went on to graduate college, after having 5 kids. He graduated college through a variety of means, including correspondence courses, traditional classes, including traveling over 300 miles in order to attend those classes. While he was in school, he would work 40 hours over the weekend in order to support myself, my siblings, and my mother. His willingness to work however hard or long, or as many jobs as needed to support us, has always been one of the things I’ve admired most about him.

Some of my fondest memories of my dad were pretty typical, him and me, out throwing a baseball or football around. I’ve often told people he ruined me athletically in those sports, considering I suck at both of them; while soccer and basketball, two sports we typically didn’t play together, I am fairly competent at. All joking aside, I loved those times when my dad would ask if I wanted to play catch. There is five years age difference between my older sister Rebekah, and my second oldest sister Bethany, while there is four years difference between Bethany and myself. Conversely, there is only about a year and a half between myself and my younger brother, Daniel, with another year and a half between Daniel and my youngest sister Hannah. Owing to the age differences my parents seemed to group us as, Rebekah, then Bethany, then, BenDanielHannah. I’m sure it made perfect sense from a parental standpoint, but I never much liked it. However, when I was playing catch with my dad, it was just the two of us.

I have been blessed to have a dad who not only provided for me, gave me an awesome male role model to follow, but is also a friend. Some people say that parents should be friends to their kids. I disagree, I think parents should be friendly to their kids, but first and foremost parents should be parents to their kids. However, as I reached the point where I needed a parent less and less, my dad and I were able to develop a strong friendship. I enjoy talking to my dad; I admire the man he is and respect how he sees life. My dad also has a very good sense of humor, a little off the wall at times, but if you know me at all then you know that is exactly the type of humor I appreciate. Whether it’s sports, politics, life experiences, or just laughing at some random commercial, we always manage to have a good conversation.

However, I believe the most telling story I can tell you about my dad, would have to be the most recent. Every year my dad and his siblings, plus my siblings and all our cousins try and meet up for a weekend. Because I was furiously trying to finish up my car in order to move to PA I was unable to go. However, the rest of my family did. They left out on a Friday and returned the following Monday. My dad, knowing how important moving to PA was to me, and also knowing my car wasn’t reliable, offered to follow me on the way up there. Since he had that week off of work already he volunteered. So, after driving 8 hours on Friday, partying all weekend, and then driving 8 hours on Monday, he turned back around on Tuesday and left to follow me on a 21 hour drive. It’s a long story, one I will probably devote an entire blog post to at some point, but we ended up traveling almost 11 hours Tuesday, about 8 more Wednesday, then we followed that up with over 12 hours on Thursday, arriving in PA shortly after midnight. That alone would have been taxing; however, my dad wasn’t finished. We spent Friday morning and afternoon moving my stuff into my apartment, then the early part of Friday evening buying groceries and running errands. He also runs sound for our church on Sunday mornings, so instead of staying another night he headed back to Texas around 7:30 Friday evening, got back in Paris early Sunday, just in time to sleep a little then run sound, and be back at work on Monday. There were multiple other things my dad did during this trip, however I don’t care to post them on the World Wide Web. I honestly don’t know if anyone will ever be able to do something that will mean more to me than what my dad did during that trip.

When I was seven or eight I had to write a paper on my hero. At the time I was a huge Texas Ranger’s fan, so I started writing about Juan Gonzalez. A couple sentences into the paper I started thinking and realized that as much as I liked Juan Gone, he really wasn’t who I considered to be my hero. Not much has changed in 16 years; my dad is still my hero.