“Dads are most ordinary men turned by love into heroes, adventurers, story-tellers, and singers of song.” –Pam Brown
My dad is my hero, even though he is over 80.
He was the first in his family to go to college, on an ROTC scholarship. Less than three months after pinning on as a 2nd Lt. was The Cuban Missile Crisis and a few years later was Vietnam.
He did Grad school part time, built a business from scratch, and set a standard of excellence in his field I will never be able to equal but strive for. He gave me an untarnished name and the desire to keep the name golden.
My pop did not have the financial wealth of others but gave me a rich life full of lessons and potential. He did not have the crazy stories of others, but his tales from his childhood and before I was born inspire and inform.
He can’t sing. I mean he’s really horrible, and I inherited that. But he sings with gusto (especially at church) because it is heartfelt and that gives his words more power.
Look at your own father, your first hero. Assess them. Learn from them. Then thank them and try to exceed them, because that is what all fathers want for their kids: to be even better than we became.