Question of the Day!

I do not believe my understanding of family values comes from a single source. As I sit trying to remember my youth, I see a thousand moments that impacted my thought processes. I remember my great-grandfather reading a telegram from Lawers in Austria asking him to sign off on old family property in downtown Vienna. His brother's family was suing the government for reparations for property seized in WWII. He refused saying they (the Lawyers) were all Nazis and he wasn't going to help no matter how much money they offered. The number was $40,000 in 1959 dollars. I have known no one to refuse such value for nothing but principle.

My great-grandmother Eva, without crying, used to tell stories about prewar Europe that seemed unbelievable until I grew up and discovered they were true.

My maternal grandparents showed us how married folk were supposed to act. I never saw or heard anyone arguing or speak an angry word to anyone, much less to each other.

My grandfather often got chastised by Nana for not charging his customers enough. He would reply, "Yes, I know, but one day there will be a lot of folks at my funeral." To this day, his internment procession may have been the most attended in Saint Petersburg, Florida; they numbered in the thousands, and it took five large vans to transfer the flowers to the cemetery.

My dad grew up in absolute poverty after, at the age of five, watching his father die in front of him. He became a county sheriff, a well-respected community leader. He left me and his grandchildren well beyond average means. And he never took credit for his accomplishments. He said it ten thousand times that everything he had was because of my mother's nagging and prodding.

My mother worked for the US government and was one of America's first female engineers. Years before Feminism was born. In the early 1960s, she and her team developed and designed the trigger mechanisms for the Navy's underwater nuclear missile program. Yet she still found time to dress up like a witch and bring cupcakes and apple dunking supplies to my elementary school Halloween celebrations.

All these family members stayed married to each other for fifty-plus years. Which somehow became a key point for me when I finally gave up my wandering ways as a young man to marry my wife of now 46 years. (Lord, grant me at least four more years!)

I have countless examples of good fortune in my life, and no single person or event molded or prepared me for the accomplishments I have managed. There is a sliver of everyone in the mix... So the biggest influence on my family values... is my family, past, present, and my hopes for the future. Through them, we all live forever.