June 15, 2025

By Arthur H. Gunther III

thecolumnrule.com

It is Father’s Day, and many of us fortunate to be one cannot fully comprehend. Were we ever worthy? Personally, I think of this time as tribute to my own father. He had his warts, but long after his passing now, I so clearly see how fine a Dad he was. In that light, though I am the father of two sons, this is Arthur H. Jr.’s day.

My Dad was never afforded college or trade school training in the Great Depression. His father kept his job as foreman of a small smoking pipe factory in an equally small village where not everyone worked but neighbors helped each other. My grandmother would make sandwiches for the unemployed fellows who rode train box cars and stopped off in Spring Valley.

Arthur Jr. was well aware of his parents’ sacrifices, and like so many in the economic calamity, he left school to work, to help the family. He put his dream of success aside, first for the family then for a wife and two sons of their own. He held many jobs – about 20 – in his work life, from the teens to beyond normal retirement, making sure the bills were paid and his sons could have a chance to succeed even if that meant two jobs at once or getting new employment by nightfall if he lost a job in the morning.

Personalities being what they were, my father and I had enough word battles. It wasn’t until the fog cleared after his passing that I appreciated his utter sense of responsibility to family. He never shirked it, and the emotional wounding I rendered in those small but hurtful disagreements seemingly rolled off him. He just kept on going like the Energizer Bunny.

Surely that was tribute to his own father, who also kept family safe. So, on this Father’s Day, I recall both men and hope to have eventual conversation with Arthurs Sr. and Jr. and tell them what I failed to say in real life.

The writer is a retired newspaperman.

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