Prior to my son’s arrival into the world, Father’s Day had become just another day since my own dad’s passing in 1992. Since I’ve become a father I’ve come to realize what Father’s Day is really about. It’s not about the Old Spice, the dress socks or the hankerchiefs (all gifts that my dad got from us at some point) It’s about the impact that you have on you’re children while you’re here and after you’re gone.

I’m a sports journalist/columnist today because of my father - I remember as a kid he would buy me books on sports before I could even read. I would lok through them and the images would tell me all I needed to know. Ali standing over Sonny Liston in their second encounter, Hank Aaron hitting 715, Joe Namath barking out signals in Super Bowl III among others. 

I remember him teaching me to write on the lined paper with the red, yellow and green lights on the left margin and if it wasn’t to his liking, I had to do it over and over until it was done right.

As I began to familiarize myself with athletes and teams in the sportsworld, I would get a history lesson on the sport and the player. Football is my first love and I think the old man forced it upon me. He always talked about Jim Brown and  O.J. Simpson and how great they were. We would sit and watch games on Sunday all day we tuned in to the NFL Today (Man, I miss Jayne Kennedy). We would sit back and watch Ron Jaworski get terrorized by the likes of Lawrence Taylor Randy White, Ed “Too Tall” Jones and Dexter Manley Sunday after Sunday - but through it all we stuck by the Eagles.

  

My dad was a huuuuugggggeeeeee boxing fan, ABC’s Wide World of Sports on Saturday afternoon was a must, whether it was gymnastics watching Kurt Thomas work out on the pommel horse or the uneven bars or the Harlem Globetrotters. But we tuned in for the boxing and I would get to see some of the All-Time greats; Matthew Saad Muhammad, Dwight Braxton (Dwight Muhammad Qawi) Michael and Leon Spinks, Ernie Shavers (who for some reason scared me as a kid) Ken Norton, and others. But there was this young chiseled heavyweight that was involved in some of the best fights I had ever seen, He would go on to win the title and not duck a challenge. Of course I’m talking about Larry Holmes. The red and white shorts with the sick red and white PONY shoes. Holmes was the Ali of my day, as the Ali that my Dad grew to love was on his way to retirement, Holmes was passed the torch and didn’t look back. His loss to Michael Spinks was something I had trouble coming to terms with, he seemed that unbeatable.

  The Easton Assassin

My dad was an emotional man as well, a trait I know I inherited from him. I remember when the 1980 U.S. Boxing team lost 14 fighters in a plane crash in Warsaw, Poland I remember my dad saying, “They were just kids, they were just kids.” Among them was Philadelphia fighter Lonnie Young, who has a recreation center named in his honor in the Germantown section of the city. James Shuler was supposed to be on that flight was well but his mother asked him not to go because she had an uneasy feeling about the trip. Ironically, Shuler would lose his life in a motorcyle accident in 1987, weeks after losing at the hands of Thomas Hearns.

As I entered my teenage years dad and I would do all types of crazy stuff, we would jump one another from behind if the other wasn’t looking. But the funniest thing had to be that by this time he and I were wearing the same size shoes and he wanted to wear my old sneaks that I didn’t wear anymore…or so he tought. I gave him his choice of the one’s he could have but the new ones were off limits. The man would literally raid my closet for a starter jacket, hat and sneakers. The old man would go to work in an old pair and leave them in his locker just so I wouldn’t get them back…like I really wanted them back.

It went on like that all through high school, me and the old man were close, just like it should be. There were some bumps in the road but at the end of the day that was my Dad.

When I graduated high school, he was tanked at the graduation, he would stand up, pump his fists and call my name, I never felt more proud. When it was over, he just grabbed me and cried, Dad dropped out in the 11th grade to enlist in the Marine Corps, did two tours in Nam and came home. So in essence my graduation was his graduation, I understood why he pushed me when he was teaching me to write, why he didn’t let me quit the basketball team but told me to work harder and do whatever it takes within reason to be successful. It all became clear on that day.

Dad passed two years later, even though he was gone I felt like he had raised a man, I know that he didn’t get the chance to tell me everything but his actions spoke volumes. He never struck my mother or my sisters. Of course, I would be the one to get it for breaking a chandelier bulb swinging a stick in the house. He never stepped out on us he and my mom went through some tough times and mom put him out once or twice but she never took the key, so he came back everyday and still paid the bills. He was a Dad, anyone can be a father but to be a DAD, there’s something behind that, something special. When your child calls you Dad or Daddy in any tone something goes through you man that I can’t explain. I’ve been called alot of things but being called Dad tops them all.

The last thing that I said to my father was that, “I hope that I’m everything to my children, that you were to me.” I didn’t name Quentin after me because he would never meet his grandfather and I wanted our names to be that final bond between me and Dad. Sometimes I wonder what he would think if he were here today knowing that I’m witing about sports. Probably what he used to always say.

“I’m real proud son.” 

 

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