When I heard the news yesterday of the passing of George H.W. Bush, I didn’t think of politics. I didn’t recall his Presidency at all. I thought of my Dad.
They were the same age. They both served their country in the Pacific theatre in WWII at a very young age, both in the Navy. They both fathered sons and daughters who loved them dearly. And towards the ends of their lives, they suffered from Parkinson’s disease. Everytime I saw a photograph of the former president he reminded me of my father. They even began to favor each other, the way they held their mouth, the way they smiled.
Of course, aside from these similarities, there was a wide gulf between the two. While George H.W. Bush was born into great wealth, my Dad was born into rural poverty. Instead of prep school, it was back breaking farm work for my Dad. While Mr. Bush was making his fortune in the West Texas oil fields, my Dad was loading trucks on the midnight shift on a dock in New Orleans as a Teamster, trying to put food on the table for his four children while a full time student at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Still, I have always connected these two men in my mind. They both had a great internal reservoir of dignity and class. They both possessed an abiding sense of duty to serve. It’s what drove them both to defy their fathers and enlist in the military at 18 the day after Pearl Harbor. It was and is difficult to find one of their contemporaries who had a bad thing to say about either of them. They were real men in an age where it is getting more difficult to find them.
Rest In Peace, George Herbert Walker Bush, 41st President of these United States.
Rest In Peace, Emmett Douglas Dunnevant, Dad, Grandfather, greatest man I’ve ever known.
No comments:
Post a Comment