In Your Living Years

I am dedicating this blog to a great man, Gorman Fisher, aka Big Daddy.
I grew up with a dad who worked a lot. His work was important to him, but it wasn't until later that I truly realized why. As I kid, I wanted him to play with me, be at my baseball games, soccer games, scouting events, and while he made some of them, his attention to his work seemed to take precedence. I remember that when we did play pool together, he would beat me again and again, and was amazed that I would come back for more. But what he taught me was that he didn't play down to me, he challenged me to play better, and when I did beat him, I knew I got his best.

When I was 8, my brother died, and while this was painful to experience as a child, I now, as a father, can more dearly understand how difficult this must have been for him. My Father tried to revive him when he found him on the floor, and his best efforts could not bring him back to life. It was in this time, as I reflect back, that my dad was selfless in times that required strength. My parents' priority was to make sure that we, as a family stuck together, and while they both mourned the loss of their child in somewhat silence, in a time when expression of emotion was not the norm, they continued to support their children the best they knew how.

As a family, we stayed together, and I remember that my Dad worked hard to make that following Christmas memorable. I think what my parents learned from the loss of their son was that life was precious and time together was important.

I remember my Dad and I usually making an annual trek to a Browns or Indians game when I was growing up, especially the Monday Night game against the Cowboys. Man was it cold. I grew up wanting more from my Dad, without understanding him and how he showed love. I didn't appreciate his hard work and his humility. I now do. It was important for him to find me jobs at his office. That was how he connected with me. I was often known as the boss' son, and while there were a few times I let him down, he never made it more about him, but I knew his expectations.

In my high school and college years, I had a few run-ins with my Dad, but instead of pushing me away, yelling or becoming aggressive, we had the brief, but serious talk, and he never held things over my head. He understood my humanness.

The summer before I was getting ready to graduate from college, he would call me from work and ask me to meet him for lunch. I would, and we would talk. He would listen, and he said he was sorry. He said that he knew he worked too much, and buried himself in his work after my brother died. He didn't want his grief to be our grief. He believed his job was to be strong.

When my Dad was running a company outside of Detroit (while my parents still lived in Cleveland), I just graduated from college on my way to Grad school. He asked me to work for him to design and build the landscaping around their major rebuild of the company grounds. We spent the summer driving to and from work together (Dad, the left lane is for people who like to drive faster than the speed limit). Even when he asked me to do this, I didn't realize how much he believed in me.

We had some of the best talks driving to and from work and to and from Detroit to Cleveland for the weekends. What he also told me about why he worked so much then was that he felt it was his job to make sure that we had the ability to do the things as kids so that we could have a better life, and he was felt fortunate that he loved what he did.

And when my wife and I moved into our first house, with the help of my parents, he came to help landscape our yard with me. That is when my Dad realized I was an adult when I said, "Dad there are 50,000 ways to plant a rose, and it will still grow. Trust that you taught me well." While I added an expletive to my comment, he stopped, listened, filtered and trusted my judgment.

And when my f