**A Legacy Beyond Service”**
As kids grow older, their parents grow wiser—at least, that’s how the saying goes. But in my case, it took more than just growing up to understand my father’s wisdom. He was a man who worked relentlessly, often 10 to 12 hours a day, seven days a week, like many of his generation who knew the sharp edge of poverty. What set my father apart wasn’t just his work ethic, but his perpetual optimism. To him, every challenge was an adventure waiting to unfold, no matter how difficult or even impossible it seemed to others.
He was a dreamer, filled with ideas that some might have called hair-brained—especially my mother—but his visions were always about helping others. Take the time he chopped the top off a donated school bus just so he could ferry horses to inner-city kids in Detroit. He ran a summer camp for inner-city youth in a notoriously racist suburb, facing down the threat of arson and hate symbols scrawled around the grounds. Every spring, he would return to that camp with plywood and paint, rebuilding what had been destroyed, never allowing hate to defeat him or deter his mission. Racists didn’t scare him. In fact, he scared them. I remember hearing that he wasn’t promoted within the church hierarchy because his congregation was too integrated—he was accused of driving away the wealthier white parishioners by welcoming too many Black families.
Unlike most Methodist ministers, who rotated through various churches, my father stayed in the inner city for his entire career. He was needed there, and he wasn’t one to turn his back on that need. It wasn’t that he was a man who did everything himself; if he lacked the skill to make his dreams happen, he’d find someone else who had it, igniting their passion for service. He knew how to unlock the potential in others and steer it towards the common good.
Yet, to me, he wasn’t just a man of lofty ideals and tireless work. He was my dad. And that meant everything. Despite the demands of his work, he found time for me. Some of my best memories are the times he’d pull me out of school for the first Tigers baseball game of the season. We never told mom about the time we watched in silence as streakers ran across the field, but it became one of those memories we shared just between us.
Fishing, too, was a bond we held dear. We’d spend hours in his hometown of Curtisville, Michigan. The whole ritual was magic—digging up worms for bait, gathering our gear from the old outdoor cellar, and stopping by the tiny country store where he’d buy candy bars with a laugh, saying, “Fish don’t bite well when you’re hungry.” He always believed we’d catch something, no matter the weather. On sunny days, rainy days, or windy ones, he’d declare the conditions perfect for fishing. We didn’t often catch much, but we caught something far more valuable—time together, a feeling that the world, with all its chaos, could slow down and center itself in those moments by the river.
I once told him I wanted to be a minister, just like him. That thrilled my mom, but by the time I was eleven, I had changed my mind. After spending the summer with my hippie siblings, I declared I wanted to be just like my brother instead. My rebellious teens followed, filled with disagreements and clashes. Between 14 and 18, I’m sure I disappointed him in ways only a father can feel. But he never yelled, never raged. He found his own way to discipline me—like taking the distributor cap off my car when I’d done something wrong, ensuring I couldn’t drive it until I had made amends.
Despite the friction of those years, he remained steadfast. As I grew older, I saw my father in a new light, and my respect for him deepened beyond measure. I started to recognize not just the work he did for others but the emotional toll that work took. He was a man who carried the weight of the world on his shoulders but never let it break him—at least, not until the death of his eldest son, Robert, who followed in his footsteps as a social worker. Robert’s murder in Detroit shattered him. He told me about his own father’s despair during the Great Depression, after losing his prized workhorses to the bank. “That broke my father,” he said, and I knew Robert’s death had broken him in the same way. He never truly recovered from that loss, and it left a shadow over his final years.
Yet, in those years, I was given a gift. My parents lived with me and my family for the last fifteen years of their life. In that time, I got to know him in a way I hadn’t before—his childhood, his insecurities, his dreams. It was as if the roles had shifted, and I was allowed to see the man behind the title of father and minister. He wasn’t just the sum of his accomplishments, as incredible as they were. He was gentle, introspective, and constantly wondering if he had done enough, if he was enough. To me, in those final years, he was more than enough.
When he passed, I grieved deeply. At his funeral, I found myself rubbing his forehead and talking to him, much to the concern of others. They thought I was losing it, but in truth, I was simply saying goodbye to a man no one fully knew, not even those who admired him for his work. They didn’t know the weight of his private burdens, or the love he carried in his heart for his family. He wasn’t just a leader to me—he was my dad. That’s the man I miss most.