Question of the Day

As the logical (and requested) follow-up to yesterday's QotD: What do/did you love most about your dad?

I know that not everyone gets on with their dads, so if you'd prefer to talk about a favorite uncle, or a grandpa, or an older brother or friend, or any other sort of dad-substitute, that absolutely counts.

There are a lot of things I love about Papa Shakes, but the first thing that comes to mind is that he is civic-minded and gives generously of his time. Besides having been a public school teacher and coach his whole career and having served as president of his church congregation like nine gazillion times, he does all sorts of things in the community—he runs bingo games at a local retirement home; he does walk-a-thons; he organized a local Healing Field of American flags to honor fallen soldiers.

One of his most important endeavors the past few years has been giving talks at schools, offices, civics groups, etc. about shaken baby syndrome. It's his part of a prevention of child abuse program that was undertaken by a community organization with which he's involved, and he's given seminars a bunch of times now. Once, when he was out for a walk, a guy who was roofing a house yelled to him to stop, then came down and ran over to talk to him. He'd seen my dad's picture in the paper with a story about shaken baby syndrome. "I used to bounce my baby up and down all the time without realizing I could hurt her," he said. "I would never want to hurt my baby, and I just wanted to thank you so much for doing what you do, or else I never would have known."

That's pretty cool.