Posted by Jim Powell on June 20, 2021 at 19:34:42 from 68.2.122.2 ip68-2-122-2.ph.ph.cox.net :
In Reply to: Ed Powell, 20 Years On posted by Jim Powell on June 20, 2021 at 19:19:14:
Okay, I guess this works. My thanks to Hank Priebe for doing this from the goodness of his heart 20 years ago. Well, he didn't do the amateurish website -- that was me in 2001 web development standards... lol. this Father's Day, 20 years after your passing Dad, I remember the way I've felt over the last two decades missing you. I haven't cried, though I did get swept up emotionally a few times in the months following your death. But that saddness and emotion quickly mellowed into a very comfortable... feeling of you, in my heart and head. As time passed I would smile inwardly when I realized that (for better or worse) I was indeed my father's son. In many, if not most "textbook" ways you were not a really skilled Dad. But the irony is, as I'm sure you realize, the textbooks are often wrong, or at least viewed differently through the lense of time. I don't want to make this post about me and become an exercise in humble-bragging about all the great things I've accomplished and how I owe it all to you. So let's just say that when you and I last spoke on our walk down Polipoli road near our house on Maui the future has exploded before me since that point. And any success I've had has had at it's core -- your belief in me, and Stephen and how you not only voiced that belief but acted upon it. Urging me to drop out of college in year two to take up with this new "life" I'd discovered in Aviation by working a part time job, or paying for half the cost of that advertisement you and I took out in the wall street journal in 1981 that led to my meeting the owner of DHL and Deb and I moving to Hawaii; you discouraging me from giving up when we were ready to pack it in in Chicago and move back to Buffalo... instead because of that, we ended up in Honolulu and the future was new again. You let me smoke cigarettes and 13, and drive the car since 14 and never made me do anything I didn't want to do -- what a lousy parent you were. But the gift you gave me and my brother, in the belief that we could make anything our "project" and even with little education, go out and do something unusual, and successful -- was amazing. The list goes on and on and on of all the counter-intuitive things that you did that were exactly the opposite of the conventional wisdom of being a parent. But you relied on faith -- faith in your two boys and the willingness to let us fail, but never suffer. So many times over the years, I smile and laugh and am so pleased thinking... I'm just like my Dad. What's even better is through the lens of time, I can see Mom's influence as well and even though I only knew her 15 years the two of you gave me a world that few people could dream of. Aloha Dad.