Losing a parent is probably one of life’s worst kicks in the pants. And there is little in life that prepares a person to deal with this inevitability. Former Florida Congressman Joe Scarborough of MSNBC’s Morning Joe has written a eulogy for his recently deceased father. It was published in Politico this morning, May 10, 2011.
It begins:
We measure success in many different ways. Some look to material wealth for the measure of a man, while others make their judgment based on a person’s political influence. Still others keep their focus on fame – even if that fame is gained for the wrong reasons. In the professions I have chosen – politics and media – winners and losers are sorted with a ruthless efficiency that has little tolerance for the kind of setbacks suffered by mere mortals.
My children have accomplished many things that would make any father proud. But none of those successes have made me as proud as when they’ve responded to failure with true grit and determination.
Joe continues to explain that his father’s greatest legacy was what he did when no one was looking.
My father enjoyed great success in his life. He rose above an abusive and lonely childhood to become a faithful husband, a loving father, and a businessman who was as generous as he was successful.
He loved the Lord with all his heart. He based his life around First Baptist Church, and was most fulfilled in his work with Samaritan Hands. Dad, a southerner by birth, was a remarkable baseball and football coach feared by his opponents in the corner of upstate New York where I was raised. I can still remember the Saturday afternoon in 1975 when his two-year-long football winning streak was broken. The Yankees on the sidelines threw their hats in the air. “We finally beat George!” they screamed before marching off to the tune of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.”
As we crossed the field I looked and saw my dad smiling. A new winning streak would begin the next week, and he had been through worse than losing a ballgame played by teenagers. Four years earlier, Lockheed had laid off Dad when the engine supplier critical to his project went bankrupt. As he approached his 40th birthday, my dad was out of work. I remember driving around the South with him for two years as he looked in vain for a good paying job. I remember the tears of my siblings at Christmas, the worried looks around the dinner table at nights, the $40 unemployment check that Dad got every week that allowed him to buy a bag of groceries and a tank of gas.
But it wasn’t until the day after he died last Wednesday that I found the diary he began writing the day he lost his job.
Wednesday April 28th, 1971: “Received notice of lay off.”
Thursday April 29th, 1971: “Gave Gil Carmichael copy of resume, registered with Mississippi Employment Office.”
Friday April 30th, 1971: “Registered with Coats and Coats, gave Harry Lackey a copy of my resume, interviewed at IDS.”
And so his daily diary went for the next two years, highlighting every job lead, every interview, every rejection notice and every hopeful possibility. He looked for a good paying job for two years but ended up taking a job without a salary, hoping that he could somehow feed his family of five on a straight commission arrangement.
Dad’s final entry in that diary was simple. “With the Lord’s help, I will do well.”
And he did. Over the next four decades, Dad worked without ceasing, raised three children, paid our way through college and supported us without fail time and time again.
My father enjoyed great worldly success. He made more money than he would have ever imagined on that day in 1971 when he was unceremoniously fired. He even gained a bit of fame this week, with his life story ending up in the Congressional Record and his name making POLITICO’s Playbook.
But for me, George F. Scarborough’s greatest legacy did not come from what he did when succeeding by the world’s standards, but what he did when no one was looking. Because of the singular focus he showed during his darkest days, my family and I stand on the shoulders of a giant who has given us the chance to dream big dreams and the example to get back on our feet every time we get knocked to the ground.
Thank you, Dad. We love you dearly and will work without ceasing to make you proud.
A guest columnist for POLITICO, Joe Scarborough hosts “Morning Joe” on MSNBC and represented Florida’s 1st Congressional District in the House of Representatives from 1995 to 2001.
A copy of the entire eulogy can be read at Politico.
Joe’s crew on Morning Joe read his eulogy for his father this morning and took the opportunity to talk about the many people who are out of work and who have had horrible difficulty finding a job. They spoke of what losing a job does to one’s dignity and feeling of self worth. They spoke of the struggle some people have faced for months, some even years now as a result of a cruel recession.
Most of all, the Morning Joe crew spoke of how only those who have been through this ordeal can really address the personal effect unemployment has on not just a person’s soul but also the soul of an entire family. Political drivel, rhetoric and ideology really becomes meaningless unless unemployment is a personal experience in a family.
Wishing Joe Scarborough comfort at his time of loss. Nothing prepares anyone for the journey one must take after losing a parent.
So no one has any feelings about unemployment in this country? I thought that employment was at the top of the priorty chart.
Is there anyone who hasn’t had their family touched by job loss? I know my own family has been hit by unemployment both when I was a child and again when I was a wife and mother. It is scary as a child and it is even more so when you are an adult and see your meager savings get eaten up by day to day living.
Most people lose their health care during unemployment. In the old days, the COLA cost more than the unemployment check that came in.
The final kick in the teeth is that your income from unemployment is taxed.
Moon, I did not read it as a point of unemployment; I read it as telling the Story of a Life. And also, for me personally, it is great Joe came to know his Father through his adult years. I lost my Father when I was 16…he died a year and a half after retiring from the USMC after 26 years of service. I see my Father as that Marine, and only learned his Story through talking through the years with his older brother.
The Story of a Life, with all the ups and downs, is more of the message I saw here.
@Raymond Beverage
@Moon-howler
I agree Raymond and than Joe for allowing this to be published. I think I only came to really appreciate my father after he was dead. He and I had a very stormy relationship when I was a teenager–I left home and joined the Navy after he and I had a heated argument and it was 4 years later that I found out I had misunderstood what he was saying. We never had a lot, but we were comfortable and my Dad pulled himself up by his bootstraps to provide for my Mother who suffered greatly with rheumatoid arthritis and two sons. There were many lean days because there was little health insurance early on and my brother and I spent a lot of time with our maternal grandparents. But we somehow made it. My military career turned out to be a good move and my brother wound up with a PhD. We far exceeded any income our Father ever had but he and our Mother were our anchors to windward. Some years ago I went home to a highschool reunion. While I was there I went to the cemetary to “visit” with my parents. I did something I never thought I would do–I laid down onthe ground and stretched my arms out across my parent’s graves and thanked them for all they had given me. It may sound very foolish, but it was a wonderful experience. In my heart of hearts, I know they heard me.
The Story of Life = the Circle of Life. As I am now in my sunset years, I have a new great-grandson, a loving wife, a large family and some close friends. I don’t know that we could or should expect much more out of life.
At Raymond, I saw it as you saw it and perhaps I communicated poorly about the unemployment thing. Joe’s morning colleagues talked about his father shaping his political thoughts rather than Joe being strictly a party person. They more or less reflected Joe’s views about the national employment situation and they spoke to the notion that even though Joe just found the diary, perhaps there were other ways the importance of employment was given to him by his father. I also didn’t put the entire eulogy up. I did provide the link.
@Raymond, your words about your father remind me of an experience I had regarding fathers.
When I was a little kid, I thought my father was the most wonderful human being in the world. I was an only child until I was 6. I then got another brother when I was almost 14.
Somewhere in there my father had a personality change. I don’t know if life kicked him in the tail once too often or if he actually had some sort of mild mental illness. He could function but he wasn’t the same person I had known as a little kid. He could turn and be horribly unpleasant on a dime. This characteristic remained from age 40 until his death when he was 80.
When he died, all of these oldish kind of men attended his graveside service in Charlottesville. My brothers had no idea who they were. I did. They were the ‘boys’ he had coached and they came to pay their last respects to their old coach who they hadn’t seen in decades.
That is when it hit me that my brothers never knew the neat guy that my father really had been. They knew a person who could have a fuse about a nanometer long and whose mood would ruin the best of days. I am glad I knew the good father rather than the unpredictable dad. I am very sorry they didn’t know him.
And there is a flip side though…they knew him more as an adult than I did because I got of out dodge as soon as I could and kept the visits short. So they knew him as adults much more so than I did.
George, I don’t think what you did was foolish at all. It was that day of recognition. I expect it really was a wonderful experience. My eyeballs sweat a little as I read your words.
Despite my storm relationship with my father, I totally understand the gratitude. I am most grateful to both of my parents and perhaps I had to get to be an old lady before I totally understood their sacrifices for their family and yes, their country also.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. This thread has taken a different turn than I had anticipated but it has taken a good one.
My father died at 48 before I was five years old. No way to save a heart attack victim in the early 30s. I can see a few vignettes in my mind, but I’m not sure whether they are real, or whether they come from what I’ve been told.
It’s a bit empty not to have memories of one’s father. Supposedly he was a man who liked to sing and dance. His profession was a forest manager/ranger, and we lived waaaay out in the woods After his death we moved to the nearest little town. I wonder what kind of person I would have been if my father had lived and I would have grown up in the woods rather than in a two-company town.
Maybe the same one you are now, Punchak.
God bless ya, George. “Honor thy father and thy mother.”
It is very possible to miss your father even though he may be alive and with you. My father lived to old age, but during the last five years or so he fell victim rapidly to Alzheimer’s Disease. There came a time when he no longer even recognized me or my brothers. Each time we talked to him, we had to tell him we were his sons and watch his failing memory try to absorb that news.
A year or so before the end, when he was still able to function physically somewhat, I was standing in front of his house in the dusk of evening. He came out and asked who I was and why I was in his yard. When I tried once again to explain that I was his oldest son and that I belonged there, he did not listen. His eyes just grew wide, and he started to run toward the door in that shuffling gait of an Alzheimers victim, crying out in fear to my mother that there was a strange man in front of the house.
I stood there in shock, devastated by the fact that my father, who had once been with me at every youth athletic contest, at every graduation, and many other times in my life, who had worried himself sick when I was in Vietnam or elsewhere on mission in foreign lands, was running away from me because he didn’t know me and was afraid of me. One of life’s real bummers.
Wolverine, that is probably the toughest of situations to take. Mine had dementia but not alzheimers at the end. He knew me. He was just slightly irrational. Just push me out at 36,000 feet. There is nothing I can say, not platitude that will make that one better. I feel fortunate that mine just dropped dead or to be more accurate…drifted off. It was quick.
Woverine–First–God bless you right back. I had a similar experience with my father during the last five years of his life. In the last three years he was in a nursing home, either restrained in a bed or in a chair since he would wander. No real Alzheirmer’s units like today. He didn’t know any of us as best we could tell since he could not communicate. I am sure he was firghtened and alone and it became a case of praying that his life, which was not living in my estimation, would soon come to a close. We normally pray for people to get better but there comes a point when the reality of the situation slaps up side the head and we say, “Lord, please let this end.”