city of hiawatha

My dad was a talented singer-songwriter and a born showman. He played guitar and steel guitar, and could pick up most other instruments by ear. Happily—for my mother and me—Dad chose family over chasing fame. Before he married Mom, when he was touring with a country band in the early 1970s, he played in many venues up and down the Midwest, mostly dance halls and bars. Along the way, he met several up-and-coming stars, including Dolly Parton and Glen Campbell. But the story from his band days that makes me proudest came at the end of his touring career. One night after a show in a city in Wisconsin, some women who worked as prostitutes came up to talk with Dad. They did so because he had treated them with respect—the way he treated everyone. He was polite and genuinely friendly, asking about their families, their hobbies, and the music they liked. A few months later, when the band returned to that same bar, those women brought Dad a gift. They had baked him homemade pies. (Apparently, in their earlier conversation, he had mentioned his weakness for pie.) Of all the men they had ever encountered, Dad was the only one who didn’t put them down—but instead offered simple dignity, without expecting anything in return. One of the women who brought him a pie had her arm in a sling, a swollen lip, and a black eye that makeup couldn’t conceal—wounds from a so-called “real man” she had met earlier that week. More than 50 years later, Dad would get tears in his eyes remembering those women—their work born of desperation, the abuse they endured, and their unexpected gesture of kindness. It was then that he decided it was time to leave the world of entertainment, which he had barely entered, and return to Kansas. Since Dad’s death, I’ve heard people say, over and over, how much they appreciated him for the way he treated everyone with respect—regardless of whether society or religion would have deemed them worthy. In a world where nearly anyone can become a father, it takes something deeper to be a real Dad. May God grant us more Dads like mine.