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closeAs a boy, I presumed that I was inherently different from my folks. It was many years later that I realized how I was much like my mother and my father, in ways large and small.
With that in mind, and with today being Father's Day, I asked several local dads this question:
"In what ways are you like your father, and when did you first became aware of your similarities?"
Here are their answers.
BOB KELLER, BELLINGHAM
At about age 16 I realized that I could wear any of my father's clothes or shoes. Exact fit at 6' and 155 pounds with a 32-inch waist. That remained true when he was 80 and I was 50.
Today, at age 73, I still have and use a pair of his work shoes, 25 years after his death. We also have exactly the same name.
LARRY MCCARTER, BELLINGHAM
I am told my voice is my father's. When I speak, people hear my dad's voice coming from me.
I am not sure about our eyes, skin or hair. These things, I suppose, are much the same but, because he is older, it is hard to compare.
Despite what others say, to me, his voice does not sound like mine. All I know is I am always trying to be the kind, hardworking, thinking person he is. Though I like the notion of sounding like my father, I certainly want to be more like him than only sound like him.
LEN HANSEN, BELLINGHAM
Einar Leonard Beck Hansen, my father, was born in 1903, the son of Danish immigrant parents. His father was a Lutheran minister and missionary sent to the United States to create congregations, build churches and then move on to state after state after state.
Dad married in 1929 in San Francisco amid the economic disaster of the Great Depression. His job disappeared in the middle of that financial morass, so he joined the WPA — the Works Progress Administration — to labor at whatever task was needed to build federal government-funded projects. In that assignment he realized his true love for a career. He found that he loved wood and could create wondrous works of cabinetry and carpentry.
Following the Great Depression the first serious jobs that were open to him were in the grocery business, and he set his career desire aside to start as a stocker and clerk, rising to produce manager, and then, in 1939, to be selected as the first manager of a Safeway supermarket in the United States. He was a recognized success. But then fate and a drunken driver intervened.
On December 2, 1941, that drunken driver slammed his car into my father in a crosswalk. Doctors said that any other person but my father would have died immediately. The vehicle assault destroyed half of his internal organs, and it took a year of surgery and healing before he could return to work.
When he returned to his company, their response was simple and final: “We don't want damaged people on our staff; you are fired.” In 1942, companies could do that, even according to law.
At a time when people everywhere in this country were angry, he did not raise his voice in anger. Instead, he thought about his direction, his dream, and restarted by working at the bottom as an apprentice carpenter and cabinet maker, working creatively with wood.
Within a few years his work and creativity was recognized as best in the Northern California area. Fine homebuilders competed for his work and product, bragging (and raising prices) when they had windows, doors and cabinetry by Ed Hansen (they used “Ed” because virtually no one could figure out how to pronounce “Einar”).
Throughout his life I never heard my father raise his voice. “Nothing is communicated and nothing is solved when people are screaming at each other,” was his oft-stated comment.
Throughout his life, he adhered to the long-taught Danish practice of making a serious consideration only after sleeping on it, never reacting and deciding in the rush of the instant.
Throughout his life, he never told me of any disappointment in my lack of woodworking interest or skills but, instead, commended and encouraged me forward in whatever form of creativity that was mine. He taught me this in spite of the Irish (my mother's) side of the family that mandated “get a job in civil service because they can't fire you.”
Am I my father's son? Yes.
Throughout my life of 75 years, in an “almost” way, I have lost my temper only three times, while he never did.
Throughout my life, I have taken decisions seriously and have “slept on them” for at least one night. And it has really worked.
Throughout my life, I have focused on my creative ability and have worked and done well in radio and television, as a journalist and editor in newspapers, as a marketing communications specialist, as a syndicated newspaper columnist and more in reaching, informing and motivating fellow citizens.
Yes, when times were challenging, I worked for the post office, did my time as a draftee in the United States Army and, as a kid, delivered newspapers and stocked grocery store shelves when there was need for additional income in the family. But that is what my Father did several times.
Am I, in fact, my father in the second generation? Yes.
And I am proud of it.
JOHN LESOW, POINT ROBERTS
I knew from an early age that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to equal my father's level of attainment.
Dad was a Marine, an attorney, the president of a corporation, a farmer, and a rancher. He was a 33rd Degree Mason, a sportsman, a civic leader and an ardent conservationist.
Dad's father was a decorated infantryman in World War I. When he returned from Europe in 1918, he was seriously debilitated by months in the trenches and the poisoning effects of mustard gas. He never recovered.
It was up to my father and grandmother to support the family. Dad never had a childhood, but he made sure my sister and I did.
Life with Dad was an adventure. Even when we were young, he treated us like grown-ups. He took us to museums, Broadway shows, national parks and up in open airplanes. He taught us how to ride a horse bareback, shoot a rifle and drive a car with a manual shift.
My father accomplished more in his brief 59 years than most men do in a lifetime. My sister and I adored him. We were always vying for his attention, along with others that wanted a share of his time.
My sister and I were never pressured by our parents. They seemed to know that their approbation was enough to keep us out of serious trouble and spur us along a positive path.
There is a Chinese saying that a parent should give a child roots and wings. Our father provided both, with a large measure of inspiration.
He died 36 years ago. But hardly a day passes that I don't think of him.
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