“Never trump your partner’s ace.”
Dads are famous for their fatherly advice. Their words can be whacky, heartfelt, thoughtful and funny. These words of wisdom from my own father get quoted in my family often. (And also “Turn down a bower, cry for an hour.”) As a father of seven, he took his games very seriously. Euchre players will understand.
For Father’s Day, we asked three local dads to share any inspiring messages from their own fathers. Their stories were profound and thought-provoking.
Pete Tiernan
Father of three, grandfather of six, and author of the newly released novel, “Once in Chicago”
“The best advice my father ever gave me came at the end of his career in advertising. It was the late seventies, and he had just been made executive at an agency in downtown Chicago. The promotion was everything he’d been hoping to achieve over nearly three decades of hard work — the final rung of his corporate ladder. I was a freshman at the University of Michigan, directionless, idealistic and disdainful of the professional world. My father was footing my educational bill, though, and he was pushing me to pursue a practical career path in business administration. I didn’t resist.”
“The summer after my freshman year, however, my dad’s dream job fell apart. Whether he was fired or laid off, I don’t know. Shortly thereafter, he asked me how I liked college. Something in my response must have troubled him, because after that, he said ‘If you don’t want to go to business school, don’t listen to me. I have no advice for you. Do what you want.’ That small piece of non-advice liberated me. I dropped out of business school, got a master’s degree in English, then went into advertising. My new novel, ‘Once in Chicago’, touches on the lessons my dad taught me, sometimes through his failures. It’s about work, about courage, about love.”
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Bill Gibson
New father and co-owner of Fine Print Bookshop in Saline.
“My dad passed away before I became a father, but he did give me some general life advice that has stuck with me for a long time. He always had me helping with his projects around the house, which is where I learned a majority of what I know about home maintenance. One time, we were working on something and it wasn’t working. Then he had an epiphany. He realized we had put something back incorrectly, which is when he said ‘Make sure you take things apart in a way you can put them back together, and also remember how to put them back together.’”
“I’ve applied that advice to more situations than just home maintenance, like communicating with my family. It’s basically another way of saying ‘You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube’, but with a little more optimism because if you’re careful, you can put things ‘back together’.”
Joseph Polzin
Father of four and Senior Pastor of Christ Our King Lutheran Church in Saline.
“When I think of the impact of my father, it wasn’t so much his words of wisdom that I remember him saying. It was how he embodied wisdom through how he lived his life and the example he set.”
“I learned the importance of family by how he prioritized caring for his family, balancing all of his commitments to be there for our important moments like high school programs or sports games. I learned the importance of faith by how he made sure to be in church with us, even if I knew he hadn’t slept in 48 hours coming from his job as a doctor on-call. I learned the importance of valuing other people by how he treated others and was generous toward them.”
“He was a man of great conviction, not because he was always talking about his convictions, but because of how he lived them out. I’m sure there are many pieces of wisdom he shared with me , but as they say, ‘Actions speak louder than words.’”
