On December 27, 1980, a man named Homer stood at my door. He’d just turned 48 years old. He wouldn’t live to see another Christmas. But neither of us knew that at the time. He was about to leave when he put out his hand to shake mine. That was strange. He’d never shaken my hand before. He pumped it a couple times and then he did something else I don’t remember him doing before. He blessed me. He said, “You’re doin’ all right.” That may not sound like the blessing Isaac bestowed on Jacob, but it sure helped me.

I suspect a lot of fathers of Baby Boomers were like that. They tended to speak less and spank more. As I grew up, Homer had more to say about what I was doing wrong than what I did right—or so it seemed to me at the time. As a young man, I guess I resented that. Having raised a couple of my own since then, I’m pretty sure I made him uneasy at times about my future.

I remember wangling five bucks from him for a collector’s item comic book, the first issue of The Fly. It was in near-mint condition with artwork by the great team of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. Unfortunately, Homer wasn’t impressed. When he saw what I’d bought, he spat, “You spent five dollars on that?” Uh, yeah, I did—plus 50 cents postage and handling. I don’t think it was the subject matter that bothered him so much as the size of the book. Why should any standard sized comic book cost five bucks? Perhaps he’d be pleased to know that’s about as much a mystery to me now as it was to him then.

Enamored of Superman and Captain America growing up, it took me years to realize I was the son of a genuine, bona fide hero. Every morning he rose early and went to work at his Gulf Station in Chesapeake, Ohio. He toiled all day every day but Sunday. He pumped gas, hefted tires, even washed cars. Ostensibly, he ran the place. But we were never sure whether he ran it or it ran him. Invariably, he was “covered up,” as he referred to it, with work there.

I do remember, though, one summer afternoon when Homer, enjoying some rare free time, told stories about his service in Korea. He wasn’t talking to me so much as he was speaking to a fellow veteran. I was just there listening. He reminisced about getting sick on a boat enveloped in the waves of the sea. He told a hilarious yarn about a conscientious sentry and one very put out colonel who didn’t know the password.

I was amazed not just by the stories, but by the fact he was telling them! Like a lot of men who grew up during the Great Depression, Homer was more a doer than a talker. He rarely expressed personal thoughts or feelings to his children.

He certainly didn’t say much about the pain he bore. He suffered for years from arthritis in his neck and spine. Maybe that’s why he pushed himself, because he was afraid that once he stopped he wouldn’t get started again. His hard work paid off, though, if not for him then for his kids. He bought my sister and me a car. He paid for two college educations.

For 30 years he was wed to our mother. Oh, how he loved that woman! She once told me that, as a girl, she’d scorned “them little ears” of his. Evidently, however, what he lacked in ears he made up for in heart. I remember Dad sometimes coming home for lunch (“dinner” as these Kentucky folk called it). Invariably, just before he left to return to work, he and Mother would engage in a kiss that would do credit to big screen lovers—and bring their son’s hands to his face in embarrassment. That love was tested in the fires of Mom’s illness. But promises had been made. Rings had been exchanged. And vows were kept until death.

Homer could be painfully shy. When a local TV reporter interviewed him about some now forgotten matter, he was so nervous it hurt to watch. He sang softly and well, but never in public. The only time I ever heard him sing was in the car as we traveled to Mam Maw’s. He sought no glory for himself. But he glowed when his kids were in the spotlight.

I remember how thrilled he was when his son preached over the airwaves from the college’s little station. He sat in his truck with the radio on, taping my message on a handheld cassette recorder. I remember how pleased he was when I graduated from Kentucky Christian University. I didn’t hear these things from his lips. I saw them in his eyes. I imagine he was thinking, “Maybe that funnybook lovin’ boy is going to turn out all right after all.”

For years, he served as an elder in the church where I grew up. Sometimes he gave communion meditations from the Lord’s Table. Homer was no public speaker. Yet I think that in the closing years of his life, he grew to enjoy giving these little talks. Among the mental pictures of him I keep is the one where he’s standing by the table with sunlight filtered through stained glass onto his gray sport coat. I can hear him saying, “Jesus and Heaven are all I’m livin’ for.”

Other pictures flash in my mind: Here’s one of him sitting on an inner tube in the creek with a soggy cigarette between his lips—having accidentally flipped over backwards then up again to a sitting position. (Hey, it was the 60s. Even elders smoked back then.) Here’s another of him playing softball, running between the bases with that funny, stiff-legged lope of his, arms swinging from the elbow. Here’s my favorite shot: Barefooted, tee-shirted, reading glasses perched on the end of his nose, small black Bible open on his lap.

Once we found ourselves washing dishes together. He washed. I dried. Somewhere between the pan and the cupboard, I asked, “If you hadn’t been a mechanic, what would you have done?” I don’t know why I asked him such a personal question. I certainly hadn’t been raised to ask him personal questions.

He paused. For a moment, I thought maybe he either wouldn’t or couldn’t answer me. And then he said, “I’d a been a preacher.”

On August 13, 1981, the man who would’ve been a preacher died of a second heart attack. I don’t remember much of what was said or done at his funeral. I only remember a sea of cars shining in the summer sun. Everybody in town knew Homer, liked him, and missed him.

Eight months before, he’d shaken my hand and told me something I’d longed to hear from him: “You’re doin’ all right.”

In Superman: The Movie, Superman’s Kryptonian father, Jor-El, gives a wonderful speech to his infant son: “You will travel far, my little Kal-El. But we will never leave you. Even in the face of our deaths, the richness of our lives shall be yours. All that I have, all that I’ve learned, everything I feel—all this and more I bequeath you, my son. You will carry me inside you all the days of your life. The son becomes the father.”

Homer Robinson was never one for speeches. But in my own house, at my own door, a couple days after Christmas, 1980, he bequeathed me the power I’d long sought from him—the exquisite, course-steadying power of a father’s blessing.

I do carry him inside me—his work ethic, his faith, his short bursts of disgust at my foolishness. The son has indeed become the father.

Thanks, Dad, for everything. I hope to see you again one day in that place where men really can leap tall buildings at a single bound, where we shall know and understand, and nothing can ever hurt us again.

Love you, Dad. |L