Do you have a hero? I do. I’d like to tell you about him.
He was born in June of 1922 and just celebrated his 99th birthday.
That means he was born before the 1929 stock market crash and spent his youth on a farm on a hill a mile or two north of Corinth, North Dakota, thinking that life might always be like the Great Depression.
Of course, the Great Depression humbled people. It made them unassuming and grateful for the little things. And that’s what my hero is like.
He spent his life in Wildrose, North Dakota, serving as an accountant on the church council, city council and school council. And no, he wasn’t a professional accountant but he should have been, because he is a meticulous bookkeeper.
In addition, he was a member of the Lions Club, Volunteer Fire Department, the American Legion, oversaw the city propane system and much more.
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Had he been paid for all of his jobs he might be a millionaire, but that’s not how it works in small town America. At least, that’s not how it worked back then because back then, everyone pitched in.
Meanwhile, his youth isn’t filled with stories about walking 7 miles to school uphill all the way. Instead, in the '30s, his father was farming 11 quarters of land with Caterpillars when everyone else was farming two.
So you see his family was never dirt poor when he was a kid, and he rode in a nice warm bus to school.
Then one day he got a letter in the mail from Uncle Sam and next thing he knew he was government property for four years during the second big war and got to travel to England, France, Belgium and Germany. It was then that he got to see a mixture of scenery both bad and good, like so many young men his age, and came back to never talk about it.
With his GI cash he bought a Standard Oil bulk business from a cousin and a small plane, which he put skis on and flew around the countryside delivering food and things to stranded farmers/ranchers during the winter.
Then he married the cute girl working in the local candy shop, had some kids and they all lived happily ever after; that is until, in a five-year span, his brother died young, his dad died of cancer and he himself was burned badly in an explosion that he wasn’t supposed to survive but somehow did.
And yet all of that is only part of the story. Because more recently he has somehow outlived most everyone he ever knew, survived a major bladder infection, surgery to remove a big tumor from his face and hip surgery.
In fact, not only has he survived, but he has breezed through it. And best of all, he has done it with no complaints.
Of course, this hero I am talking about is my father. And my second hero is my son, who, whether he knows it or not, is so much like him.