Lessons
from a father are invaluable and lucky for us, Tim Russert shared his
own experiences with his father, as well as a few as his role changed
after son Luke was born.
In his book, Big Russ & Me, and the follow-up, Wisdom of Our Fathers, Tim shared some moments that will live on forever. Here are some excerpts:
All through my childhood, and well beyond it, my father held down
two demanding jobs. But as hard as he labored and as long as he toiled,
we never heard a single complaint about his heavy workload or the
sacrifice he was making. He didn’t talk about it, he just got it done.
And if he had to take a third job to support his wife and four kids, he
would have done that, too ... like so many members of the strong,
silent generation who grew up during the Great Depression and went off
to war, he had learned long ago that life was hard and nothing was
handed to you. In fact, Dad considered it a sign of success, and even a
blessing, that he was able to hold down two jobs. He could remember a
time when a man considered himself fortunate to have even one.
Russert's
father, a war hero who rarely talked about his experiences during World
War II, agreed to share one battle story with his son:
When
I was in high school, the two of us were in the basement one day when
Dad walked over to his desk, opened a drawer and took out a manila
folder. He handed me a yellowed clipping from the October 27, 1944
edition of the Southport Weekly, an English newspaper. The headline
read: US BOMBER CRASHES IN FLAMES IN AINSDALE, and the article
described the crash of a B-24 Liberator at an Air Force Base in
England. I read it quickly and zeroed in on the key lines: "When the
plane crashed it broke up, and some of the airmen were thrown clear."
Dad, I realized, had been one of them.
"This is amazing", I said.
He
looked at me and said, "It was a lot tougher for the guys who died."
Then he took back the clipping and put it away without another word.
The conversation was over.
Russert's
father never took a single sick day from his main job as a foreman for
the sanitation department. Russert tried to pass that work ethic onto
his own son, Luke:
On September 7, 1995, I took Luke,
who was ten, to a baseball game at Camden Yards in Baltimore. [That was
the night] Cal Ripken, Jr. was going to break Lou Gehrig's Iron Man
record just by showing up and playing in his 2,131st consecutive game.
This wasn't about something glitzy, like home runs ... I explained to
my son that Cal Ripken's record was different from all the other
records because this one was about loyalty, dedication, discipline,
diligence and persistence.
I told Luke that night, and
I meant it with all my heart, that Cal Ripken had done for baseball
what my Dad had done for our family.
In Wisdom of Our Fathers, Russert wrote about his father's reaction to Big Russ & Me:
I
always go to [my father's home] for Thanksgiving, and in 2004, a few
months after the book came out, we were loading up the car to drive to
the airport when Big Russ came over to me to say goodbye. For as long
as I can remember, Dad and I had always parted with a handshake and a
half hug. But this time he gave me a huge bear hug and he said softly,
"I love you" – something I had never heard him say before. I was fifty
four years old, and all I could think was, Boy, I wish I had written
this book thirty years earlier.
