Father’s Day Story Packs a Punch

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Story for Father’s Day Packs a Punch

The photograph is from the early 1940s, black-and-white and slightly overexposed in the outdoor sunlight.

It is of a man, in his early 20s, with a thin mustache and a thick nose. His jaw is square as a brick’s edge. His hair is dark and short and flattened by sweat. His eyes are hidden in shadows.

The man is a boxer. He is in his prime, stomach flat and muscled, shoulders broad and powerful. He is working the speed bag, which is a blur after having just been struck by his left fist.

Jimmy Harvey, an Oak View resident with a gray-and-ginger goatee and bear’s build, cherishes this picture of his father taken between 1942 and 1946 while Roy L. Harvey was in the Navy during World War II.

Jimmy saw the photo for the first time when he was 14 and promptly asked his dad to teach him to fight.

1JimmyHarvey

Jimmy Harvey, who I would not like to box or fight!

“He said, ‘No, you don’t want to learn from Ol’ Canvas Back,” Jimmy recalls clearly a half-century later. “I asked, ‘What does that mean?’ ”

Answered his dad: “In boxing terms it means you spend more time on your back on the canvas than fighting.”

Looking through the prism of time, Jimmy, now a grandfather five times over, understands: “I think the reason Dad never taught me to fight is I used the term ‘fight’ and he used ‘box.’ He boxed for the art of it – I wanted to hurt somebody.”

In truth, Jimmy was the one generally getting hurt.

“I had my nose broken a few times,” he allows. “I wouldn’t back down. I was just stupid. I was getting expelled from high school all the time for fighting.”

The most memorable time Jimmy refused to back down happened not at school, but at home.

“I was 16 and Dad thought I was feeling my oats a little too much,” Jimmy shares. “We squared off, looking each other in the eye, and Dad said: ‘I know what you THINK you can do.’

“I was so mad. I really wanted to pop him and he knew it. He told me, ‘Let ‘er rip.’

“I decided I was going to sucker punch him quick,” Jimmy continues, pantomiming what followed by pounding his right fist into his left palm: “He caught it.”

Awed by the feat still, Jimmy adds: “Dad looked me in the eye and said, ‘You’re not ready.’ That cooled me off a bit.”

Sparring partners, in a manner of speaking, described their relationship. “We were never close,” the son allows. “I was a product of the ’60s and Dad was of the ’30s and ’40s.”

Time has a way of shrinking generation gaps. So does terminal illness. In 1988, at age 68, Roy was in the hospital. As Christmas – and death – approached, Jimmy visited daily.

“It was a race between liver failure and lung cancer,” Jimmy shares, his piercing blue eyes suddenly awash with emotion. “I was with him when he died. That was tough. Uncle Del was there, too.”

Flipping through a photo album at the wake, Del came to the picture of his brother working the speed bag.

“I said, ‘There’s old Canvas Back,’ ” Jimmy retells. “Uncle Del asked me what I’d said?

“I said, ‘Daddy told me he was on his back all the time so they called him Canvas Back.’ ”

Uncle Del replied, and sharply: “Son, I don’t know where you got your information, but your dad was All-Navy two years running.”

Tracing a finger over the grainy boxing photo, Jimmy rejoins: “He must have really been something in the ring.”

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Wooden & Me Kickstarter Front PhotoCheck out my memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and my essay collection “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” …

Column: Dads, Sons and Daughters

Ignorance, Bliss, Dads, Sons and Daughters

 

Father’s Day arrives tomorrow, so it seems apropos to begin today with a hallmark quote from yesteryear. Actually nearly 140 yesteryears ago when Mark Twain famously observed:When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.”

 

Charles Wadworth expanded on Twain’s thought, noting: “By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he’s wrong.”

Dallas and Greg, who make being a dad so great!

Dallas and Greg, who make being a dad so great!

 

Clarence Budington Kelland, a 20th century novelist who once described himself as “the best second-rate writer in America,” made a first-rate compliment about his own father: “He didn’t tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.”

 

Similarly, from Mario Cuomo: “I watched a small man with thick calluses on both hands work fifteen and sixteen hours a day. I saw him once literally bleed from the bottoms of his feet, a man who came here uneducated, alone, unable to speak the language, who taught me all I needed to know about faith and hard work by the simple eloquence of his example.”

 

From attribution unknown comes this eloquent pearl: “One night a father overheard his son pray: ‘Dear God, Make me the kind of man my Daddy is.’ Later that night, the Father prayed, ‘Dear God, Make me the kind of man my son wants me to be.’ ”

 

The rock band Yellowcard offers this lovely lyric about the power of a dad as a role model: “Father I will always be / that same boy who stood by the sea / and watched you tower over me / now I’m older I wanna be the same as you.”

 

PBS book talk show host Barry Kibrick told me of raising his two sons: “I never worried about over-praising them and building up their self-esteem too much because there are plenty of people in the world who will try to tear them down.”

 

Author Jan Hutchins had a similarly wise dad, sharing: “When I was a kid, my father told me every day, ‘You’re the most wonderful boy in the world, and you can do anything you want to.’ ”

 

Or, as my good friend, author and coach Wayne Bryan advises parents: “Shout your praise to the rooftops and if you must criticize, drop it like a dandelion. On second thought, don’t criticize at all.”

 

Hall of Fame baseball player Harmon Killebrew apparently had a Hall of Fame Dad, the son recalling this: “My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard. Mother would come out and say, ‘You’re tearing up the grass.’

 

“ ‘We’re not raising grass,’ Dad would reply. ‘We’re raising boys.’ ”

 

A great attitude for dads of daughters, too.

 

Speaking of girls, John Mayer strikes the right chord with these lines of song: “Fathers, be good to your daughters. You are the god and the weight of her world.”

 

            As for fathers and sons, 19th century French poet Marceline Desbordes-Valmore asked rhetorically: “Are we not like two volumes of one book?” German poet Johann Schiller knew these two “volumes” need not share similar DNA, noting: “It is not flesh and blood but the heart which makes us fathers and sons.”

 

Getting further to the heart of the matter, John Wooden, who believed “love” is the most important word in the English language, said: “The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.”

 

Another basketball coach, Jim Valvano, shared one of the secrets to his success when he noted: “My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person – he believed in me.”

 

On the topic of “gifts,” a Jewish Proverb states: “When a father gives to his son, both laugh; when a son gives to his father, both cry.”

 

Here’s some good advice from Bill Cosby when it comes time to open a gift Sunday: “Fatherhood is pretending the present you love most is soap-on-a-rope.”

 

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for the Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Woody’s new book, WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” is available for pre-order at: www.WoodyWoodburn.com