Here's to you...Dad

My Dad was pretty big stuff in his small Nebraska town. He helped build a golf course out of a country pasture and went on to become the volunteer greens keeper. He turned hard clay into one of the most beautiful courses in Nebraska. Yes, the folks up there remembered him for that and you will find a bust of him out near the first tee.

He was also the mayor for a few years. He was in that post when the streets finally got paved.

But, half of the town remembers him for being the best Catholic a Protestant church ever produced. (Don't get him confused with being a pillar of some church. He wasn't.)

It was back in the 1940's. Dad, unlike me, was a great athlete. In fact, he got a scholarship of some sort to play basketball at Creighton University in Omaha. (That's right, he was a Protestant kid who got a scholarship to play basketball at a Catholic university.)

But times were tough and he came home to help his dad hold on to the Ford garage and one farm to the East of Hartington. The family owned a bunch of farms before the Great Depression but lost them. Yeah, I could have been a cattle baron but alas, my shoes are cleaner and my bank account is much smaller. Can you imagine how much his heart ached at not having a chance to play ball on go on to a bigger life?)

Dad worked in the garage with his brother after grandpa passed away Now, most sons think their dads walk on water and worry that they will never be as good of a man. Mine not only walked on water, he started Global Warming.

He started that walk at then struggling Holy Trinity High School. That little school couldn't afford a basketball coach back in the 40's and the priest asked dad if he could help out for a year. He said he would and kept that promise for 8 years. He never took a cent in salary and I suppose he took plenty of grief from the Protestant community for coaching at a Catholic school and whipping their ass in the county basketball tournament.

I must say, those folks have never forgotten what he did. Right next to his casket was a big spray of red roses from his teams. The priests were part of his funeral service. The Catholic church has honored him several times and have honored us, his family, by including us in those events.

How could a writer worth his salt leave a life like that alone?

Well, I couldn't. It's been a life goal to write something about those basketball years and I finally finished the movie script yesterday. You should know I HATE basketball so this was going to be a major effort on my part. Football was fine, but basketball I never got.

I have already completed a couple of edits and there are a couple more to go and frankly, I love it. It was fun to write. It made me well up inside. It brought tears. And, it brought out some writing that I didn't think I was capable of doing. I think there was some higher intervention here and it went straight to my fingers. What seemed to hit the page bypassed my loathing of the sport. That's the way it was suppose to be.

Normally, once I got in my "writing mode," it would take me a month or so to write something like this. I went start to finish in three days and I am very happy with it.

Yes, I do hope it makes it to the silver screen because my Dad's life was powerful, purposeful, and centered on helping other folks enjoy a better life through athletics.

So, here's to you...Dad. Your story is out there for a bunch of people to see. I hope they get the chance. God bless ya!