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I'm putting out a second volume of essays sometime in September. It'll be called Doug Cartland's Four-Minute Essays for Leaders, Vol II. Catchy, I know.
I'm dedicating it to my dad.
Which is easier said than done.
Not that it's difficult to dedicate it to him, quite the contrary. There is no one who deserves it more and no one I'd rather dedicate it to.
The problem is that dedications need to be minisculey brief. How, in god's name, do I sum up what he has meant to me in such brevity?
I've tried a million dedications to him every which way you can imagine. And I've thrown a million of them away. It's like trying to squeeze an elephant into a cookie jar. Stupid elephant wiggles and jiggles and fights me the whole way.
I'd write something, spin it around, add a couple of strokes and then inevitably crumple it up and pitch it.
You have to understand that here is a guy whose example has been before me all my years.
The year I was born his own dad died and he took over his consulting engineering business and made it a great success. His wasn't the cheapest engineering firm in Chicagoland, but it was certainly one of the very best.
When that success was summarily filched from him in the 1970s by a nasty housing industry (long story) he built it all again spectacularly...from scratch.
At the same time I saw him open our home to a struggling teen-aged cousin and step in to attempt to fill the void when those cousins lost their dad.
Too, when he retired about twenty years ago the local high schools didn't have to go looking for him. He showed up at their door asking them if they could use a tutor.
They could.
It seems he did almost as much engineering and consulting work after he retired as he did before, almost all for nonprofit charitable organizations. For no charge, of course.
Now in his eighties he reads vociferously, leads and attends discussion groups, goes to classes that interest him.
All along, he's been an immovable foundation of bedrock to his kids, all five of us plus three step kids. He's the one we rely on for advice, counsel and as a sounding board. Always a steadying hand, a guiding force.
He's as sharp and as insightful as ever, his character and strength unabated by time.
Since 2004 I've had lunch with my dad once a month. Well, we miss once in a while, but we probably make it ten times in a year. He lives about an hour and a half from me so we meet somewhere in the middle.
It's not easy to schedule as he is almost as busy as I am.
Wish I had a tape of all of those lunches. They've been rich. You've heard of the book Tuesday's With Morrie? I could have written one called Lunches With Dad.
The conversations have been wide-ranging from personal to history to politics and back. Books we were reading, stuff that was happening and often about my three kids...three of his ten grandkids.
My dad gave up smoking when he was sixty. He gave it up so he'd be around for his grandkids. And, here he is. It is impossible to calculate how meaningful those relationships have been. My kids revere him.
My dad will tell you he isn't perfect. But then heroes aren't made of perfect. They'd be less heroic if they were.
But you see my problem. Even with all of the words I've used here I haven't grazed the surface of what my dad means to me. You see how sometimes it's harder to write five words than five thousand.
Well, through all of my intellectual and creative contortions; after pacing, pondering; after revision upon amendment upon modification, I came up with this:
For Dad, who taught me and teaches me still.
That'll have to do.
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