A Tribute to My Father—and Good Fathers Everywhere

I'm one of the lucky sons. One of the blessed sons. Because I not only had a father, but a good one. He provided for us and put a roof over our heads and food on the table. And he expected things of us. But he did so much more.
He got married right after he graduated college, but he and my mom never took much time to be a married couple. There were always kids. By the time he was 30, he had four of us to take care of. Was he ready for it all? Fathers didn't ask that question in the 1950s. They were probably better off. No matter how long we delay such things, we're never ready.
I remember as a kid looking at pictures of him before he was the man he became. He looked like a grown-up even in his high school yearbook. Why did he sacrifice so much for us? I learned as I got older that calling what he did a sacrifice would have irritated him. He did what people did. No one back then thought postponing adolescence into their 30s was an option. They started things. Started their lives. Started families and careers.
One picture from his wedding is my favorite: the young groom grinning as he watches his bride cut their wedding cake, celebrating on a rooftop at a neighborhood building. No wedding planners. No exotic honeymoons. It was a drive to Niagara Falls and back to life.
John Habeeb and his bride, Christina, on their wedding day in 1954.
John Habeeb and his bride, Christina, on their wedding day in 1954.
After he left the Air Force, where he served as an officer training future officers, he started teaching history and coaching hoops at a public school in northern New Jersey. He became a department head, then assistant superintendent, and one day, he was the boss. There was a sense of inevitability about that outcome. Some people are born to run things.
What were his dreams? A child of immigrant parents, he didn't think much about such things. His generation was too practical. They didn't sit around talking about how to change the world. They were too busy trying to change their world.
My dad's life—our life—was a slice of the American dream. A rental house every summer at the Jersey Shore. Family night at the drive-in movies. Trips to New York City to see a Knicks game or a Broadway play. A pool in the yard and a basketball hoop attached to the garage.
He was an old-school dad. There wasn't a lot of hugging. Or praise. On the rare occasion he said something nice, it meant something. "Not bad," he would say after a good effort. If it was a particularly good effort, he would say "not bad" twice.
He wasn't a man who looked back on life with regret. He had little use for taking his own temperature. He had a temper. I was afraid of him, but not physically. I was afraid to let him down. Disappoint him. When he yelled, it made me tremble. His temper had that kind of power.
I remember the fights he had with my mom. I never understood what the fights were about, but what kid does? Sometimes, I thought one of them would just call it quits. But always, the next day came. They carried on.
As time passed, the temper faded. As my dad got more comfortable in his own skin, as he was better able to navigate his own emotions, he got calmer. Meet him today, and you'd call him laid-back.
As I got older, I came to appreciate the small things, the daily habits and rituals that my dad and my mom shared. Those rituals and rhythms of life gave me a great sense of stability. A great sense that relationships can last. That love can last.
The coffee he started for my mom every morning. The daily run to the supermarket. The evening coffee out by the pool, listening to WOR on the transistor radio. The early dinners at a local bar for pizza and mussels marinara. The card games, which mom always seemed to win. The habits of love were there for me to observe. And imitate.
The love I witnessed didn't look like anything I saw in the movies. It looked like something better. Something within reach. The constancy. The consistency. The mutual understanding. None of it was terribly exciting. But it was good for me. It was good for my parents, too.
"The most important thing a father can do for their children is love their mother," former University of Notre Dame President Father Theodore Hesburgh said. My dad, not a religious guy, would agree. And he would agree with theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who said this in a letter to his niece before her wedding day: "It's not your love that sustains your marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love."
That lesson may be the greatest my dad taught me: marriage sustains love.
My dad taught me big and small things. He taught me how to tie a tie, and throw a spiral. He taught me to think through problems and see both sides of an argument. He taught me the importance of hard work, and that talent was overrated. He encouraged me to take risks, but not be reckless. He taught me how to play blackjack and poker. How to lead and learn. He really taught me how to play basketball. And the importance of sticking things out. "Finish what you start," he often told me.
And always, he was shaping my character. Trying to draw out of me the best version of myself, which I too often resisted.
Turning boys into men is no duckwalk. It's something the state can't do. Or a social worker. It's something mothers can't do alone, as hard as they may try—and as good and heroic as they are. Fathers are uniquely qualified to do this work. And uniquely situated. Dads play a critical—and underappreciated—role in their daughters' lives, too.
I know I would not be the man I am today, or the husband and father I am, without his example. He's 94 years old, and still influencing me. Still teaching me.
To all of the good dads out there, thank you. Not enough is written about you, the men in this country taking on the responsibilities and pleasures of fatherhood. And disappointments, too.
Your steadiness and steadfastness may not make for good fiction, but it makes for a good life. Your effort to shape the next generation of husbands and fathers is the most important work in America.

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