AN UNEXPECTED BOUQUET FROM A READER

This edition of the Eppley Files marks the 10th anniversary of posting the Files with great help from my wife Anita. Sometimes I think I should give up writing and start a new avocation like learning how to play bridge, becoming a cartoonist, or playing the organ that sits in our living room collecting dust.

Often I tell Anita that I am going to discontinue the Eppley Files because I think no one is reading them. She responds by saying that many people read them but just don’t have time to respond. Then something happens that proves her point.

Shortly after New Year’s Day, for example, I received an email from Gloria Wright, a woman from Mentor who saved an op-ed piece I wrote for the Plain Dealer almost three decades ago. What a gift her message was! I received permission to publish it:

GLORIA WRIGHT’S MESSAGE

Mr. Eppley - I just looked you up on the Internet and I am thrilled that you are alive and I get a chance to write this note. My daughter cut out a paper clipping you wrote soooo many years ago and I have saved it for almost 25 years and am writing this note with tears in my eyes since I just came across it.

Your writing was about “To some mothers on Father's Day. Since that time I have gotten a father's day card from my girls each year for 25 years when my husband abandoned his two daughters. Your description of the mother being offered “entry-level jobs” and acting as “painters, plumbers, electricians” hit home. I went to school for “handy-man training for the housewife” and learned how to play the role of man in our house and even took up auto mechanics to be self sufficient. Over the years, all of my jobs have been extremely exceptional well in interest and my love for health care fulfilled.

Now that I am retired I STILL GET MY FATHER’S DAY CARD. I will show my daughter the clipping I got almost 30 years ago that she sent me and then will proudly display your clipping - will have it blown up, framed and put on a the living room wall to proudly display. How much that article meant to so many of us “single” mothers.

Gloria Wright - Mentor Ohio

Below is the article to which she refers. It was published June 18, 1983 in the Plain Dealer.

TO SOME MOTHERS ON FATHER’S DAY

Last Father's Day my wife and I met a longtime friend whose red eyes and drawn face told us that she had been crying for some time. Without our asking she volunteered to tell us of the event that occasioned her tears. The night before she had unexpectedly received a bouquet of roses. The card said, “Thanks for being such a good father to me,” and was signed by her 21-year-old daughter. This gesture so touched her that she cried tears of happiness all night.

Indeed, she has been a good mother – and for the past 13 years since her husband left her for another woman – she has tried to be a good father to the four children he also left behind.

Life has not always been good to her. Initially, the rejection and the loneliness overwhelmed her and left her bitter and depressed. Ugly battles over delayed or diminished support payments and frequent trips to her parents to borrow money did not help her self-image. But time, her own inner courage and the support she has received from her family have had a healing effect, and now she is cheerful most of the time.

It is right that the nation set aside a day to honor fathers – men who have given life and nourished it. But a grateful country should not forget that vast army of women who because of circumstances – death, desertion, divorce – have stepped in and done a father's job. They have worked to support families, often in entry-level jobs because raising a family did not count as “previous work experience.”

They managed to pay mortgages and taxes even though they generally have earned far less than their male counterparts in comparable jobs. They have clothed and fed children, calmed their fears, and acted as their advocates when they were delinquent or disruptive at school. They have taken them on camping trips and have read the sports pages in order to discuss and enjoy the games with their fatherless sons. They have been house painters, plumbers and electricians. They have stood their ground when their peer-pressured sons and daughters heaped verbal abuse upon them.

They have done all these things alone. At times they have lived on the edge of madness, but somehow most of them have remained sane. A nation celebrating Father's Day should also remember that some of its best fathers are mothers.

Copyright©1983

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