Beowulf. Arthur. Robin Hood. Bilbo, Thorin and The Fellowship of the Ring. The Companions of the Lance. Heroes of legend, fantasy, and D&D. As a child growing up, are we not asked by our teachers and elders; "Who is your hero?" Although I found a place for myself in reading legends from England and the North of Europe, in Tolkien, and in playing Dungeons and Dragons, my hero did not come from here. Nor did it come from comic book heroes (I did not read comics anyhow) athletes, presidents, great thinkers, spiritual leaders, etc. As a youth I really didn't have an answer to the hero question.
Now, looking back, it is clear to see that as a youth my hero was my Dad. I did not worship the ground that he stood on. Mostly I did not enjoy his company and I often found him over serious. But here is where it dawned on me. I recall a fierce argument with Casey Dickman, my best friend in Alpine, Texas, defending my Dad for not going to Vietnam. Casey said his dad didn't go because the military wouldn't take him for health reasons, but he believed in serving his country and wasn't a coward. Okay, but my Dad believed in peace and was brave enough to go to jail for his belief if it would have come to it. In the end my Dad had a teaching deferment from the draft, so it never came to deciding on jail or shipping out to the Vietnam War. At age 10 or 11, Casey and I did not understand the reasons behind war, but we could throw about the stock phrases and arguments like pros. Anyhow, that must have been the first time I thought about my Dad as someone worthy of defending. How to approach the subject of Dad as my hero? It's so easy to blandly list his traits of awesomeness and achievements. It's just as easy and more fun to list his flaws and very strange character traits. And then there is this. Although I can now see my Dad was my hero, I didn't love him as I loved my Mom. My Mom and I had comfortable. In her presence I mostly felt normal and at ease with life. She was my rock. Dad was my hero.
Was it middle school or high school that we first studied the Renaissance?
That's when I decided (I want to write realized) that my Dad was a true Renaissance Man. A Leonardo Daviche, a Michael Angelo.
From birth and for all my years of schooling, up through college at UGA, my Dad was an artist and an art teacher. He started teaching junior high school in Boulder, Colorado. Then there was the private boarding school called Colorado Rocky Mountain School, where Mom was also a teacher, counselor and dorm leader. This opened their married life together. Next came Alaska. Dad first taught junior high in Sitka, where Tor was born, then high school in Homer, where Leif and I were born. From there it was onto higher education. He taught at Blackhills State College in Spearfish, South Dakota, was the art department chair at Sol Ross University in Alpine, Texas, and then went back to complete teaching at Valdosta State University, in Valdosta, Georgia. In between there were teaching stints in Australia and England as a Fulbright Scholar. So, obviously my Dad was a teacher and an artist. If that is all I saw him as, I don't think I could think of him as my hero. Yet after he retired, my Dad changed. The luster of the academic, the leader, the organizer of artists and creative types was done. His drive and the object of all that serious attention transferred from the higher calling of education to the more self absorbed pursuits of building model railroads, perfecting ski turns, and the like.
But I am straying from my purpose. Before retirement, I saw my Dad as the true Renaissance Man. Simply as an an artists, he was an accomplished potter, painter, sculptor, jewelry maker and so on. But then he also designed and built houses. He was a bit of a musician, playing drums or anything with rhythm, as well as singing in choruses. He was a mechanic and could fix anything in a house, was handy with a car, and a master with bicycles. He was a bit of a socialite and dominated gatherings and parties with his stories of adventure. Dad was an athlete. He was a true rock climber and mountaineer, and helped pioneer the sport of kayaking. He was an early spelunker, explorer of caverns. And in nature, whether on a mountain, drifting down a river, or walking through the desert, he was a philosopher. Finally, Dad, was a free thinker and an individualist who seemed to have had no fear of what other people thought of him. This could be very embarrassing to a teenager, but even as I blushed or hid behind my hands, I was still proud of him. And when Casey called my Dad a coward, it didn't bother me at all. I already knew firm as the Sun rises that he was not. He had seen friends die on mountains, in caves, and in white water. My Dad had hung from the end of a rope on the Matterhorn in a blizzard, and he was bold enough to wear red socks, sandals, short shorts, and a clay covered apron to business meetings that were strictly jacket and tie affairs.
