{"id":9871,"date":"2015-06-22T03:28:02","date_gmt":"2015-06-22T03:28:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=9871"},"modified":"2015-06-22T03:28:02","modified_gmt":"2015-06-22T03:28:02","slug":"dad-asked-a-simple-question-and-gave-birth-to-a-career","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=9871","title":{"rendered":"Dad asked a simple question … and gave birth to a career"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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It’s kind of late in the day. It’s about to end.<\/p>\n

But in the waning hours of Father’s Day, I’ve suddenly gotten filled with the desire to share a brief story about my dad and a simple question he posed to me.<\/p>\n

It was late in 1970. I had returned home from\u00a0a two-year\u00a0U.S. Army stint. I was preparing to re-enroll in college.<\/p>\n

Mom, Dad and I were having dinner one evening at their home, where I returned after my Army hitch.<\/p>\n

We were chatting about college, my plans and what I might want to do with my life now that my military obligation was over. I was single, unattached (for the time being) and I had my whole life ahead of me.<\/p>\n

Dad asked, “Have you declared a major yet? Do you know what you want to study in college?”<\/p>\n

I had not yet made that decision. “Why do you ask?” I said.<\/p>\n

Dad responded immediately, “Have you thought about journalism?”<\/p>\n

To be honest, I hadn’t given it any thought. “Journalism?” I asked.<\/p>\n

Sure, he said. He told me of the letters I wrote home from wherever I was stationed for the previous two years. I wrote home frequently from basic training in Fort Lewis, Wash.; from Fort Eustis, Va., where I went through my advanced training; then from Da Nang, South Vietnam and later, from Fort Lewis, where I was assigned at the end of my tour.<\/p>\n

He mentioned how “descriptive” they were. He said I had this ability to turn a phrase. He thought journalism might be a good fit for me, given — he said — my ability to string sentences together.<\/p>\n

Oh, gee, why not? So, I returned to college in January 1971, enrolling in some journalism-related classes.<\/p>\n

I then fell in love with this craft called “journalism.”<\/p>\n

I stayed with it for the next four decades.<\/p>\n

I look back\u00a0at that dinner-time moment with Dad and Mom with great fondness and appreciation for the simple question that Dad asked. It helped me — along with\u00a0prodding and pushing from the girl who would become my wife in September 1971 —\u00a0undertake a fruitful and moderately successful career in print journalism.<\/p>\n

It’s not yet over, thankfully.<\/p>\n

I’m pretty sure I thanked Dad for nudging me down that path. He’s been gone now for 35 years; Mom died 31 years ago. I can’t thank them again now.<\/p>\n

However, I can share this memory to remind myself — and perhaps others — of our parents’ wisdom.<\/p>\n

In that moment at the dinner table, father definitely knew best.<\/p>\n\n

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It’s kind of late in the day. It’s about to end. But in the waning hours of Father’s Day, I’ve suddenly gotten filled with the desire to share a brief story about my dad and a simple question he posed to me. It was late in 1970. I had returned home from\u00a0a two-year\u00a0U.S. Army stint. … Continue reading Dad asked a simple question … and gave birth to a career<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[1689,1770,1774,2587,3116,4944,5110],"class_list":["post-9871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media-news","tag-fathers-day","tag-fort-eustis","tag-fort-lewis","tag-journalism","tag-mom-and-dad","tag-u-s-army","tag-vietnam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9871\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}