It sounds sort of ridiculous for a grown woman to be referring to her father as “Daddy” but that is how I remember him…after all, I was only sixteen when he died, so he is frozen in my mind the way a 16 year-old remembers things. But through the years, as I have gotten older and long since he has been gone, I have started to understand more about who he was…not just from a child’s perspective, but from the perspective of an adult and one who is a practitioner of human behavior.
James Ian Cameron Crawford was a big man…in stature as well as talents. From purely Scottish decent, he was the third oldest of 5 children – four boys and one girl. His parents both arrived in this country from Scotland through Ellis Island and made their home in the Boston suburbs. A late bloomer in some respects, he attended Tufts University as an engineering student – starting at the age of 24, and went on to become a mechanical engineer. He was a brilliant man with a quick wit and a quiet nature. He could do anything, and not just because he was and still is one of my biggest heroes, but because he actually could do just about anything. He could fix or build anything – from the perfect dry flagstone walls he built to installing a bathroom in what once was a closet. He hybridized his own bearded iris, and assembled his own transistor radios from parts purchased in an electronics store. He wrote poetry and prose and played piano by ear since he had never learned to read music. He was a faithful and adoring husband and a strict but loving father who was reluctant to show his soft side, but definitely had one.
As a dog guy, who professed to not really like cats, I can remember discovering him secretly staying up all night with my cat after she had been spade; just to be sure she was ok during the night. He was the lead musician in our family band called the “Snellville Snobs”, playing piano, with my sister and me playing toy instruments and making a joyful noise that somehow actually sounded like songs. On Sunday mornings he would call my sister and me into his room, and while my mother made breakfast he would make up wonderful, detailed stories about two best friends “Mr. Gazitch and Mr Gazatch” as they went through their lives full of zany adventures. My sister and I would be rolling with laughter until breakfast was ready, always eager for the next weekly installment.
Ian (he never went by his legal first name) was a man who wanted a son – someone to work with him in his workshop – that he could teach how to use tools and make things – just like he did. So when I came along as the second of two daughters, he realized that there would be no son. But he also quickly realized that even though I was a little girl, I had the curiosity and interest to fill the void – and soon we were in his workshop together with him teaching me how to use all of the tools that he loved and used everyday. I learned how to hang sheet rock by the age of 8, I learned how to spot weld and to work a soldering iron. I learned how to use a miter box. It was pretty unusual for a girl back then to have the experience of building things and working with her dad in the workshop, but I loved every minute of it. But most important of all, I got to spend time with my daddy doing what he loved. It was time I will remember all my life and it was the best time I ever spent with him.
The lessons I learned from my daddy teaching me about work and tools have stayed with me – not just when the pump in my outdoor fountain died or when I needed to repair a broken chair leg. But there is rarely a day that goes by that I am not using at least one of his lessons in my professional consulting and coaching work today; Measure twice – cut once. Always clean your tools before you put them away. There is a tool for every job. When there is a problem-always check the power source first. The details count – any job worth doing is worth doing well. It takes longer to fix something later that to do it right the first time. Work at something you love and you will never work a day in your life.
So for all you fathers out there on this Father’s Day, please remember that it’s not the expensive gifts that you buy your children for which they will remember you – not the latest electronic gadget or the coolest new bike. It’s the time you spend with your children, doing things together that you love that they will remember and cherish for the rest of their lives. And if they are half as lucky as I am, their daddy will also be with them forever in those priceless memories. Thanks daddy. I love you to the moon and back… Happy Father’s Day.
