My father died at 4:10 am on August 10.  He was 87-years old when he fell in his battle against liver cancer.

My Dad's death is an opportunity to reflect on the role of fathers in our culture. Much has been said about dads who abandon their children to lives of neglect and abuse.  Of course you can be home and be and abusive parent.

Mothers are more revered in our culture.  Did you know that the volume if long distance calls is 11 times greater on Mother's Day than on the day we set aside for fathers?  Have you ever noticed how many rows in the card stores are devoted to mothers?  In my Hallmark store, there are ten times the cards for moms than for days.

Perhaps it is time that we should acknowledge our fathers. Maybe we should pay more attention to our dads and what they do for us.  I could say plenty about my father.  When I was 10, I got into trouble.  A few buddies and I vandalized an old house in our neighborhood.  No one had lived there for years, and it had become a eye sore to be sure.  One day we broke a few windows and one of the boys spray painted words on the side of the house.

I knew we were wrong.  I wanted to scream, "stop," but couldn't find the guts to do so.

While we were having our fun, a Wichita Police Department officer drove by.  We were so busy with our mischief that we never noticed that he was there.  In a minute or so, he had rounded us up and put us in the back of his squad car. I was terrified beyond words.

Eventually the officer eased the car into gear and drove downtown to the police department.  The drive took forever.  Once there, he put us into a holding cell. I will never forget the "clang" as the door was slammed shut.

I was now frightened and hungry. My stomach growled and I began to wonder if I would ever see home again as the day's sky became night. 

After a few hours, I was told that my father was there and that I would soon be headed home.  Frankly, I didn't know what was worse—staying in jail or facing the wrath of my Dad.

When I got home, I got spanked harder and more intensely than ever before.   Then my father sat me down and told me how tough it was to raise six boys.  We had a new baby, Paul, and there was never enough money in a schoolteacher's life for many of the essentials let alone any of the luxuries of life.  

My Dad did things I would never dream of doing. He had made my bed from two-by-four planks from the lumberyard, and I had a thin mattress and scratchy woolen blanket from the local Army surplus store.  The "bedroom" for four of the Kinney boys, myself included, was in the garage that my father had sealed shut from the weather.

I knew that my family was "working class" if that.  But we were what we were, and there was no getting around that.

After my "encounter" with the police, I had plenty to ponder.  I instinctively knew that I had unnecessarily created a crisis for my father and, sure enough, for me as well.  My father sat me down for a father-to-son conversation.  He quickly told me that there was no way that he could supervise my every movement, and that I must understand that that I knew the difference between right and wrong and that I had done wrong.  If I had any questions about what to do, I was supposed to ask.

Then my father gave me a lesson in what we now call "tough" love.  He told me that not only had I broken the law and damaged another person's property, but that I had dishonored our family.  It grew worse.  He told me that he loved me with all his heart, but I simply could not, for the sake of my four little brothers continue on this path. The mistakes I made would be amplified in their lives.

While I pondered his words, he launched his nuclear attack.  "Joseph," my father intoned, "the laws of Kansas say that I must be responsible for you until you turn 16.  But when you reach your 16th birthday, you will be out on the streets if you cause problems. You will no longer have a home in this house and a place at my table."

Not long after high school was finished, I joined the U.S. Marine Corps.  My family was no longer was just the Kinneys, but a bunch of fellows in green shirts.  When mail call came, I jumped for joy when my name was called. But I never lost sight of the fact that some young Marines seldom if ever had their names called.  Had they had been thrown out of their homes? Were they orphans?  For them, mail call was a time of pain, a period when their lack of connection to a family was made brutally clear.

My father prepared me for the Marines.  I knew that I could either build my platoon up or tear it down.  You make those choices in how you behave, how you do in school, and how hard you block and tackle on the football field.  He wanted me to feel "used up" in all that I did on the playing field of life, holding nothing back.  I thank God for my time with Dad.