A father's manifesto
by Bob Collins

(April 19, 2007) -- If you read enough of my essays, not just here but in other places where I ply my trade these days, you've probably figured out that I'm pretty much all about fathers, specifically the two I know best -- me... and my father. Though I swing mostly to the left-center politically, I'm pretty conservative when it comes to the role of fathers, mostly because I'm the son of a Greatest Generation father. Maybe you know one. They were dashing young men who we knew only as old men (fathers are always old to us, even when they're really young), who -- sometime long ago -- went willingly off to a brutal war, won it, then came home to start businesses and families, and spend the rest of their lives saying very little about what they did in the war, while teaching their sons how to be fathers.

This week, we rented Flags of our Fathers at our house, so you'll have to forgive me a bit for what I'm about to put you through. It made an impression, especially the end when the father lay dying, wishing to his son that he'd been a better father. Funny, no matter how great the father, he always thinks he could have or should have been better at it.

Mine was a father who worked. Hard. He had five kids to feed. When I was very young, he started a grocery store in Medfield, Massachusetts, which was about 50 miles from where our house was. So he often stayed over at the store, or at least came home way after my bedtime. Occasionally, the family would help out on Sundays (when stores were still closed). My twin brother and I were too young, so my even-harder-working-mom would make a little bed for us on the checkout belt, and there we slept while the family worked.

Later, he was in the insurance business, which meant he had appointments with people in the evening. He'd come home late, usually too late for me.

His was a generation that showed their love to their families by taking care of them, and exchanging their youth and life's energy, for a chance for their children to have a better life.

As young men, we charged into our parenting years, determined to be better parents than the ones we had. Within a few years, if not months, we catch ourselves sounding like our parents, and when we finally give in to the obvious, we acknowledge that we are our fathers. Over more time, we warm to the honor of that fact.

My Dad didn't fly, although when I was home to visit my mother a few months ago, I leafed through -- again -- a diary he kept during World War II. He was a corpsman, and he took care of the flyboys who came back to England from missions over Germany. He could tell how the war was going, he wrote, by the condition of the men coming back. He wrote that a man, a boy really, from California, was doing better since the transfusion my Dad gave him the night before. I thought, "wouldn't it be cool, to try to track that man down?"

As near as I could tell, my Dad's outlet was boats, not airplanes. He had a few over the years and every now and again, he and I, and one of my siblings, would go fishing off Newburyport, Mass... just north of Cape Ann. Or occasionally we'd go down to Cape Cod in search of "blues."

Maybe my Dad just wanted to get away, the way I got away by heading into the garage to pound some RV rivets. Or maybe he saw the boat as a means to be closer to his kids. I like to think it was the latter because that's one of the reasons I started building an RV, first to have a vehicle to get to them quickly when they went off to Harvard, and then as something to keep us talking and communicating.

Here are my boys on the day the RV kit arrived, on the left.

I'm pretty sure that was the last time all three of us were together around airplane parts, because -- as I've written before -- they had their hobbies. I had mine. Besides, they were -- at that time -- young teens and if your kids aren't quite young teens yet, well, let me just tell you now and you can remember these words then, "it will get better."

As I was building, and I'm glad you had faith that I'd eventually get around to RV building in this column, I had to work hard not to view everything in how it would impact my building. A T-ball game? A school play? A band concert? It's easy -- way too easy -- to have your first thought be, "well, I really want to pound these rivets." It's too easy not to say to your spouse, "let's go away this weekend," when you can just as easily spend it entertaining yourself with an airplane project.

The picture on the left? It was July 2001. Almost 6 years ago. Son #1 was about to go through trials that I won't get into here, but which no kid should have to endure. He did, and it wasn't easy for any of us. But he did. And we did. And an airplane project sat lifeless.

The picture on the right was taken last week at a Twins-Yankee game. He's 21 now, and just got a job -- on his own -- in the I.T. department where I work. He looks -- and I think is -- happy to be with his Dad. And we had a great time, watching baseball instead of pounding rivets.

Son #2 there on the left? He's out of the house now on his own too. Neither of them went to Harvard, by the way. He's a paramedic in the Twin Cities. Full-time job, benefits, half-way decent pay. Last month, I co-signed on a loan with him for a motorcycle. I sit up nights worrying about him on a motorcycle, probably the same way my Dad spent some evenings worrying about me in an airplane.

Boats.... airplanes.... motorcycles. We are our fathers.

Anyway, we're flying to Cleveland (we're both Indians fans) late next month to watch the team play and find the brick I bought to honor my son in the new Heritage Park at Jacobs Field. Good RV building time wasted? Nah.

Six years. Boys grow to men. Fathers and their sons are bonded together.... drift apart... and, inevitably, come back together again as men. Just as it was for our fathers and their fathers before them.

The only constant in that time in Casa Collins is the RV project, which sits patiently for its chance to fly too. Every week, VAF and the Van's Web site is full of first flight reports from builders whose serial numbers are hundreds higher than mine (70240, by the way), and I momentarily catch myself thinking, "I wish I had this thing done by now." But I catch myself just as I did when I thought about pounding rivets instead of going to a school play, or a Cub Scout meeting, or a baseball game. Priorities matter.

These are great little projects for us. They make us proud when they're done. But, you know, they'll wait for your time and attention.

Some things in life can't.

This, of course, has been a difficult week for our country, and for any parent. The waste of talent that could -- and probably would -- change the world for the better is incalculable. On Wednesday I watched another video of what's being called  "a shooter's manifesto," which has made it easier for us to blame evil, and find a degree of rationality, in an individual who no longer had the capacity for rational thought. I fear this makes it easier for us to ignore our failures -- our failure to reach out with help, and caring, and love while it can still make a difference.

Though, I'm talking about what happened in Virginia this week. I'm also talking about what happened in the homes where a father walked away, leaving wives and children to fend for themselves. I'm talking about what happened in, sadly, every other city and town in America, where fathers missed a T-ball game, a band concert,  a quiet moment with a struggling son, in exchange for a few more minutes at work, chasing something that ultimately has no value to creating a life well-lived. I'm talking about the increasing disconnect between fathers and their children, which makes it more difficult to detect that early sign of mental illness, until it's too late.

This is the kind of week that makes me look away from the television, and glance in the mirror. This is the kind of week when I'm reminded that at our age, and with our role, we are the fathers of our country.

This is the kind of week when I wish we were better at it.