My Father's Day Wish Is Hoping Your Dad Was As Great As Mine.

This is my dad…his name is Pete Murray and I am his oldest kid,.
My dad was a regular guy in a lot of ways. He grew up during the Great Depression and was very much a child of his generation.
He was street smart and enterprising. He liked to gamble but was always very cagey about it, figuring that if you were patient and methodical enough you could beat the house maybe just a little more than they beat you.
My dad was patriot. He served as a navigator in the RAF during WWII and flew Lancaster bombers over Germany. He did about 45 raids and lived to talk about it, although he never did much talking about the raids themselves. Mostly about air force life in England at that time.
My dad was a civil servant and worked for the Immigration department for the requisite number of years, and then retired and became a citizenship court judge. His robes are hanging in a closet in my basement.
Early on in my dad’s career, he was in charge of clearing people who were coming into Canada through Fort Erie on the train. As a result he got to know the coaches and players of the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Quite often they would give him tickets, really good seats to Maple Leaf home games. On many Saturdays he and I would jump in the car, drive to Toronto, eat an early dinner at Ruby Foo’s in Chinatown, go to the game and drive home.
As quality time with my dad went, this was pure gold.
My dad liked stats and told me that if I got into following sports when I got older to pay attention to the stats…that they would enhance your enjoyment of the games and also be helpful if you ever want to bet on them.
My dad also loved country music and through him I got introduced to a lot of the singers and songwriters that would influence my writing later on. He loved Hank Williams. He told me that Hank Williams will always be the spirit of country music no matter no much rock and roll they try to ram down our throats. My dad didn’t like rock and roll. Although one time he was over and I played him Dark Side Of The Moon by Pink Floyd. He didn’t mind that.
My folks split up when I was about 16 and my dad moved to Ottawa to work for the Ministry of Immigration. Two years later I was there with him. Two years after that we were in Toronto, because my dad decided that the Federal government was full of shit, and went to work doing the same thing for the Ontario government, which evidently wasn’t.
I lived with my dad and his second wife Di, until I finished college and moved downtown to room with an old friend from Ottawa.
I remember the conversation I had with my dad just before I left. He said: “Can you make a living being a writer?” and I said, “I guess I’ll find out.” And he said, “I guess so.” And that was it.
My dad always gave me good advice and never imposed his will on me pretty much all my life. I grew up thinking for myself and am, to this day, convinced that he made that possible just by being there for me if I needed him.
My dad was a great husband once he got the marriage thing figured out, a great father to me and my brother and sister and a great grandpa to my kids and my brother’s. We saw him and Di quite often and the kids loved him a lot.

My dad lived a good life and carried relatively little emotional baggage. The only thing that bothered him was having to leave us when he and my mother split up. But since we all turned out OK as adults, I think a lot of that stuff went away.
My dad passed away close to 10 years ago. He was about 86 and died of natural causes although he did have a number of small strokes along the way.
I think about him all the time. We all do.
He wasn’t larger than life or anything. But he knew a lot about living and tried to teach us as much as he could.
But he never could quite figure out how I made living by writing. Every time he came over, he would ask, “Are you still in that advertising racket?”
“Yeah dad, I still am.”
You don’t have to be superheroic to be a hero as a dad. You just have to be there. And my dad always was.
Happy Fathers Day To All Dads Everywhere.

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