Top Drawer Dads: Celebrating Fathers as They Shape Our Lives

By Top Drawer Dads

He is pulled to this place. He has been here before. This is a place rarely but always cautiously journeyed. Occasionally he arrives by invitation, sometime by assignment. Today he is there poking his nose into something not his business. He is here without invitation, a boys risky intentional mistake.

He stands tiptoed on top of the old wooden shoeshine kit pulled from the back of the closet. Slowly, cautiously, all so quietly, he awkwardly pulls at the loose, cutting, metal handles. He is aware, very aware, and constantly alert to the silence of footsteps in the hallway, the creaking sounds of the loose banister. He has opened his dads top drawer.

This is a place of wonderment when there with permission. This visit, however, is without approval. It is unsupervised. Todays visit is driven by uninvited curiosity and accompanied with apprehension a childs exaggerated anxiety. It is also a nice place, a warm safe place.

Follow the stories of Dan, Jim, David, Bob, Peter, Steven, and Dave, as they share memories of their fathers top drawers and how those memories shape them and their relationships as husbands, fathers, and sons.

For when they went searching through their dads top drawers as wide-eyed boys, they found more than trinkets, pictures, and mementos. With each uncovered treasure, they learned more about the man they so admired, what he valued most, and what they were to become.

The top drawer is something visible and not so visible. The drawer holds things that present who dads really are. There are patterns of family behavior, character traits, moments of intimacy, and markers of some of lifes greatest moments.

Children often dont know they are opening that drawer.

May Top Drawer Dads provide a message of appreciation and love to a father or father-to-be.

Please share your story at www.topdrawerdads.com.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Apr 26, 2012
• ISBN: 9781449757397

Top Drawer Dads

  Dr. Thomas F. Mahan is founder and chairman of The Work Institute, LLC. Prior to founding The Work Institute in 2000, Dr. Mahan was a senior vice president with the Saratoga Institute, a director of organization development with Cigna, and a general manager with Prentice-Hall. Professor Mahan, as time allows, is adjunct faculty at Peabody College of Vanderbilt University. Dr. Mahan is also well known through his teaching and conference speaking with national and international organizations. Tom is an executive career counselor and advisor, noted speaker, behavioral consultant, and author. Marjie is the daughter of Dick and Murielle, the wife of Jerry, the mother of Adrienne, Nathan and Aaron, and the grandmother of Luke, Madilyn, Mila, and Eli. She is a lifelong journalist, a communications professional, and a key member of the Top Drawer Dads team. Contact Marjie at [e-mail]

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Copyright © 2012 Top Drawer Dads, LLC

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Photography by Marjie Aldom Smith.

A special thanks to Jackson White.

For more information, please visit topdrawerdads.com and e-mail [e-mail].

WestBow Press books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock. Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

ISBN: 978-1-4497-4314-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-5739-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012906331

Gaineville Midland Photo page 43 used with permission Ben Prepelka and the Scenic US

Ellis Island image on page 34 image Permission Son of the South

The song Loving Arms, Words and Music Hiram J. Blanton/© 2011 Don’t Forget My Music/ASCAP

The song Roots and Wings, Words and Music Steven Blanton/© 2011 Don’t Forget My Music/ASCAP

WestBow Press rev. date: 4/26/2012

Dedicated to Our Fathers

Contents

Dad’s Top Drawer

Dan

Jim

David

Bob

Peter

Steven

Dave

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An Invitation

He is pulled to this place. He has been here before. This is a place rarely and cautiously journeyed. Occasionally he arrives by assignment. Today, he is there poking his nose into something that’s not his business—a boy’s risky but intentional pilgrimage. He stands tiptoed on top of the old wooden shoe-shine kit, pulled from the closet. Slowly, cautiously, all so quietly, he climbs and awkwardly pulls at the loose, cutting, metal handles. He is aware, very aware, and continuously alert to the silence of absent footsteps in the hallway, the creaking of the loose banister. He has opened his dad’s top drawer.

This drawer is a place of wonderment when there by request. Today’s visit, however, is without permission. It is driven by uninvited curiosity.

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His heart is pounding with excitement and accompanied by the exaggerated anxiety of a boy in questionable territory. Focused keenly on the wonder of the drawer’s contents, his eyes scan the treasure.

And it is all there—old baseball cards, coins, rusty campaign buttons, faded handmade Father’s Day cards, a ring or two, matches, Grandpa’s railroad watch, something called a fuse, an autographed baseball, and a penknife no longer carried. There is a safety pin, tweezers, and nail clippers somewhere in the clutter, hidden by a photograph and the stub of a torn concert ticket.

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If you are a father, chances are your top drawer is the current protector and preserver of the same riches that were in your dad’s top drawer. Here are pieces of one’s self and one’s history. And the acceptance, guardianship, and passing on of these treasures are as much a part of your heredity as are DNA, appearance, and manner. Children carry the awe and mystery of their father’s secret places and intimate moments into their adult lives and relationships. These symbols, which come with generational stories and memories, rest in Dad’s top drawer.

Dad’s top drawer is a treasure chest of reminders a dad keeps and somehow knows his children will occasionally visit. It is here that they smell, feel, and touch their dad. It is here they discover the same security you experienced in your visits to your father’s top drawer.

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In his father’s top drawer, Dan remembers a worn and weathered piece of paper. At a glance, it’s nothing much, but unfolded, it is a link to his father’s heart. For on that paper, opened and folded until torn on the crease lines, is a poem. That poem is a celebration of his dad’s brother. Jay was killed in WWII.

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Memories Define Who We Are

One of eight children, Dan’s dad was particularly close to Jay, who was next to him in age. The poem is titled, When a Brother Is Lost at War. There was just that one copy. After stumbling upon it, Dan asked his dad about it—and his father told him.

His dad never said why, but he gave the poem to Dan. Dan treasures it. Perhaps his dad knew Dan would treasure it.

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A number of years ago, it was so cracked and so messed up, I retyped it. I typed it—this is before the computer—on a typewriter and gave him a fresh copy of it. I still have the torn copy. When you open it now, you have to open it gently, because—he wrote it in ’44, ’45, so it’s sixty-five years old—something like that. That was always important to me.

Dan keeps the poem in his drawer with a plaster-of-paris bust of a Cub Scout. It is about four inches tall, with all the little bubbles that came with those casts made from red rubber molds. It shows the painstaking paint strokes of a ten-year-old boy making a gift for his dad. You know—the stupid little things you make for your parents. And you bring them home, he says. But Dad kept it. And he treasured it.

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It stayed somewhere around, on his desk at work and on his desk at home, recalls Dan. A few years ago he gave it back to me. He said, ‘I’ve kept it all these years and I want you to have it.’ And I have it—very nice.

Getting the Cub Scout back wasn’t ceremonious. It was one of many things his parents handed back, thinking they would be meaningful now that the kids were older. Dan and his father were together at the homestead in Texas about ten years ago. His dad turned to him and said, Here, take this. If I keep this, it may get broken or something. The bust was on his desk. It was one of those big, rolltop ones, handed down from an aunt of his mother who had raised her. Her parents had been ill, so she was raised by Aunt Annie. And when Aunt Annie died, she passed down the rolltop.

So the rolltop, even today, is much discussed, he reflects. You know, when Dad passes, who’s gonna get the rolltop? Of course, it should go to the oldest—I burned my name on the back with my little wood burner a long time ago. Now, I’m the oldest—so it’s no question, he jokes, but Dad had the Cub Scout sitting on top of the rolltop that day.

Today, the little, hand-painted bust is in Dan’s drawer. "You know, you’d think you’d keep stuff like that in a safe deposit box, but you can’t pull it out and mess