Headline Surfer® photos /DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there around the world for today is a day of personal reflection.
Being a father to a son (or daughter) is far from easy. Being a son (or daughter) to a father is from easy, too.
George Will, journalist and political pundit, once said of fatherhood, "We are given children to test us and make us more spiritual."
It was the Christian television evangelist, Billy Graham, who who once said of the paternal side of parenting, "A good father is one of the most unsung, unpraised, unnoticed, and yet one of the most valuable assets in our society."
It was the Christian television evangelist, Billy Graham, who once said of the paternal side of parenting, "A good father is one of the most unsung, unpraised, unnoticed, and yet one of the most valuable assets in our society."
And it was Pope Paul XXIII, who reminds us of the responsibilities: "It is easier for a father to have children than for children to have a real father."
Speaking for myself, I don't know how I did it, but I raised my only child to adulthood, Henry Frederick, IV, now 22 and living in Daytona Beach. I don't know how my father did it, either, tending to seven children -- four boys and three girls.
My father is 77 and widowed. His wife, my mother, died nearly 13 years ago, on his birthday to be precise: Aug. 27. All of us kids were fully grown then.
For my son, divorce of his parents came four years later when he was 14. Thankfully, I got to raise him under my roof, even as I re-married 18 months later.
You do the best you can with what you have to work with, whether you are raising seven children or one. Such are life's challenges, for a father as it is for a son or daughter on this special day of reflection.
Being a father to a son (or daughter) is far from easy. Being a son (or daughter) to a father is from easy, too.
FAST FACTS: Origins of Father's Day
The noble idea of celebrating Father's Day became quite popular in US so much so that President Woodrow Wilson approved of the festival in 1916. President Calvin Coolidge, too, supported the idea.DID YOU KNOW?
Basyle "Boz" Tchividjian, a former sex crimes prosecutor for the 7th Judicial circuit in DeLand from the 1990s until the mid-2000s, is the maternal grandson of evangelist Billy Graham. Tchividjian, 48 and married with two daughters, is now a law professor at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., the conservative Christian college founded by the late Jerry Falwell. The elder Graham is 94.
Tchividjian also is a supporter of the 2016 candidacy for Sheriff of Volusia County by VCSO Capt. David Brannon. He even drove down here to attend a June 10 campaign fundraiser in support of Brannon.
Date of Publicaion: 2016-06-19 04:18:22 -0700