This Father’s Day, Our American Stories pays tribute to the remarkable dads who shape our lives, coming to you from Fort Worth, Texas. Join Lee Habib as he shares a deeply personal narrative about his own father – a man who, like so many good fathers of his generation, didn’t talk about dreams but built them. He put a roof over heads, food on tables, and through hard work and consistent effort, laid the foundation for a life filled with purpose and enduring family values.
Dive into the profound life lessons learned from an old-school dad who taught strength, responsibility, and the unwavering power of marriage to sustain love. This segment explores the unique role fathers play in shaping character, from teaching resilience and hard work to navigating life’s challenges. It’s a hopeful look at the lasting legacy of fathers, highlighting how their dedication, example, and everyday habits build not just families, but the very fabric of the American dream. Celebrate the men who turn boys into men and profoundly influence their daughters, standing as true heroes in our American story.
📖 Read the Episode Transcript
This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the Star and the American people, coming to you from the city where the West begins, Fort Worth, Texas. And all show long, our Father’s Day Special.
This next story is a tribute in the ends of my father and good fathers everywhere. I’m one of the privileged ones. I not only had a father, but a good one. He provided for us. He put a roof over our heads and food on the table, and he expected things of us, but he did so much more. He got married after he graduated college, but he and my mom never took time to be a married couple.
There were always kids.
By the time he was thirty, he had four of us to take care of. Was he ready for it? All fathers didn’t ask that question in the nineteen fifties, and they were probably better off.
No matter how long we delay such things, we’re never ready.
I remember as a kid looking at pictures of him before he was the man he became.
He looked like a grown…
up, even in his high school yearbook. Why did he sacrifice so much for us? I learned as I got older that calling what he did his sacrifice would have irritated him. He did what people did. No one back then thought about postponing adolescents into their thirties. They started things; started; their lives started; families; started careers. One picture from his wedding is my favorite: the young groom grinning as he watches his bride cut their wedding cake, celebrating on a rooftop at a neighborhood building.
No wedding planners, no exotic honeymoons.
It was a drive to Niagara Falls and back to life. After he left the Air Force, where he served as an officer training future officers, he started teaching history and coaching high school hoops at a public school in northern New Jersey.
He became a department head, then assistant superintendent, and one day he was the boss. There was a sense of inevitability about that outcome. Some people are born to run things. What were his dreams? The child of immigrant parents, he didn’t think much about such things. His generation was too practical. They didn’t sit around talking about how to change the world. They were too busy trying to change their world. My dad’s life—our life—was a slice of the American dream. A rental house every summer at the Jersey Shore. Family night at the drive-in movies; trips to New York City to see a Knicks game or a Broadway play; a pool in the yard; and a basketball hoop attack to the garage. He was an old-school dad. There wasn’t a lot of hugging or praise. On the rare occasion he said something nice, it meant something. “Not bad,” he would say after a good effort. If it was a particularly good effort, he would say, “Not bad,” twice. He wasn’t a man who looked back on life with regret. He had a little use for taking his own temperature. He had a temper. I was afraid of him, but not physically. I was afraid to let him down, to disappoint him. When he yelled, it made me tremble. His temper had that kind of power. I remember the fights he had with my mom. I never understood what the fights were about, but what kid does? Sometimes I thought one of them would just call it quits, but always the next day came.
They carried on.
As time passed, his temper faded. As my dad got more comfortable in his own skin, as he was better able to navigate his own emotions, he got calmer, made him today, and you’d call him laid-back. As I got older, I came to appreciate the small things—the daily habits and rituals that my dad and mom shared. Those rituals and rhythms of life gave me a great sense of stability—the great sense that relationships can last, that love can last. The coffee he started for my mom every morning; the daily run to the supermarket; the evening coffee out by the pool, listening to WOR on the transistor radio. The early dinners at a local bar for pizza and muscles marinara; the card games, which Mom always seemed to win. The habits of love were there for me to observe and imitate. The love eye witness didn’t look like anything I saw in the movies. It looked like something better—something within reach. The constancy, the consistency, the mutual understanding. None of it was exciting, but it was good for me. It was good for my parents too. The most important thing a father can do for their children is love their mother. Father Theodore Hesberg, former president of Notre Dame University, once said, my dad—not a religious guy—would agree. He would also agree with theologian Dietrich Bonhaffer, who said this in a letter to his niece before her wedding day: “It’s not your love that sustains your marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.” That lesson may be the greatest. My dad taught me: Marriage sustains love. My dad taught me big and small things. He taught me how to tie a tie, how to throw a spiral. He taught me to think through problems and see both sides of an argument. He taught me the importance of hard work and the talent was overrated. He encouraged me to take risks, but not be reckless. He taught me how to play blackjack and poker, how to lead, and how to learn. He taught me how to play basketball and the importance of sticking things out. “Finish what you start,” he often told me. And always, my dad was shaping my character, trying to draw out of me the best version of myself, which I too often resisted. Turning boys into men is no duck walk. It’s something the state can’t do, or a social worker. It’s something mothers can’t do alone, as hard as they might try, and as good and heroic as they are. Fathers are uniquely qualified to do this work and uniquely situated. Dads play a critical and underappreciated role in their daughters’ lives too. I know I would not be the man I am today, or the husband and father, without his example. He’s ninety-four years old and still influencing me, still teaching me.
To all of the good dads out there. Thank you. Not enough is written about you.
The men in this country taking on the responsibilities and pleasures of fatherhood.
And disappointments too.
Your steadiness, insteadfastness, may not make for good fiction, but it makes for a good life.
Your effort to shape the next generation of husbands and fathers. It’s the most important work in America.
This is Our American Stories, and the celebration of Father’s Day continues after these messages. Lee Habib here again, and I’d like to encourage you to subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcasts. Every story we are here is uploaded there daily, and your support goes a long way to keeping the great stories you love from this show coming again.
Please subscribe to the Our American Stories podcasts wherever you get your podcasts.
This next story is a tribute in the ends of my father and good fathers everywhere. I’m one of the privileged ones. I not only had a father, but a good one. He provided for us. He put a roof over our heads and food on the table, and he expected things of us, but he did so much more. He got married after he graduated college, but he and my mom never took time to be a married couple.
There were always kids.
By the time he was thirty, he had four of us to take care of. Was he ready for it? All fathers didn’t ask that question in the nineteen fifties, and they were probably better off.
No matter how long we delay such things, we’re never ready.
I remember as a kid looking at pictures of him before he was the man he became.
He looked like a grown…
up, even in his high school yearbook. Why did he sacrifice so much for us? I learned as I got older that calling what he did his sacrifice would have irritated him. He did what people did. No one back then thought about postponing adolescents into their thirties. They started things; started; their lives started; families; started careers. One picture from his wedding is my favorite: the young groom grinning as he watches his bride cut their wedding cake, celebrating on a rooftop at a neighborhood building.
No wedding planners, no exotic honeymoons.
It was a drive to Niagara Falls and back to life. After he left the Air Force, where he served as an officer training future officers, he started teaching history and coaching high school hoops at a public school in northern New Jersey.
He became a department head, then assistant superintendent, and one day he was the boss. There was a sense of inevitability about that outcome. Some people are born to run things. What were his dreams? The child of immigrant parents, he didn’t think much about such things. His generation was too practical. They didn’t sit around talking about how to change the world. They were too busy trying to change their world. My dad’s life—our life—was a slice of the American dream. A rental house every summer at the Jersey Shore. Family night at the drive-in movies; trips to New York City to see a Knicks game or a Broadway play; a pool in the yard; and a basketball hoop attack to the garage. He was an old-school dad. There wasn’t a lot of hugging or praise. On the rare occasion he said something nice, it meant something. “Not bad,” he would say after a good effort. If it was a particularly good effort, he would say, “Not bad,” twice. He wasn’t a man who looked back on life with regret. He had a little use for taking his own temperature. He had a temper. I was afraid of him, but not physically. I was afraid to let him down, to disappoint him. When he yelled, it made me tremble. His temper had that kind of power. I remember the fights he had with my mom. I never understood what the fights were about, but what kid does? Sometimes I thought one of them would just call it quits, but always the next day came.
They carried on.
As time passed, his temper faded. As my dad got more comfortable in his own skin, as he was better able to navigate his own emotions, he got calmer, made him today, and you’d call him laid-back. As I got older, I came to appreciate the small things—the daily habits and rituals that my dad and mom shared. Those rituals and rhythms of life gave me a great sense of stability—the great sense that relationships can last, that love can last. The coffee he started for my mom every morning; the daily run to the supermarket; the evening coffee out by the pool, listening to WOR on the transistor radio. The early dinners at a local bar for pizza and muscles marinara; the card games, which Mom always seemed to win. The habits of love were there for me to observe and imitate. The love eye witness didn’t look like anything I saw in the movies. It looked like something better—something within reach. The constancy, the consistency, the mutual understanding. None of it was exciting, but it was good for me. It was good for my parents too. The most important thing a father can do for their children is love their mother. Father Theodore Hesberg, former president of Notre Dame University, once said, my dad—not a religious guy—would agree. He would also agree with theologian Dietrich Bonhaffer, who said this in a letter to his niece before her wedding day: “It’s not your love that sustains your marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.” That lesson may be the greatest. My dad taught me: Marriage sustains love. My dad taught me big and small things. He taught me how to tie a tie, how to throw a spiral. He taught me to think through problems and see both sides of an argument. He taught me the importance of hard work and the talent was overrated. He encouraged me to take risks, but not be reckless. He taught me how to play blackjack and poker, how to lead, and how to learn. He taught me how to play basketball and the importance of sticking things out. “Finish what you start,” he often told me. And always, my dad was shaping my character, trying to draw out of me the best version of myself, which I too often resisted. Turning boys into men is no duck walk. It’s something the state can’t do, or a social worker. It’s something mothers can’t do alone, as hard as they might try, and as good and heroic as they are. Fathers are uniquely qualified to do this work and uniquely situated. Dads play a critical and underappreciated role in their daughters’ lives too. I know I would not be the man I am today, or the husband and father, without his example. He’s ninety-four years old and still influencing me, still teaching me.
To all of the good dads out there. Thank you. Not enough is written about you.
The men in this country taking on the responsibilities and pleasures of fatherhood.
And disappointments too.
Your steadiness, insteadfastness, may not make for good fiction, but it makes for a good life.
Your effort to shape the next generation of husbands and fathers. It’s the most important work in America.
This is Our American Stories, and the celebration of Father’s Day continues after these messages. Lee Habib here again, and I’d like to encourage you to subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcasts. Every story we are here is uploaded there daily, and your support goes a long way to keeping the great stories you love from this show coming again.
Please subscribe to the Our American Stories podcasts wherever you get your podcasts.
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