I think of my dad fairly often. Most of us probably think of our dads like that. He died 11 years ago. I tend to think of him in two ways:
- I do something that reminds me of him and I think, "I inherited that from my dad."
- I see something I don't do so well at and think, "Dad would have been on top of that."
1. In many respects, my dad was a lot different than I am. It is strange to think that he was my current age when I was a freshman in high school. He seemed so much more responsible than I feel. He seemed so much more on top of things than I feel. He seemed so much more mature than I feel.
Of course, he went off to fight in a world war when he was 18. I would have been freaking out at that age.
But he was a Miller in temperament. I categorize the parts of me by my grandparents. I was a Schenck just then. I was a Shepherd just then. I was a Miller just then.
My Dad was his mother's son. He was responsible and dependable. He was a bookkeeper. He could be trusted to keep track of the money. He was also funny and a tiny bit mischievous. His April Fool's tricks were notorious, often sprung on us before we could fully open our eyes. He was a Miller.
Sometimes I feel like I had all those telomeres. There was a bookkeeper inside of me, but it was overtaken by the Schenck in me. My dad and I would race to see who could add up the individual charges at a cafeteria we ate at, and see if we were right at the register. He almost always won.
My dad would start his stopwatch at a rest park on a trip just to see how long it took. There was no pressure. He just did it for fun. He would have loved Google maps, but he was just a little too old in mind to get a smartphone when they came out. I always use a stopwatch when the wheels of a plane leave the ground and then stop it at touchdown, just to see if the pilot was right. It's a tiny artifact of my dad.
I knew the types of planes from him. 727, two in the back. DC-10, big one in the back middle. 737, two on the wing. 747, the king of them all with a bubble on top. I've not lived up to his legacy to know all these more recent Airbus intruders.
He collected little cars toward the end. The collection started with one that his dad had. When he passed he had a whole slew of them on display around the living room. He sold a pretty nice one to afford to get married, as I recall.
Fun stories about the short dating and courtship with my mother. He proposed so that she would kiss him. On their first date, she picked the tip up off the table because she thought he had forgotten his money. They would sit in the car and he would fall asleep because he was getting up so early to work on a bread route.
2. My dad wasn't bookish like I am. And if he had been, he would have finished reading more than I have. The Schenck in me actually stopped mid-sentence this week to point out a cardinal in the window.
He once said, "I don't understand how someone as educated as you doesn't carry a pen everywhere you go." I do now, interestingly. I have for the last 10-15 years, along with a moleskin. I couldn't bring myself to carry as large a notebook as he did. And in any case, cool people just take notes on their phones these days anyway. But he'd be happy to know that I do generally have a pen on me these days.
He was raised in legalism. He felt guilty not wearing a tie to church. Occasionally he would go without one on a Wednesday. He was quite keen for me to keep my hair short. I went to his own hair cutter right before his funeral to honor his preferred length.
He once said to me, "What is it that you don't do?" For the record, there are many things I don't do. I haven't murdered someone in ages, for example. But it was a revealing question, I thought. The Christianity he grew up with was formulated around things you didn't do.
He was very faithful. He was faithful to read his Bible and pray. He tithed through World War II in a time he didn't think he was right with the Lord. He figured he'd have to do restitution when he got back anyway. I'm sure he was fine with the Lord that whole time.
3. When I say a corny line to someone in a drive-through or to someone waiting on me, I think of my dad. I do think my jokes are better than his. I remember a story of him shelving molasses at his Grandfather Miller's house in Camden and them surprising a cousin by throwing a jar at them and saying, "Think fast." Occasionally, one would break.
Speaking of jokes, he told of how they would tell the French girls with a smile, "If you aren't the ugliest thing I've ever seen." And they would just smile thinking he was flirting and complementing them. He wasn't any good with languages that I could tell. I was talking to my daughter Sophie just this week trying to figure out one phrase he taught me. I think in might be something like C'est n'est fin rein, but it sure didn't sound like that on his lips. For years he tried every Sunday to master Buenos dias with an older Colombian man at our church, but failed.
He had a fondness for his mother. He sent her money throughout the war. He took her side in disagreements.
4. He was a great father. I could count on him to know the answer to any life, practical problem. He couldn't help me with my studies. That was always my mother's domain if either of them would know. But he could help me with a car or something to do with money.
"More accidents happen in parking lots than anywhere else." He was an insurance adjuster for a long time. "It's right after it has started raining that the roads are slickest." "A car will go a long way if you make sure it has oil and water." I remember him checking the oil at rest parks on trips.
Although I'm not sure what good the tests are, I think he tested once to have an IQ of 129. He took a course in remembering people's names once, I believe. Try to notice something that stands out about them and visualize it somehow in connection with their name. I think he put me on to a system of memorizing numbers that I still use occasionally to this day. 1 = t or a tie, 2 = n or noah, 3 = m or ma, 4 is r or rye, 5 = l or law, 6 = sh or shoe. So the number 914 could be remembered by the word "bitter."
He gave his vacations to the church. District conference, general conference, Frankfort camp. It didn't really occur to me that most families went to the beach or camping. He was the district treasurer in Indiana and then in Florida for 30 years. Everyone thought he was a pastor.
He was a frugal with the church's money, generous with his own. My mother once said that they didn't have anything because he gave it all away. But he was a conservative voice on a church or district board. What I mean is that he resisted what he thought were risky ventures. He was not stubborn. But I suspect that a lot of the time he wore the "black hat," the hat that sees the negatives of a venture.
But he was not stubborn. He was a team player. He worked with District Superintendents he thought were too easy to spend money. He loved the Dale Carnegie course he once took. "A man convinced against his will is of the same mind still." He did not try to bully anyone into changing their mind. He was someone you could reason with. He would listen to your side. Some of that likely came from his business background too.
The Millers were Old German Baptists. They were quietists and pacificists. My dad went to war but I think he must have absorbed some of that demeanor from his mother. "In honor preferring one another" was a verse I heard him quote more than once. He mentioned a growth moment when he saw his brother-in-law Paul Myers send back a food order that wasn't what he had asked for. My Dad had a sort of an aha moment--you can actually get what you really want if you speak up.
5. There were other parenting quips that I remember. "Anything but instant obedience is disobedience." I wonder where he heard that. His father was much more of a hard taskmaster than he was. My father only punished me a few times and never in anger. There was always a reasonable talk before any punishment. For him, it really was about steering in the right direction, not wrath.
In his early years, the saying was, "Anything worth doing is worth doing right." But in later years it became, "Good enough for who it's for." I'm more disposed to the second saying in most things.
6. He put up with my dreaming. I once read about raising worms in a Popular Mechanics magazine. I was going to make lots of money... although he said South Florida was an unlikely place to raise worms. He bought me a tub and, predictably, I was on to something else before he was out for any worms. That tub sat in our backyard for years.
He bought me some wood when, as an 8-year-old or so, I insisted I was going to build a plane to fly my Grandma Shepherd back to Indiana. He bought me leeches and chemicals for a high school project. He bought me computer chips to build a hexadecimal computer I never put together. He bought me a Commodore 64 that I never used to its full potential.
7. In his later years, I always felt like I should be talking to him about something meaningful but I never quite knew what to say. I didn't really know his world, and he didn't know mine. He had never heard of Immanuel Kant, and I knew nothing about cash flow or risk management.
In his later years, he became very anxious. My family can see me taking on those characteristics. It might have been sugar related, the so-called "Miller curse." I took him and mom to the airport about a year before he passed. I dropped them off to park the car, and he was anxious about how I would find them. My mom said, "The same way you would have found us when you were younger."
He had a soft heart. As far as I can tell, he was the originator of the "Schenck wave." He would stand outside and wave until the departing person's car was out of sight. He was a "J" personality. He had a schedule. He wanted to keep it. He didn't like to deviate.
But he would. He would protest my mother's openness to side trips and changes of plans. But he almost always fulfilled her wishes. It took a few years to finally go down "Stinking Creek Road," but it did eventually happen.
I hope he knew how much I loved him, how much everyone loved him. I'm sure God welcomed him not as a good and faithful servant but as a good and faithful son. What great love must have overwhelmed him! Then he knew something he probably did not fully understand on earth--God loves him beyond anything he could have understood before.
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