Another Father’s Day comes around, and my Facebook feed is full of photos of fathers.

That prompts me to add my contribution to this day of gratitude for fathers.

My father was steady and dependable. He was kind and nonjudgmental. He contributed to his community through volunteer service in a variety of roles.

Daddy has been on the other side for 18 years now, but his example is always with me – and will be throughout the rest of my life.

Sometimes I wonder how he’d be in today’s world.

I know he’d enjoy the internet and would most likely be on Facebook.

He always enjoyed politics, so I know he’d have some opinions about U.S. and world politics now! Gosh, with all of the cable shows, he could watch and watch and watch. (I have a feeling he’d like Rachel Maddow). There is so much more available now than his weekly Newsweek magazine.

He’d be fascinated with all that cars offer, with back up screens and lane drift alert and the like. He really enjoyed a new car or truck. As a young man, he bought a new model every year. He didn’t do that later in his life, but he sure enjoyed shopping for a car and the whole negotiation process.

He liked staying abreast of new ideas and technology . . . while still honoring his stolid German Lutheran Salzburger background with frugality, evidenced by comparison shopping as well as repair and gardening skills.

He enjoyed watching sports on TV and getting up early on Saturday mornings to fish in his jon boat. He paddled that boat for many years before he bought a small trolling motor to make his trip around the lake a little easier.

His church and his heritage were major factors in his life. He was born in 1926 in an 1870s farmhouse on Ebenezer Crossroads and moved across the road into a new house with his two-year bride in 1956. He lived there the rest of his life, three miles from the church, Jerusalem Lutheran, he attended his entire life – the church in which he was baptized as an infant and in which we had his funeral 73 years later. The same church in which five generations were baptized before him. The same church that his Salzburger ancestors built during 1767-1769, forming the bricks by hand.

He love all things Georgia Salzburger. He enjoyed learning about his ancestors. Gosh, he’d love Ancestry.com now! He enjoyed being involved in the  Georgia Salzburger Society.  He was president of our Seckinger-Waldhour family reunion for many years. He was proud of his ancestry and very aware of how the past contributes to the present.

When I look at my life, I can see Daddy’s influence in many aspects of who I am. He taught me not with words but by example. Examples that contribute every day to who I am and what I value.

Father’s Day is a wonderful prompting for me to look back at Daddy’s life and to look at my life now – and to be grateful for all that he taught me through the way he lived his years on this earth.

I know I’m blessed to have a Daddy who played such a central role, through his time with me and – through the example he set – the time beyond his death.

Happy Father’s Day, Daddy. You blessed me in so many more ways than I can even know.

And I am so very grateful.