April 3 was my father's birthday.
Had he lived past 1982, he would have been 81 today.
Bill Gleason loved sports.  As a catcher in high school, he caught while my Uncle Joe pitched.  His claim to fame was turning an unassisted triple play. He could be gritty.  He served with the Army Rangers in WWII in France.  He was smooth.  He was stylish, and had a way with the ladies.  By the time I was born, the third in the family, Bill had re-prioritized his life.  I wasn't near the top.  In those years, my father's priority was the bottle. 

From the day I left for college, I went three years without hearing from him.  One day, I was summoned to the payphone in the dorm.  My sister put him on the phone, and I learned that he had been diagnosed with throat cancer.  Doctors gave him five months to live, and he wanted to see me when I came back for Easter Break.

I'm grateful that Franciscans taught me well.  As I saw it, I had two choices:  screw it, or forgive him and start anew.  I opted to put the past in my subconscious.  Now sober, but sickly, my father became a heroic figure, filled with a life's worth of philosophies and wisdom, just looking for someone to share them with.  He persisted for nearly two years, through chemotherapy and the ravages of cancer.  He never complained once.  Not to me, and not to anyone else.  There was no self-pity left.  Instead, he accepted his sickness and his impending mortality. 

Visitors to the hospital expected to see a fragile shell of a man, and leave his aseptic room sorrowful and biting their bottom lip.  Instead, they found a quick-witted man whose humor lifted them to new heights, and whose whisper carried the heft of a load of bricks.  In those days, my Dad was free from the lies of liquor, and there he sat defying the odds with honesty and attitude.  Friends made their obligatory trek to the hospital, and amazingly, people came back.  His room was like a non-stop party, and his guests left buoyed, their spirits fed by the essence of this man, Bill Gleason.

On this, his birthday, I need to say thanks for lessons learned, examples set and one hell of a guy.  I always think of him when I listen to this song, "One More Arrow," by Bernie Taupin & Elton John.

He said I want to grow up
And look like Robert Mitchum
And I hope that when I'm gone
There'll be some say that I miss him
He must have been romantic
He must have sensed adventure
And I feel the steel of his strong will
In the frame around his picture

And he's one more arrow
flying through the air
One more arrow landing in a
shady spot somewhere
Where the days and nights blend into one
And he can always feel the sun
Through the soft brown earth that holds him
Forever always young

He could have been a boxer
But the fight game seemed so dirty
We argued once he knocked me down
And he cried when he thought he'd hurt me
Strictly from the old school
He was quiet about his pain
And if one in ten could be that brave
I would never hate again

One more arrow
One more arrow
One more arrow
Forever always young