06/16/2024
HAPPY FATHER'S DAY TO THE MEN WHO HAVE HELPED RAISE US WHO DID NOT HAVE AN OPPORTUNITY TO HAVE CHILDREN .
“It is not flesh and blood but the heart which makes us fathers and sons.” —JOHANN FRIEDRICH VON SCHILLER
This famous quote was penned by the 18th-century German poet Johann Christoph Fredrich von Schiller. The quote is a line from Schiller’s 1781 play The Robbers, a drama that revolves around two aristocratic brothers and their beloved father. The quote means that being biologically related to someone does not necessarily make them “family”; it is your emotions for someone that determine whether you think of that person as a father, son, etc.
A SALUTE TO THE CHILDLESS ON FATHER’S DAY.
A bittersweet, poignant and moving Fathers' Day salute to my older brother, Bart J. Bailey, who never married and never had children.
THANK YOU.
Thank you for your guidance and support.
Thank you for being steady and sober when I was impulsive and emotional.
Thank you for being a great example and a role model to my sisters and our children, nieces, nephews and their children.
Thank you for our great and memorable motorcycle trips through mechanical failures, flat tires, blazing sun, freezing rain, snowstorms, drenching and petrifying thunderstorms and a couple of tornadoes.
Thank you for countless hours of talking and laughing.
Thank you for bailing me out of jail and other countless trials and tribulations.
Thank you for being a patriarchal symbol to innumerable populace, in your community and worldwide. Young men and women, missionaries you helped spiritually and financially and therefore have in turn touched countless lives for good.
Although Bart and our father Jack have both passed on. Thank you for your guiding influences.
THANK YOU.