Dad and me, December 2006

My Dad passed away a week before Christmas in 2007, and this is the first year I can walk past a rack of Father’s Day cards without getting weepy. Most of you don’t know my Dad but I wish you had. Knowing him would have brightened your life.

There would be no Get Out and Give Back if it weren’t for Dad’s example.  And since Father’s Day is this weekend, let me tell you a little bit about him.

Almost 20 years ago Dad told me that he had discovered the secret of happiness, but he wouldn’t tell me what it was because he said I wasn’t ready.  For the next 5 or 10 years I pestered him to tell me the secret.  Finally, after 10 years, I asked him one last time.

He forgot.

But he did tell me once that he believed that each of us had a responsibility to leave this world in better shape than when we found it. 

That’s what he did.

Dad sponsored villages and built schools and did other good things in Haiti and near the Amazon River by working with the archdiocese of Cincinnati or an old high school girl friend who was a now a nun in Peru.

When he first decided in 1976 to help the village in Haiti, which the poorest village in the western hemisphere at the time, he had just survived his first of four coronary bypasses.  He was put in touch with Sister Aloudie, and he wrote her a letter, asking her what she would do with his contribution.   She wrote back in French and said she would “feed the starving children.”  Dad sent Sister Aloudie one percent of the gross profit from his lumberyard, the Hess Lumber Company, each month for years.  And the villages that Sister served had running water, electricity and at one point, Dad sent them musical instruments.  The village’s population doubled. 

Mom and Dad visited Haiti a few times, and they were there when the village opened a three-sided school house built with donations from Dad and two other people he didn’t know.  Dad, always a believer in operating under the radar, was horrified when he saw a huge sign one side of the schoolhouse that read “Jim Hess family of Bellefontaine, Ohio.” 

The only time Dad allowed himself to be interviewed by a few local newspapers and TV stations about his work in Haiti was when Sister Aloudie came to visit America about 20 years ago.   He hoped that the audiences would be inspired to do the same thing, and he quoted in a newspaper once as saying that the monthly check he sent to Haiti was the only bill he didn’t mind paying. 

He told me once that if each church in the United States would adopt one poor village somewhere in the world, we could eliminate world hunger.  I don’t know if he was right or not, but isn’t that a beautiful thought? 

Dad did a lot of good work in Bellefontaine too, but few people knew about it.  When a minister told him his parishioners were struggling financially, Dad paid their utility bills.  He bought bicycles for the children and Thanksgiving dinner for the families. No one but Dad and the minister knew he did that.

One Christmas Dad found out about a destitute, newly-single mother of three.  Dad and Mom went to Walmart then appeared at this woman’s house with several large bags of food and gift-wrapped toys.  When the woman asked Dad, who she’d never met, why he did that for her and her family, he said it was because he could. 

Dad sent a couple of kids to college who otherwise couldn’t afford to go.  He drove cancer patients to their chemo appointments.  Sometimes he’d take the patient’s entire family out to dinner if couldn’t afford to do it themselves.  Sometimes he’d give them all the money in his wallet, so Mom always made sure he never left the house with more than twenty dollars. 

Dad let you know if he thought you weren’t generous enough, too.  When I showed off the goodies I bought during a two-month trek through India and Thailand, including a handmade, 48” marble and lapis tabletop, he told me I should have spent that money helping the poor. 

It didn’t matter that I had spent three of those weeks with Global Volunteers teaching English to Hindu orphans.  I was devastated.

The marble tabletop was banished to a storage facility for seven years.

Today it serves as our dining room table, and as a continual reminder to me of the balance between the beauty of things and the beauty of giving.

Dad was the king of random acts of kindness.  Once he saw a woman on the side of the road needed money for gas to go to a friend’s wedding in Cleveland.  Dad filled up her tank.  He paid to have another lady’s car repaired so she could continue her paper route.  He didn’t know either of them, but that didn’t matter to him.   

Dad was humble, modest and the nicest human being I have ever known.  So many people have said they never heard Dad say anything unkind about anyone.  He stopped smoking his pipe back in the ‘70s.  He didn’t drink.  When he was really, really, angry he’d say “Judas Priest.”  But despite his lack of vices, he was one of the funniest people I’d ever met.

The legacy Dad left was a legacy of humility, humor and generosity.  He really did leave the world in better shape than when he found it. 

Happy Father’s Day, Daddy.  Rest in peace.