The Night My Father’s Arm Was Stronger Than Johnny U’s

Judging by the crisp, white Carolina National Championship shirt my older brother is wearing, this picture must have been taken in the spring or summer of 1982. The kid on the big wheel is Chad, I think, and that’s his dad standing in the middle: the greatest quarterback then to have played the game, if not ever. Johnny Unitas. Johnny U’s right arm, that “Golden Arm” that threw at least one touchdown pass in forty-seven straight games, is resting on ten-year-old me. How lucky can a kid get?

How my dad arranged for us to visit the Unitas family those many years ago still remains somewhat of a mystery to me, but it had something to do with business, I believe. In fact, Dad might have fully explained it to me at some point, but there are three factors which work against my providing a detailed account. First, when we are children, we tend not to pay as much attention as we should. I’m going to meet Johnny Unitas? Who cares about the details? Second, the passage of time wipes away the fine lines of too many of our memories. Details from different vacations, for example, merge together. Which trip was it that I came out of the gas station bathroom only to see the family wagon pulling away from the gas pump, and I thought everyone was leaving me? Things that happened in one childhood home get recalled as happening in another. Which house was it that my little brother flushed my Star Wars watch down the toilet? Names of childhood teachers, and the grades in which we had them, run to the far corners of our mind, never to come out again.

The third factor working against my recollection is that my dad was in a lot of different businesses during my childhood. He worked in textiles, ran sporting goods and appliance stores, worked at the American Cancer Society, and then at one point made a go of buying and selling used printers. I cannot say which of these, if any, caused him somehow to cross paths with Johnny U.

What I remember clearly, though, is standing in the Unitas home, and Johnny U’s throwing open the doors to his trophy room. Inside were trophies, ribbons, and newspaper clippings too numerous to count. There was even a bust of the man himself. My ten-year-old eyes were overwhelmed by the attempt to take it all in.

“Take whatever you want,” he said, and for a moment I thought he was serious.

And I remember the front yard, because that’s where we tossed the football around. That’s right, Johnny U, the Golden Arm, threw me several passes, and I caught every one. Indeed, how lucky can a kid get?

Which leads me to this.

Children, no matter what age, believe they know more, and will do far better, than their parents. When we look back at how we were raised, the intervening years conspire to affirm our beliefs, letting us see far too much of what our parents didn’t do well, or what they didn’t do at all. When it comes to my dad, I see too often his many different career paths, and with each passing year I cannot help but contrast my own professional successes against those he did not have. I will do better than he, I tell myself.

We should, of course, view our parents differently. We should seek to recall more often the good they did. We should remember the lessons they taught and the opportunities they set before us, no matter how large or small. This is how I hope my ten-, eight-, and five-year-old will someday remember me.

In this spirit then, with Father’s Day approaching, I remember the good my father did on a night in the early 80s. It might have been a year or two before, or even after, the above picture, but the details have disappeared with time.

I can’t recall the team involved or even the sport, but I remember that my team, the one I was rooting for, just lost a big game. It was a playoff game, or perhaps the championship, and I was reduced to tears by the great sorrow of it all. My dad sat down beside me and encouraged me to hold my head high. They gave a great effort, he said, and their success in making it this far, much farther than most of their competitors, was something of which I should be proud. There would always be more chances and more opportunities, and they just might make it all the way the next time. But no matter what, he said again, hold your head high.

Remarkably, something about the right there and the right then, I heard it.

And I have lived it, too. In the years since I have been commended personally and professionally many times for keeping calm in the face of apparent obstacles and for holding my head high when things don’t break the right way. I note this not to celebrate me, but to celebrate my dad. He made me this way. On a family room couch so many years ago, with his arm wrapped tightly around me, he made me who I am today.

Thank you, Dad. Happy Father’s Day.