Free Tell My Sons: A Father's Last Letters by Lt Col Mark Weber, Robin Williams Page A

to do a story on the snow fort. When that cameraman showed up, you put on your snow gear faster than ever before. The TV appearance was a great moment of pride for me as a dad, because I had always told you hard work pays off—and this time it really had. †
    Snow fort, like my dad: The decisive demand that everyone fall in line, the fanatical determination to finish what you start, the excellent results we achieved.
    Snow fort, unlike my dad: The very idea of a snow fort; my understanding that you were losing your Christmas break, that it was miserably cold, and that this dream was more mine than yours.
    *   *   *
    It’s not lost on me that I’m heavily focused on fathers and sons and discipline here. Nurturing was a part of my equation, but it came second to discipline. Plus, I knew Kristin was providing it to you in the same way my mom provided it to me, so I’ve been less conflicted about that.
    I’ve been much more conflicted when it comes to thoughts about my own dad and what kind of dad I wanted to be. Hetaught me in an imperfect and somewhat unintentional way about what parenting and leadership really is: an example that inspires or deters, encourages or discourages, empowers or weakens—or, as I’ve learned in life, a little bit of all the above.
    I turned out to be a pretty decent person. Does that mean my parents had it right?
    You’ll meet people in life who were gentler parents but had kids who turned into criminals. Did those parents have it wrong?
    I’ve had decades to test, prove, and disprove what I liked and didn’t like from my youth. I spent most of my undergraduate work in social studies and teaching, digging into child development, sociology, and psychology. And yet, I still have more questions than answers.
    That said, I propose to you that although there are few things in life more complex and uncertain in outcome than child rearing, we do know that some techniques work better than others. We also know that kids get a deciding vote in the equation by way of their personalities and life choices. ‡
    In the final analysis, my story is an acknowledgment that no father or leader is perfect, but that every father borrows the best of what he’s observed and tries his hardest to ditch the rest. It’s my hope that you do the same and that you do it at least as deliberately and carefully as I have.
    When I think about my own mixed emotions and imperfect memories of my dad, I do wonder what you all will remember about me. This is a timeless consideration that was best explained by Mark Twain when he quipped, “When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”
    Unless there’s a cure for cancer, you won’t see me when you turn twenty-one, and that’s the age when I was only beginning to understand the virtue in my dad’s actions and words, even if I didn’t always adopt them.
    As an adult, I was able to see him build his own four-thousand-square-foot home. Working with him on that house gave me a hundred glimpses of a simple wisdom I was blind to in my youth.
    For thirty years he worked in construction, and I saw him exercise responsibilities commensurate with an army brigade commander. Despite a healthy pension and a body worn hard by dozens of years working in Minnesota winters, he picked up his tools and went right back to working ten-hour days, this time for himself.
    He heats his home with wood, and he cuts and splits every piece of oak that goes into that furnace, which is no small feat for a northwest Wisconsin home.
    I’ve seen him climb trees with his bare hands and feet, and I’ve heard about him climbing right back up after falling out of them.
    When the fishing is good in late winter, he uses a ladder to cross open water to reach the receding ice.
    He’s a perfectionist, and his sense of pride is often too much for