The Father Privilege: Turning Boys into Men Is a Dad's Job

On this episode of Our American Stories, for those of us whose fathers did their best to raise and love us, we’re the lucky ones. In fact, the greatest privilege no one in America seems to be talking about may be “The Father Privilege.” For our Father’s Day Special, Lee Habeeb shares the story of his own father.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:16):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the Star and the American
people coming to you from the city where the West begins,
Fort Worth, Texas and all show long our Father's Day Special.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
This next story is a.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
Tribute in the ends of my father and good fathers everywhere.
I'm one of the privileged ones. I not only had
a father, but a good one. He provided for us.
He put a roof over our heads and food on

(00:54):
the table, and he expected things of us, but he
did so much more. He got married after he graduated college,
but he and my mom never took time to be
a married couple.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
There were always kids.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
By the time he was thirty, he had four of
us to take care of. Was he ready for it?
All fathers didn't ask that question in the nineteen fifties,
and they were probably better off.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
No matter how long we delay such things, we're never ready.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
I remember as a kid looking at pictures of him
before he was the man he became.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
He looked like a grown.

Speaker 1 (01:29):
Up, even in his high school yearbook. Why did he
sacrifice so much for us? I learned as I got
older that calling what he did his sacrifice would have
irritated him. He did what people did. No one back
then thought about postponing adolescents into their thirties. They started things, started,
their lives started, families, started careers. One picture from his

(01:50):
wedding is my favorite. The young groom grinning as he
watches his bride cut their wedding cake, celebrating on a
rooftop at a neighborhood building.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
No wedding planners, no exotic honeymoons.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
It was a drive to Niagara Falls and back to life.
After he left the Air Force, where he served as
an officer training future officers, he started teaching history and
coaching high school hoops at a public.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
School in northern New Jersey.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
He became a department head, then assistant superintendent, and one
day he was the boss. There was a sense of
inevitability about that outcome. Some people are born to run things.
What were his dreams? The child of immigrant parents, he
didn't think much about such things. His generation was too practical.
They didn't sit around talking about how to change the world.

(02:41):
They were too busy trying to change their world. My
dad's life, our life was a slice of the American dream.
A rental house every summer at the Jersey Shore. Family
night at the drive in movies, trips to New York
City to see a Knicks game or a Broadway play,
a pool in the yard, and a basketball hoop attack
to the garage. He was an old school dad. There

(03:04):
wasn't a lot of hugging or praise. On the rare
occasion he said something nice, it meant something not bad,
he would say after a good effort. If it was
a particularly good effort, he would say not bad twice.
He wasn't a man who looked back on life with regret.
He had a little use for taking his own temperature.
He had a temper. I was afraid of him, but

(03:26):
not physically. I was afraid to let him down, to
disappoint him. When he yelled, it made me tremble. His
temper had that kind of power. I remember the fights
he had with my mom. I never understood what the
fights were about, but what kid does. Sometimes I thought
one of them would just call it quits, but always
the next day came.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
They carried on.

Speaker 1 (03:49):
As time passed, his temper faded. As my dad got
more comfortable in his own skin, as he was better
able to navigate his own emotions, he got calmer, made
him today, and you'd call him laid back. As I
got older, I came to appreciate the small things, the

(04:10):
daily habits and rituals that my dad and mom shared.
Those rituals and rhythms of life gave me a great
sense of stability, the great sense that relationships can last,
that love can last. The coffee he started for my
mom every morning, the daily run to the supermarket, the
evening coffee out by the pool, listening to wor on

(04:31):
the transistor radio. The early dinners at a local bar
for pizza and muscles marinara, the card games which Mom
always seemed to win. The habits of love were there
for me to observe and imitate. The love eye witness
didn't look like anything I saw in the movies. It
looked like something better, something within reach. The constancy, the consistency,

(04:53):
the mutual understanding. None of it was exciting, but it
was good for me. It was good for my parents too.
The most important thing a father can do for their
children is love their mother. Father Theodore Hesberg, former president
of Notre Dame University, once said, my dad, not a
religious guy, would agree. He would also agree with theologian

(05:15):
Dietrich Bonhaffer, who said this in a letter to his
niece before her wedding day. It's not your love that
sustains your marriage, but from now on, the marriage that
sustains your love. That lesson may be the greatest. My
dad taught me marriage sustains love. My dad taught me

(05:38):
big and small things. He taught me how to tie
a tie, how to throw a spiral. He taught me
to think through problems and see both sides of an argument.
He taught me the importance of hard work and the
talent was overrated. He encouraged me to take risks, but
not be reckless. He taught me how to play blackjack
and poker, how to lead and how to learn. He

(06:01):
taught me how to play basketball and the importance of
sticking things out. Finish what you start, he often told me,
and always, my dad was shaping my character, trying to
draw out of me the best version of myself, which
I too often resisted. Turning boys into men is no

(06:22):
duck walk. It's something the state can't do or a
social worker. It's something mothers can't do alone, as hard
as they might try, and as good and heroic as
they are. Fathers are uniquely qualified to do this work
and uniquely situated. Dads play a critical and underappreciated role
in their daughters lives too. I know I would not

(06:44):
be the man I am today, or the husband and
father without his example. He's ninety four years old and
still influencing me, still teaching me.

Speaker 2 (06:54):
To all of the good dads out there. Thank you.
Not enough is written about you.

Speaker 1 (06:58):
The men in this country takeing on the responsibilities and
pleasures of fatherhood.

Speaker 2 (07:03):
And disappointments too.

Speaker 1 (07:05):
Your steadiness insteadfastness may not make for good fiction, but
it makes for a good life.

Speaker 2 (07:11):
Your effort to shape the next generation of husbands and fathers.
It's the most important work in America.

Speaker 1 (07:19):
This is Our American Stories, and the celebration of Father's
Day continues after these messages. Plea habibe here again, and
I'd like to encourage you to subscribe to our podcast
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(07:42):
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Speaker 2 (07:52):
Please subscribe to the Our American

Speaker 1 (07:55):
Stories podcasts wherever you get your podcasts,