For all the fathers out there, and their children: please take the time to read Father’s Day Lesson About Children, and Life. Here is an excerpt:
The morning of Sept. 8, 2008, was like most mornings for Thomas S. Vander Woude, a former airline pilot who, in retirement, kept a farm in Nokesville, Virginia. … By his side was his youngest son, Joseph, known as Josie, who was 20 at the time, and who had Down syndrome. …
While Thomas was working, Josie was off in a different part of the yard when a broken septic-tank cover gave way under his feet, and he slid in. Vander Woude, from a distance, saw his son fall. He understood right away that Josie was in mortal danger. The tank was 8 feet deep, and filled almost to the top with waste.
Vander Woude rushed to the hole, which measured 2 square feet. He reached down to grab his panicked son, but without success. …Vander Woude … lowered himself into the tank. He treaded in the sewage in an attempt to keep Josie’s head above the water line, but Josie was still sinking.
So Thomas Vander Woude made a decision: He would hold his breath, dive under the sewage, and lift Josie onto his shoulders. When rescuers finally arrived, they pulled Josie out of the tank; he was alive. But Vander Woude, 66 years old, was dead.
He had made the deliberate decision to risk drowning in sewage in order to save the life of his child. …
The hellishness of his final moments gives the story a kind of ghastly power. But there is also something opposite: an intimation of nobility, and a lesson about living.
I understood the story of Vander Woude’s death through the prism of fatherhood. I tell myself, as I imagine most fathers do, that I would make any sacrifice, suffer any hardship or humiliation or pain, for my children. … How did he become the sort of man who could devise a plan to save his drowning son, and then carry out that plan, knowing all the while that it might mean his own death? …
[T]he Rev. Vander Woude … describes his father as someone who trained himself for virtue, and who possessed a crucial understanding — one that is particularly rare in self-indulgent, self-actualizing America — about the nature of happiness. He knew that joy is best found not in the pursuit of pleasure, but in the execution of responsibility. …
Thomas Vander Woude Sr. … was a pious and committed Catholic, who attended Mass every day, who provided for the poor, and who knew, as his son describes it, that God meant for him to live for his family. “A father puts others ahead of himself,” the Rev. Vander Woude said. “That was his belief. He never said that. He just did it. He loved being a husband and being a father. Pride, pleasure and possessions are where people go for happiness. But my father first thought of God, and the devotion to the family, the love, comes naturally from that.” … “He went down there in peace,” the Rev. Vander Woude said. “This is what he did. This is who he was. This was where his life was taking him.” …
There’s a little secret about Father’s Day that I think a lot of fathers understand, and that our children don’t. … The joy of Father’s Day is the joy of every day: the gift of being in the company of your children, and of living for them in the way you are meant to live, in the way that Thomas Vander Woude lived, for all of his sons.
(Hat Tip: Dan Markel.)
