Message from a grateful son

I'm writing this from the desk in my room in Wenham, Mass. It's pouring rain outside and last night the storm was so severe it shook the blanket of golden leaves from the trees and covered the ground in autumn.

Early this morning my dad texted me from home in Coeur d'Alene and told me that the father of a family we used to attend church with suddenly passed away from brain cancer with less than three weeks warning. Shaken by the story, I rushed to my computer and found the family on Facebook. I didn't personally know the man, but I knew of him and what I knew of him was enough.

He was like my dad. He took his family to church, went hiking with his son, and was the bedrock of his family. He didn't need recognition; he just needed to know the people dearest to him were walking with the Lord.

He worked hard; very hard. His hands were tired from the labor of passing years and his back was worn. You could see by the look in his face and the way he held his children that the paradox of the joy of his family and the pain of this world was a source of his gray hairs. He loved his wife, he loved his country, and he loved his home. But most of all, he loved his savior. He had a velvet soul, tender from daily prayer yet steely eyes with a vision for the future. He was quick to act and slow to speak because a man of his word takes ownership of his character.

Our country is at a loss of fathers like him. My generation scraps in endless debate over masculinity concluding in nothing because though we have every noble source at our fingertips, we have no pattern to follow. While the pastor, politician, and hero of history are noble, they are displaced. A father holds among the most influential positions in a boy's life because his example channels straight to his son's heart. Values are caught, not taught, and no amount of teaching will correct a boy's reckless spirit if a father does not play catch with his son.

It is no surprise that the young people of my generation care not for past generations' models of gender, marriage, and sexuality when the fathers of the past were weak men who abused women and divorced for personal gain. There need be no apology from the man who firmly walks in his integrity and the people of culture do not inherit a right to terminate his breed out of resentment of not seeing him patterned in their own lives.

This is a letter from a grateful son. Few will grasp the significance of this letter and it is unfortunately only understood by the few who were blessed with a righteous father. I am grateful for my father and pray that I will have half the moral stuff he does.

You may not have known him but you know his legacy. I didn't know Donnie Goecke but I know that "The whole earth is the tomb of heroic men, and their story is not engraved in stone over their clay, but resides everywhere without visible symbol; woven into the stuff of other men's lives."

Reece Brown is a fifth generation Kootenai County resident currently studying economics at Gordon College.