Who where my dad’s

I never really knew my father. My earliest memories (other than what was in the photo albums) of my father were an incident at his mother’s house where she is just screaming and yelling at us (I cannot recall if it was directed at me or not), and Me and dad leaving out the side door. Other than that memory, the only thing I can recall about him was never getting child support on time or at all. Then when I was around thirteen, other than a few brief visits, I went with Dad to a Banning-Carson football game, then spend the night for Christmas. The last thing I remember about that holiday was that I was heavily in to computers and the commodore 64 in particular, and all I wanted for Christmas was a computer drive I needed to use the computer to it’s fullest. He got me a point and click camera. When I got home, my mother and step-dad exchanged it and got me my drive. Other than that, I pretty much do not feel I have a dad.

I say all that, not because I was being selfish about the present or casting shade on my dad, but to so a comparison of what a real dad is, and to tell about FOUR great dad’s who treated me like my own son. It was tough growing up without a father, but I was blessed to have a wonderful caring mother and my awesome Grandparents who helped raise me while my mom worked as a single parent. During this time, my mother decided to help give me a sense of belonging for lack of a better explanation and enrolled me in Boy Scouts.

I had never really been away from my family other than school, and I was quite scared to go where I knew no one at all. When I got there however, I felt a sense of welcome from everyone I had never really felt before, especially from the Male scoutmaster’s. Our scoutmaster was Mr. Wayne Gemmell, he was scary to me at first what with his handlebar mustache and cowboy hat he loved to wear, but he treated me gently and always cared about how I was doing. Mr. Tom Mason was one of the assistant scoutmasters, and even though he was a little rough around the edges, he loved the kids. I remember many happy occasions I would spend at his family’s house. He had three boys who were also in our troop, and we would always have fun either at their house, or on our many campouts. Mr. Sullivan was another assistant scoutmaster who had a BIG family (13 children), but even with that many kids, I was always welcome in their home and treated like one of the family. Finally, there was Mr. James Feenstra, yet another assistant scoutmaster (yes, we had a lot of scoutmasters, at our highest, we had 42 scouts spread across 4 patrols!), who, even though the other scoutmaster’s were equally awesome, I would have to say Mr. Feenstra was the best! He had two sons and two daughters and I had spent so much time at their house, people started thinking I was his 5th child! I remember one time vividly where our troop was having a pinewood derby contest, and me with no father and no tools, was invited over to Mr. Feenstra’s house and he spent the whole day helping me build that pinewood derby car. For one birthday, the family actually had my party at their house and had all of my friends from the scout troop attend. Years later, I am still good friend’s him, and he actually attended my wedding to my beautiful wife heather and took the best wedding pictures of anyone there.

There are so many more stories I could tell, like our many great camping excursions or parades we would participate in, but I don’t think people would want me to ramble on about it for days. The reason for telling my story is that even if your real father decides to not be in your life, there are those out there who would gladly step up and fill that void. Not for money, not for recognition, but because they truly care. And I was fortunate enough to have Four father’s step up and be my father.