Will+B’s+Final+AmEx+Speech+2016

 **Song for My Father**

The year was 1965 and it was the era of hard bop and modal jazz. Miles Davis just recorded the hit tune My Funny Valentine with Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock was perfecting his style with Davis. On the modal side, John Coltrane recorded his most well known album A Love Supreme, which sold hundreds of thousands of copies. It was also the year that jazz was dying. The Beatles released a Hard Day's Night and more and more young people turned to Rock and Roll rather than Jazz. Modal Jazz was a new style of jazz that revolved around the same key above augmented and inverted chords, just think Miles Davis Kind of Blue. But hard bop was something new entirely, or rather it was something old. Hard bop was a return to the older generation of jazz virtuosi by combining the simplicity and rhythm of swing with the energy of bop. It also incorporated elements of African American hymnals. One such artist Horace Silver released his biggest hit Song for My Father in this very year. He was inspired by Brazilian rhythm, the melody by Cape Verdean folk music, and he dedicated this song to his dad. Through the language of music Silver gave back to his father. And just like the pioneers of jazz learned from their fathers, we can learn from ours. So with that, I’d like to give all of you a Song for My Father.

With my friends I wanted a good laugh so I asked my dad about two of his younger brothers. I asked “who are they like?” knowing what response I’d get he answered “You know Beavis and Butthead... shutup Beavis, let's go burn something butthead...that was them. The older one always did something stupid and was smart enough to get away with it, but the younger one did the same thing and he always got in trouble, always.” And my friends and I laughed, that was 5th grade.

My father and I were in the car and he was explaining to me friendship. He said, “you know Will, you’ll always have friends you see at school, but they come and go.” I responded, “ya I feel like that about Nolan and Davis I knew well last year but I don’t really talk to anymore.” “But not only them,” he said, “You’ll find a lot of good friends that you know you don’t always stay friends with. But there is always a group you’ll find who are always there. I never had those friends in school or college but I found them at Emerald Bay.” I ask, “like Rick and Bruce?” “Yes, the fellowship in Catalina over those summers working hard everyday was different then most friendships you’ll find. The first couple of weeks the barge comes with all the supplies and it was our job to set it all up. We worked our asses off putting up every tent, it wasn’t permanent like they have it now. We also had to unload the food and put up the dock. When you share that kind of work with other men who are there to work hard you have a strong connection with them. Those guys I’ll still see nowadays and we can always relate to each other regardless of how far away we live from one another.” His words got me thinking about who the real friends in my life are, who the ones I have a true community with. Soon realizing that I wouldn’t work over the summers at the boy scout camp like my dad I was challenged to find fellowship with a similarly good group of people.

When I was very young my dad told me a great tale. A story that I thought was real for a long time. This tale was from Emerald Bay and it was with my dad, his brother Mark, Rick, and Bruce. The four of them canoed out to a small cave called smuggler's cove, which is actually a real place and fun to snorkel around. Anyways, in his story they were looking around the cave and Rick found a gold coin, like some form of pirate treasure. At this point my dad had to explain to my younger self that a whole gold coin was actually worth a lot of money. So they found the coin and they thought there might be more so they started digging where they found the first one. The day was nearing its end and the tide was also rising. They dug up two more coins by the end until they had to leave before the tide completely filled the cove. They all got into the boat and started heading for the exit. But as they approached the exit they saw an octopus completely cover the entrance. With its tentacles outstretched clinging to the ends of the cave, my dad and the three others needed to get out of the cave before it flooded so they rammed right into the octopus. All of that force did nothing to the octopus but then my dad’s brother Mark looked at the coin in his hand and had an idea. Mark through the coin at the octopus and some of its tentacles let go, but it wasn’t enough. Then Bruce realized that he need to throw his coin the octopus let go a little more. Finally my dad through his gold coin at the octopus and the octopus lost all suction to the wall. Rick gave the boat a final push and they were able to make it out of the cave right before it flooded. Me as a kid thought about this story for hours and hours upon end. It was exciting; my father had adventurous stories like any hero I knew.

As my dad was driving me home one day, I think I was in middle school we had another great conversation. I think it started by me asking how he could wake up and go to the gym at 4:30 every morning. The crux of our conversation went like this: he said “I’ve always known that I have this kind of internal drive. When I was younger it was not always good during baseball because I always knew I could do better, and I beat myself up for it but I was kind of intense.” I asked, “does Grandpa Bob have the same thing with baseball?” He answered, “Yes, even more than me. But you have it too I can tell you aren’t motivated by what people think but what you really want to do.” I replied “thanks, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to go to the gym at 4:30 in the morning.” “You never know,” He said, “You sleep differently when you're older. You could probably do it, but your brother couldn’t. He has no internal motivation.” We both laughed and I never forgot that wisdom.

One time I was curious about how his thoughts on religion, specifically the ones that often become political, and so I asked a question that I was honestly curious about. I asked him if he thought it was a sin to be homosexual. He looked at me with eyes so serious and a brief pause that you would think it was from a movie. He said, “When you have these friends you’ve known all of your life, you know these guys are good people, and one day you learn that they’re gay, you can’t, with any sense of morality, say that they are wrong or sinful.”

The years moved from 1965 to 66 to 67 all the way to 1968. My grandpa thought he was going to be selected from the draft to serve in Vietnam year after year. In 1968 my dad was born and my grandpa left to fight in the war. My dad lost a kidney as a baby and they didn’t think he was going to make it. Last weekend my dad’s mom, my grandma, texted that she just saw the movie Step Brothers and that it reminded her of her kids growing up. My dad responded that hopefully it wasn’t that bad. Later that day my brother was talking with Dad and as I walked by I hear my dad say, “I just can’t believe those knuckleheads were throwing glasses at the bartender during our wedding.” With that phrase I sat down to hear the rest of the conversation. He said, “The trouble my brothers would get in was ridiculous [I’m going to skip the trouble explained in detail] you guys are lucky that you two are good brothers.” Besides all the laughs we have when we hear about our uncles, Cade and I were glad to hear it.

I often talk to my dad about APUSH. He was always better at history in school; he has an incredible memory. We’ll get into discussions about Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. or his experience with living under the Carter administration. Wherever the difference in our historical interpretation or even our politics will fall, I will always respect my dad for one reason: the importance of his experience in shaping his worldview. His experience with working at terrible jobs has led him to the conclusion that it’s a good idea for young people to have bad jobs. It gives us something to work for, a drive that demands we get out of our present circumstance. And he never forgets to mention that when he implores me to get a job. He is also an advocate of living poor in college, I have to agree that it’s motivational to make us get out of there quicker. I appreciate and try to reflect his trait of allowing the mundane, the exciting, the whole sphere of our experience in life to inform our beliefs.

I can tell you far more anecdotes about my father but I don’t want to keep us here forever. So with that I’ll stop the storytelling. I am very fortunate to have a father who is active in my life and who is committed to my mom. But the concept of fatherly advice is not unique to only biological fathers. It is present in our conversations with older friends, older cousins, aunts and uncles, or at least responsible ones. And many of you have already given fatherly advice to kids far younger than you. In the America I will grow old in, I want to see children sitting on a bench in the park listening to their father tell a story. I don’t want the kids to be completely bored, distracted, or playing on an iphone. In this America I want all of us to be more open to fatherly advice. I don’t want my kids to be bored with my stories because I hope that I’m not that boring. And in this future America I want all of our words of wisdom, whether you be male or female, to be interesting enough for our children’s appreciation. I can’t come up with a logical argument worthy of being support for a facet of life so necessary. But hopefully you have all had experiences with father figures that have influenced your life for the better. So I ask that these experiences, like those which my father gave to me, will persuade you of the importance of fatherly advice.