MY DAD

My dad was the most ethical person I've ever known. I surely didn't realize it at the time. However, today, I "get" what an extraordinary man he was. I could probably conjure up several examples but one just made it across my radar screen. ( Could be because today, Feb 22, is the anniversary of his death).  He had a simple ethic: "always try to do what's right." This view was not always clear or made sense to anybody else but it did to my Dad. He was fond of saying he understood what "doing the right thing" was even if others didn't. The example that comes quickly to mind is a time when my Mom's folks "fell out") This is a NC term which means they refused to have anything to do with him. The perceived slight had to do with my Dad's decision to help a neighbor harvest his crops. What made this an issue was that my Uncles, Mom's brothers, wanted to have all the land in the area to farm. However, another farmer had rented acreage and would not give it up. The Uncles came up with a plan: deny him the labor force needed to harvest his crops.The idea was that if he could not harvest the crops, the landlord would not get her share and so  the land eventually would come back to the Uncles. When my dad refused to go along, Mom's folks were incensed as well as my mom. My dad's logic: not fair to the neighbor and a selfish and wrong act; "getting back at someone" was not in his nature but mainly, helping the neighbor harvest the crops was the "right thing to do."