Matt Shafer
(1 of 2)
Thank you all for the kind words about Dad, many of them from those of you who have known him for longer than I’ve been alive. The notes about Dad at work are particularly touching because, as will surprise absolutely nobody, Dad didn’t talk about work much at home. It’s amazing (although it should not be, of course) how consistent the man his coworkers describe is with the man he was at home.
Dad obviously enjoyed work and it was clearly important to him, as the comments (and his 40+ years there, several of them after he “retired”) attest. But it was also always clear to us that family was Dad’s first priority. Yes, if it was a weekday, Dad was in the office at 8am sharp (unless he was in a deer stand or a duck blind), but if there was ever a day he wasn’t also home with the family by 5:15, I certainly don’t remember it. What I do remember are the countless hours he spent waiting for football practice to finish while reading the newspaper in his truck, pitching batting practice, playing catch, coaching basketball, and taking me to the woods for target practice (Dad) and to wildly hack at bushes with a machete (me, much to Dad’s chagrin).
When Mom and Dad finished helping me move into my apartment as I started my job after college, I remember Dad telling me two things: 1) show them what a boy from Longview can do, and 2) don’t let them make you work too much overtime. Years later, I’ve seen how easy it is to let work become too important, and also how unsatisfying that can be. I think Dad may be one of the rare people that actually had true work-life balance, and I only hope I can follow his example with my family.
As I got older, got a real job and started paying bills, got married and had children, Dad continued to get smarter and smarter (it’s funny how that seems to happen). A few memories and lessons...
When I was 4 or 5 years old, Dad hung a spool of thread from the ceiling just out of my reach. He’d have me jump and reach for it over and over until I was able to finally touch it. Once I could finally jump high enough to touch it, he’d wrap the spool a little to raise it up higher, and I’d have to go back to jumping and reaching again. That pattern went on for years. Looking back at it now, he may have just been trying to tire me out so I’d go to sleep, but I think he was also teaching me something about ambition and striving to always improve.
In college, I often joined the regular lunch-hour basketball game at LeTourneau if I was home from school on a weekday. By that time, I was tall enough that my head would almost scrape the ceiling from which the spool of thread used to hang. One day, I wanted to show Dad that I could now jump high enough to dunk a basketball (at least sort of), which felt to me like the natural culmination of all those years jumping and reaching for that spool of thread that always continued to be just out of reach. I managed to get off a decent, but not too impressive, dunk. Dad took that opportunity to impart a different lesson, this one about humility, as he said (yes, I can quote it word-for-word 20 years later) “Be careful. We only have one rim.” (Dad was nothing, if not practical). But, he delivered it with the half-smirk of a suppressed smile, an expression he wore often when he deployed the dry humor that many others have mentioned. It’s an expression that I often feel on my own face, and it unfailingly summons vivid visions of Dad.
