Ken Fite

“The boss needs to see you in his office right now” aren’t exactly the words you want to hear on a Friday morning. Or ever. But they’re the words my coworker said to me that day in August, 1997.

I was nineteen years old and working as an on-air disc jockey at a rock station in north Florida. I had wanted to be on the radio since I was eight years old. My dream was to get on-the-air at my hometown rock station in Orlando, but this first job in Gainesville was fun and great experience for me. I just knew that somehow, working there would pave a way to getting on-the-air in Orlando.

I had only been at the station for three months, but during that time I had hustled every single day. In addition to my 10am-12pm shift, I helped out the morning show from 6a-10a and I did overnights from midnight to 6am. Twelve hour days aren’t that bad when you’re doing what you love.

As I walked down to Gus’s office, my heart pounded. I could feel it beating all the way in my throat. I walked in, closed the door behind me, and walked out a minute later.

He was quick with his words. I wasn’t a good fit for the station and was shown to the door.

I had been fired.

I made my way to the radio station’s restroom without running into anybody, locked the door behind me, and sat down. Tears welled up. Not only had I been fired, I had also been set up.

What I didn’t mention earlier was that another DJ at the station was jealous of my success and was determined to stop me. He came up with a brilliant scheme to get me pushed out of a job that I loved – and it worked. I remember being heartbroken that someone could be so evil to get a hard-working employee with a big dream fired but even more so that my boss didn’t have my back.

What’s sad is that I’m not alone. This scenario plays out with many different people in many different ways every single day. A dream job today can quickly turn into a nightmare tomorrow.

But the lesson I learned from being fired from my dream job was this: When someone tells you what you’re not, you have to remember who you are. And remember Whose you are, too.

While that’s always stuck with me, it’s easy to forget.

You’re told you’re not a good speaker when you know you’re better than you used to be.

You’re told you’re not cut out for the job when your ratings clearly show that you are.

Although I had all of the stats proving my worth, I still couldn’t convince my program director not to fire me that day. It was too late. He had already been convinced otherwise by someone else.

I was devastated. In that moment, I almost gave up on my dream. That would have been easier.

But within a week I got hired on-the-air at two big name stations. Although I lost one job, God gave me two. Six months later, I was offered a job on-the-air at my hometown rock station in Orlando.

My real dream job.

Almost 20 years later, I still look back on the whole thing with amazement.

The job I lost in the end really ended up being the very thing holding me back from becoming who I was meant to be. Sometimes when you’re going through a tough season, it’s hard to see how things will work out. But if you have faith and remember who and Whose you are, they always do.

When was the last time you stopped being so busy and spent some time resting?

In today’s culture, that sounds ridiculous.

We have a to-do list a mile long. We complain about everything we have to do to anyone who will listen. And if nobody’s around to listen, we put it on Facebook. We wear being busy as a badge of honor to show the world how important we are. The more we jam into our schedules, the better we feel about ourselves. And the more activities we enroll our kids in, the better off they’ll be, we say.

My family just got back from vacation at a resort here in Orlando, Florida. We spent our days swimming, endlessly going down water slides, and playing games at the arcade. We had a blast.

It was great to call a timeout on the busyness of life and just get away for a few days.

But you don’t have to spend money and go away to give yourself the gift of rest.

There’s a word I haven’t been able to get out of my mind for some time now. The word is Sabbath.

Sabbath literally means stop. It’s derived from the Hebrew word sabat. It’s most commonly known and used in reference to the Bible, where God rested on the seventh day – the Sabbath – following the six days of creation. Many still observe the Sabbath today, dedicating a day each week to rest.

God thought the Sabbath was so important that He included it in the 10 commandments. It’s number four. “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall do no work.”

How many of us actually observe a Sabbath? How many of us stop working one day each week?

What makes a Sabbath is simple… it’s just the absence of work. So what is considered work? Doing anything you consider a chore is work. So if cooking is a chore for you, it should be avoided. But if you love cooking, then it’s not a chore and isn’t something to be avoided on the Sabbath. (Side note: I predict after reading this, my wife will suggest we order a pizza for dinner tonight.)

Besides the obvious chores around the house, observing the Sabbath means no logging into work. It means no pulling out the company BlackBerry just to check email. It also means no worrying.

My favorite book so far this year is Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown. A few insights I gained from the book that can also apply to a weekly Sabbath are:

-By abolishing any chance of being bored, we lost the time we used to have to think and process.
-The busier things get, the more we need to build in thinking time into our schedule.
-Play is an antidote to stress.
-Essentialists see sleep as necessary for operating at high levels of contribution.
-Build sleep into your schedule so you can do more, achieve more, and explore more.
-Essentialists do one fewer thing right now in order to do more tomorrow.

While all of these nuggets of wisdom relate to a weekly Sabbath, the last one really speaks to me.

We all have a never-ending to-do list and it would seem crazy to put it off for a day so we can rest. We worry that we’ll get farther behind on our chores and all of the things we have to get done. The paradox is that by choosing to do fewer things today, we can be even more productive tomorrow.

Spend some time today planning to observe the Sabbath tomorrow. Give yourself the gift of rest.

One evening, Thomas Edison returned home after a long day working at his research laboratory. Shortly after dinner, a man rushed to Edison’s home and delivered some devastating news.

A fire had broken out at his research factory a few miles away. Firemen from eight nearby towns were desperately trying to put out the fire, but were struggling to contain the out of control blaze.

Edison arrived and pushed his way through hundreds of onlookers and stared at the green and yellow flames, seven stories high, fueled by the many strange chemicals inside the building.

That’s when Edison quickly looked for his son and told him with the excitement of a kid on Christmas, “Go get your mother and all of her friends – they’ll never see a fire like this again!”

“What?” Edison’s son said, not understanding his father’s strange reaction to the horrific scene.

“Don’t worry,” Edison continued, “It’s alright – we’ve just gotten rid of a lot of rubbish.”

This story was told in Ryan Holiday’s book, The Obstacle is the Way. When I first read it, I just couldn’t believe Edison’s reaction to seeing his many years of hard work going up in flames.

But Edison’s point of view when disaster struck was this: What other response was there?

Even though Edison wasn’t upset, it would have been understandable if he had been.

The years of prototypes, research, and formulas inside the building had only been insured for a fraction of their worth because the building was supposed to have been built to be fire resistant with fireproof concrete. Virtually everything inside of it was now reduced to ash and gone forever.

Edison was 67 years old at the time of the fire. In today’s world, he would have been encouraged to go ahead and retire. Friends may have said that the fire was a sign to just quit and go home.

But Edison didn’t quit.

The next day, he was interviewed by a reporter and said that he wasn’t too old to make a fresh start. “I’ve been through a lot of things like this. It prevents a man from being afflicted with ennui.”

Within a month of the fire, the factory was up and running again with men working double shifts day and night to create new products that the world had never seen before. Although the damages from the fire had totaled $1 Million dollars (equivalent to $23 Million in today’s dollars), Edison and his team earned almost $10 Million in revenue that year (well over $200 Million today).

The same man that failed 2,000 times to create a workable light bulb knew that giving up was always the wrong answer. Edison actually loved to fail. He once said, “Negative results are just what I want. They’re just as valuable to me as positive results. I can never find the thing that does the job best until I find the ones that don’t.” He knew that he couldn’t succeed unless he failed.

The trials that you and I face each day may not be as significant as a fire that destroys everything we’ve ever worked for, but they can still feel significant to us, nonetheless. We need to remember that how we react to setbacks in life matters much more than whatever it is that we’re reacting to.

Edison’s formula for greatness was simple and is advice that we can apply to our lives whenever disaster does strike: Embrace failure and don’t be afraid start over, no matter how old you are.

And when your dreams go up in flames, don’t worry. You’ve just gotten rid of a lot of rubbish.

At some point in your career, you’ll get an email from your boss about an important announcement.

A colleague decides that they’re going to retire. They’re overjoyed. And you’re a little bit jealous.

Last week I had the opportunity to give a retirement speech for someone. She loved her job of 31 years and was sad to go but looked forward to setting out on a new adventure. It got me thinking…

While some love their jobs, many people do work that they hate. In a 2013 State of the American Workplace study performed by Gallup, 70 percent of Americans said that they hate their jobs. They described themselves as disengaged from their work and saw retirement as the light at the end of the (very long) tunnel. It makes me think of the scene from Office Space where disgruntled employees take out their frustrations on a jammed printer with a baseball bat behind the building.

Retirement is a concept that was created in the early 1900’s to bribe factory workers into working a job that they hated with the promise that one day they could leave and get paid to enjoy life later.

And it worked.

Millions of Americans worked jobs they hated, staying at the same company for 30+ years. They lived for their work. They were given the gold watch. But they also lost the best years of their lives.

While the days of staying at the same company for an entire working career are gone for the most part, we still haven’t abandoned the practice of doing work we hate now so we can enjoy life later.

Seventy percent of Americans will back me up on this.

Retirement scares the crap out of me. I imagine myself living in a van down by the river eating a healthy dose of government cheese. I don’t want that. I once heard someone say that they were serving their time, like the years leading up to retirement were like a jail sentence. Who wants that?

We need to stop waiting for retirement and find ways to become more gruntled now. Deferring our happiness until we retire is a dumb idea. But most of us don’t realize there might be another way.

What if instead of waiting for retirement, we found ways to enjoy life now?

What if we planned family vacations now instead of waiting until retirement to travel the world?

What if we listed what we want to do when we retire and we started doing those things today?

What if all of those people out there, the 70 percent of Americans who say they hate their jobs, made time out of their busy day to find their calling that they wouldn’t dream of retiring from later?

What if we realized that the archaic concept of working 9-5, modeled after the factory age, was dead, and we instead found ways to create passive income instead of clocking it in every day?

I will be honest with you – that’s why I love writing. To think that someone can buy my books at 3:00 in the morning while I’m asleep and drooling on my pillow is amazing to me. To think that I can write whenever I want from wherever in the world I want, click on publish, and thousands of people can read these books for years to come blows me away. To have the opportunity to help people become better with email, with improving their focus and concentration, their memory, and becoming a better employee at work by creating and publishing something once is crazy to me.

But that’s the world we live in now.

And that’s the dream I’m following.

What’s yours? What are you doing to create a life that you won’t want to retire from?

Stop waiting for retirement. Find work that doesn’t feel like work. Discover your calling.

Make some time to find a way to create the life you dream of living someday today.

My family and I spent the last week in Iowa. Like usual, I brought along every device I could pack, including an iPhone, an iPad, a Kindle, and my laptop (so I could write… that was my excuse).

After a few days with the in-laws, we rented a car to visit some family. On the drive to go pick up the rental car, my father-in-law asked, “Do you have a map?” “No,” I said, “I have my iPhone.” After a few seconds of silence he finally said, “You better take the map” and handed me one.

He was right.

Just a few minutes after leaving Des Moines and heading north, my iPhone stopped working.

Well, it still worked… I could still play Angry Birds on it if I wanted to. But it didn’t work. No cell coverage. No email. No Facebook. No Twitter. No Pandora. Nothing. I realized that I wouldn’t have access to my toys until I got to the hotel that night. Forced offline, I started to get a little worried.

It’s a strange feeling when you realize you’re disconnected from the world. You move into panic mode and you start coming up with some pretty good excuses for needing access to “the grid.”

What if I miss an email? What if someone needs to get a hold of me? What if my car breaks down?

But the things we fear usually don’t come true. Instead of becoming disconnected to the world, going off the grid can make you more connected with the people you spend your time with.

Without the crutch of a gadget, being off the grid can even force you to pay more attention to life.

My boys, who are also addicted to Angry Birds, suddenly found themselves without their toys, too. Like their dad who had to engage with the real world, they found ways to be creative and have fun.

They climbed a mound of dirt next to a newly built house and pretended that it was a mountain.

They looked for rocks and washed them off with a hose to see what kind of treasures they found.

They ran around and played with their cousins, exploring a cornfield.

They helped name a stray cat.

Then the next day, we all tried to catch fireflies in their grandpa’s backyard.

We went to an Iowa Cubs baseball game.

We played on a slip-and-slide.

We shot each other with squirt guns until we were soaked.

We shucked corn for the first time.

We took a walk in the woods and my oldest son found a log that looked like an alligator.

When the kids lost their toys, they got creative and their imaginations took over.

I’ve written before about seeing life through a 4-inch screen… how I’d much rather live life in the moment instead of trying to capture every single experience with a camera, only to miss it.

A funny thing happens when we ditch the devices. Our brains reset. We get creative. We have fun.

What would happen if we decided to spend one day or even just one afternoon disconnected?

How could going offline for an electronics Sabbath help us appreciate more of what we have?

Don’t wait until you’re stuck off the grid to pay more attention to the things that really matter.

I had no idea what I was going to write about this morning. But that’s nothing new.

I opened the lid of my laptop, clicked on Add New Post, and stared at the blinking cursor of death.

I sat in silence for a few minutes and then said a little prayer for guidance before getting started.

Some call it writer’s block. I call it Saturday.

You see, a lot of people think that writers are just bursting with things to write about. That we can’t wait to sit down and share the amazing thoughts and insight stuck inside our head with the world.

But it’s not true.

We struggle. We worry. We do our morning ritual. We write what we feel called to write about that day, and then we click on Save or Publish and we walk away, hoping to have made a difference.

But the most important thing we do is we show up. Every single day. And we write.

We don’t wait until we figure out what to write about. We just write. Author William Faulkner once said, “I write when I’m inspired, and I see to it that I’m inspired at nine o’clock every morning.”

The one piece of advice I’d give someone wanting to become a writer would be this: Just show up.

It’s advice that applies to a lot more than writing. It can help with any decision or problem we face.

Funny how advice works, though…

We like to give it out freely, but rarely do we follow our own advice, even when we need it.

This was a hectic week. I needed to buy a retirement gift and struggled for days trying to figure out what to get. But it wasn’t until I took a step in faith and left the house that I found the perfect gift.

I also had to give a speech for the retiree in front of 75 people and agonized over the whole thing until I sat down to write it out and then practiced delivering it. It ended up working out just fine.

And then this morning. The blinking cursor of death that thought it would win showed up. But I sat down in faith and wrote some words about having faith that I didn’t even know I was going to write.

That’s how faith works. You show up. You do your best. You let God take care of the rest.

What I keep reminding myself when I don’t know what to do is to just take one step in faith – the first step – and things will work out. It’s like driving home late at night when it’s dark out. You can’t see the whole way home, all you can see is a small part of the road being lit by your headlights.

But that’s all we need to see. If you just follow the path that’s lit, you’ll find your way home.

If you’re struggling with a decision or if you have something weighing on your mind – just show up. It turns out, writing is a lot like life. Show up and take a step in faith. The path will become clearer.

This morning, I woke up and read the obituaries.

It’s the advice author Austin Kleon gave in his book Show Your Work!, which I’m currently reading.

Kleon says that reading the obituaries can be like having a near-death experience. He writes, “Reading about people who are dead now and did things with their lives makes me want to get up and do something decent with mine…although I certainly don’t want to taunt [death] or court it or invite it any closer than it needs to be…I do somehow want to remember that it’s coming for me.”

I’ve never had the desire to read the obituaries. I always knew they were out there, but that was the kind of thing that I thought older people did while eating toast and drinking their coffee. Not me.

But this morning, I decided to try it, and I read about some really interesting people.

I read about a high school teacher of 32 years named William Kelsey who was determined not to let the kids he taught “fall through the cracks.” Knowing from personal experience that all students learn differently, he was committed to teaching in a way that was visual, fun, and engaging. He wouldn’t just teach his classes about marine biology from a textbook – he would bring real, live, animals into the classroom and teach about them. When he taught students that didn’t want to go to college, he would work with them to help them find their talents and discover what their calling might be. He found his own calling and passion for marine biology by accident, when that was the only class available for him to take one semester as a graduate student at FSU.

I read about Patrick Stover, a local postmaster for over 35 years and how after he passed away, his daughters decided to retrace his steps and visit the various places around town that carried significance for him. They visited the post office where he worked and the fire station where he volunteered for 30 years. One daughter said that her father’s rule for living life was, “You set an example, and you don’t brag about what you’ve done”. He saved his money and spent it on things that could never be taken away, like education, paying for all three daughters to go to college. And he spent his money on travel – camping in the Rocky Mountains and driving a Volkswagen van across Italy and Switzerland during a family trip – to create lasting memories with the people that he loved. At his service, his daughter thanked him for teaching her about life and about adventure.

I also read about Robert Patterson, Jr., a lawyer and a fifth-generation Floridian who loved to dance at parties and also loved to wear bright-colored yellow, green, and pink jackets at important business meetings. Patterson was once awarded a plaque by former Orange County Mayor Richard Crotty for being “The World’s Nicest Man.” It was only after Patterson’s granddaughter started asking questions about his military past for a school assignment that Patterson shared that he had been awarded a Purple Heart and also given 4 stars of valor for his service in World War II of which he still carried shrapnel in his body from the combat. He didn’t see a need to mention any of this before. What irony that this fun-loving but humble war hero passed away on the 4th of July.

Although I thought it would be a bit weird waking up today to read the obituaries, I learned a lot.

Kleon was right – obituaries aren’t really about death, they’re about life. Reading about how these amazing people lived their lives makes me want to get up and do something decent with mine, too.

It’s Independence Day.

For most of us, that means that later today, we’ll be cooking out, stuffing our faces with delicious barbecue, and lighting sparklers and snakes with our kids that will forever mark up the driveway.

The Founders would be proud.

But Independence Day always seems to remind me of something else – the year is halfway over.

It reminds me of the goals and dreams that I declared on January 1st would become a reality. And it reminds me of my failures when I compare my goals to what I’ve actually accomplished this year.

Back on New Year’s Day, I wrote about how we should stop making resolutions and start setting goals. I explained how resolutions never work, but setting specific daily goals can make us unstoppable. I wrote it, but I didn’t live it. Sometimes it’s hard to practice what you preach.

You get busy. Life takes over. Our goals and dreams take a backseat to life’s endless demands.

And sometimes we sabotage ourselves with the wrong daily goal to give our dreams a chance.

I had a goal of writing six books this year.

But instead of focusing on a daily word count, my focus was on time spent writing. I still woke up before the rest of the world, but I clocked it in each day instead of reaching for a specific goal.

The reality is that sitting down to write 500 words a day and sitting down to write for a few hours seem like similar goals, but they’re not. One is specific and leads to a destination – 500 words is the exact length of this blog post. It’s enough to write six 30,000 word books in a year.

Sitting in a chair to write each morning wasn’t specific enough. There’s Facebook and cat videos and too many other distractions out there for butt-in-chair time to be a good enough writing goal.

It’s easy to get discouraged but we need to celebrate what we have accomplished so far.

What I keep reminding myself is that I still wrote a book this year, the best one I’ve ever written.

And how many people spend years writing their first book?

Norman Vincent Peale’s advice on success was to, “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” Set big enough goals so that even if you fail, you don’t really fail.

We like to give up on our goals when we get off to a bad start. It’s easier to give up and decide to try again next year than it is to readjust. Today might not be January 1st, but it doesn’t need to be.

Declare a new goal.

The year may be halfway over, but we still have half a year left. Don’t waste it on cat videos.

Tonight, while you watch the 4th of July Fireworks, take a look at the stars and be reminded that if you focus on the right daily goal, you can accomplish anything. Remember to shoot for the moon.

“Get down here right now!” That’s what a dad was screaming at his kid a few weeks ago at church.

We had just listened to a sermon on a topic like anger or something. The kid was in the second story playground and would not come down when it was time to go. The dad was getting mad, and loud, and started to yell because the kid would not budge. I said to myself, I’d never do that…

Never say those words.

Because, trust me, the moment you say something like that, the universe destines you to find yourself in whatever situation you just told yourself you’d never find yourself in.

And so I thought about that dad last Sunday when eleven o’clock rolled around and it was time for my two-year-old to come down from the second story playground and decided that he wouldn’t.

Like the dad from a few weeks before, who I now realize hasn’t been back since that playground incident, I was getting mad, and loud, and yelled, “Get down here right now!” Noah wouldn’t budge.

Two-year-olds don’t take well to demands from adults.

As I stood there, staring up at my son who stared back down at me with the eyes of a crazed fugitive on the run from the Law, I saw that there was a lesson in leadership that I could learn from him: You can’t make someone follow you, listen to you, or do what you want – unless they want to.

In one of my favorite books How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie wrote that, “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.” I love that. It shows how we can’t change how someone feels, thinks, or acts. It reminds us that they have to first be open to change before being asked to do anything. You can force people to do things, but that loyalty never lasts.

I told my son that we were late for church and he didn’t care. He laughed, as if he were saying You’ll need to do better than that.

I offered him a cookie that didn’t exist and it did no good. I told him I was going to eat the cookie and laughed back at him, trying to strike a blow to the one thing he holds dear. But no luck.

I told him we were going bye-bye as my wife and I confidently walked away and then hid around a corner and asked each other, “What are we going to do?”

Ultimately, I had to crawl underneath openings two feet high to get my son. He looked about as shocked to see me up there as one of the sweet church ladies watching the terrible scene play out.

I’m still not sure exactly how I could have made him want to come down.

But I do know that because I focused on my wants instead of his, because I didn’t find out why he didn’t want to come down, nothing worked. I need to remember this with people of all ages, too.

A few weeks back, I wrote a post for my mom for Mother’s Day. I wanted to take a moment to recognize my Dad and thank him on this Father’s Day Weekend for everything he’s done for me.

If your dad’s still with us, I hope this post inspires you to also write a thank you note. And if not, maybe spend a few moments thinking about your dad and reflect on the memories you still have.

Thank you, Dad.

Thank you for being a great provider.

Your job was demanding but I never heard you complain. And our family never went hungry.

Thank you for going out and getting another job after you were let go, even though it was farther away and required travel. You could have easily collected unemployment and sat around complaining about how life was unfair, but you didn’t. You hit the pavement and found something else. I don’t think you knew that as a little boy, I was watching how you handled that, but I was.

Thank you for letting Mom and me tag along and go out of town with you as much as you did. Those trips as a family were fun and made my childhood special and I still think of them often.

Thank you for not being mad at me when I accidentally broke your mom’s China when I was five years old and hid underneath your bed for what felt like forever. I felt bad enough already.

Thank you for taking me out to breakfast on Saturday mornings. It’s a tradition I keep with my boys today and I look forward to it every week. I like to think that they might keep the tradition, too.

Thank you for saying Yes when I’d ask you to throw the ball with me out in the yard. I know you really didn’t like that kind of thing, but you did it because you knew that it meant something to me.

It meant the world to me.

Thank you for lying on the floor all night long while keeping my hand in a bowl of ice water after I grabbed your car’s scorching hot exhaust pipe when you told me not to. Sorry I didn’t listen to you.

Thank you for driving me to basketball games all over town when it was inconvenient and probably the last thing you wanted to be doing on a weekend after working hard all week long.

Thank you for not being embarrassed that I was the worst player on the team, demonstrated with antics like trying to make a basket from half court for what must have seemed like no good reason.

Sorry about that air ball from half court. I really thought I was going to make the shot. Thank you for not making me feel like an idiot after the game on the way home. I was trying to impress you.

That was the reason.

Thank you for grilling me endlessly when you noticed that a cigarette and a beer were missing from your stash. You had so many, I really didn’t think you would ever notice if I took one of each.

I forgot that you were an accountant.

Thank you for quitting smoking and drinking 30 years ago. I wonder if you’d be reading these words today if you hadn’t made and stuck to that tough decision. You would have missed so much.

Thank you for working two years past when you were supposed to retire to help put me through college. I didn’t think much of it at the time but realize now how much of a sacrifice that was.

Thank you for saving for my college so that by the time I left high school, school was completely paid for. It gave me a sense of security knowing the only thing stopping me now would be me.

Thank you for making me pay my own way when I changed majors so many times while trying to “find myself” that I ran out of paid credits. That’s when I started taking college seriously.

Thank you for telling me you didn’t believe I would finish college. It was the wake up call that I needed. I know now I wasn’t proving you wrong, I was proving what you really believed right.

Thank you for always being happy to see me, whether I was gone for a day or gone for three months. I always knew when I walked through that door you’d have a smile on your face.

Thank you for all of the talks over the years, from how to handle broken relationships to career advice. You didn’t always know what to say, but you were always there to listen.

Thank you for hanging in there when you went to the hospital twice. I almost lost you both times. Thank you for fighting for your life, I can’t imagine my boys not knowing you.

Thank you for being such a great Pawpaw. My boys love you so much. I know this because they go berzerker whenever they learn that they’re going to visit you. I know you love them even more.

Thank you for being a great husband to Mom and staying married for over 40 years. In a world where people like to take the easy way out, you two stayed together even when it wasn’t easy.

Thank you for setting that wonderful example for me. Happy Father’s Day. I love you, Dad.