Today is My Father’s Day

My Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, has blessed me so much more than I deserve.

He led me through the ups and downs and twists and turns to the most amazing woman in the world, Amy Morales. (You may think “the most amazing woman in the world” is someone else, but this is my blog and I say the most amazing woman in the world is Amy!) He gave me two terrific parents who are loving and generous to me and loving and dedicated to each other and their marriage. I have a terrific extended family of aunts, uncles, cousins, my cousins’ children, and Amy’s two daughters, their respective husbands and their currently developing babies. I have a number of great friends. I’ve never been without food or shelter. And there are the billions upon gazillions of other blessings I have no clue He’s given me.

As fantastic as each of those blessings are, none of them compares to the gift He gave me 12 years ago today: my son, Nikolas.

Nikolas Scott William Daravanis was born at 11:40 a.m. May 10, 2000. My life has never been the same.

He has made me laugh so many times, like the day he stopped me in my tracks while I was heading toward the bathroom. Parents know that during the potty-training stage, they will go blue in the face asking “Do you have to go potty?” This particular day, Nik and I were about to go to the town’s park and before we left the house, I said “Do you have to go potty?” He didn’t but I did, so I told my son who was standing at the door waiting for me, “Well Daddy does, so when I’m done, we’ll go (to the park).” At that moment, this 3-foot tall 3-year-old suddenly came up with a deep James-Earl-Jones-type voice and said, “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”

Nik also is the source of my favorite two word phrase. Whenever I would come home from work, the first thing I would hear is “Daddy’s Home!” I’ve lived in a couple of places since then, but every time I cross the front door threshold, I hear in my mind “Daddy’s Home!” What followed, however, was not so great. Nik would run as fast as he could from the back room to the front door to hug me. How is that not great, you ask? At 4-years-old, Nik was just the right height that his forehead was on the same level as my crotch. I had two choices. I either got out of the way like a matador evading a charging bull, which would result in Nik plowing into the front door, or I scoop him up before he had me “singing soprano.” I chose the latter, although I didn’t always succeed.

I spend more time worrying about Nik than anything else these days, not because of what Nik does or says, but because of the selfish acts of his mother. In 2005, she broke her promises to me and her vows to God and destroyed our family unit. I’ve written numerous times the damage a boy growing up without his father’s physical presence causes. Studies from multiple and unrelated sources show drug, alcohol and cigarette use and criminal activity increase and self-esteem and educational success decline when children are raised in broken homes. I am doing what I can to help Nik buck that trend. I call him at least once a week, I never end our conversation without telling Nik that I love him, and I do not hang up before he does. And I never, ever miss a visitation period no matter what the sacrifice.

Because I live in Arizona and Nik lives primarily in Indiana, he and I are physically together only 9 weeks per year – one week at Christmas, one week during his school’s Spring Break and seven during the summer. Nine weeks equals 63 days – 63 out of 365 days per year that I can hug, kiss, mentor, coach and be an example and inspiration for Nik. I strive to make every second of those 63 days valuable and memorable. I’m thankful that he is appreciating my efforts.

He will occasionally send me an e-mail or text that says “I love you, dad.” This past March when he had the flu and wasn’t feeling good, he called me and said “Whenever I talk to you, I feel better, so that’s why I called.” I am so very, very blessed.

The Bible tells us that we should place our troubles upon the shoulders of the Lord and not worry. I’m really trying to follow that directive, but I still worry about the future. We do not know what will happen tomorrow, but there is one eternal fact.

Nikolas will always be my son and I will always be his dad.

Bigger Than He Looks

When I started this quasi and inconsistent journal, I wanted to document some of my thoughts and feelings, and record my ancestors’ lives.

Papou at his sweet shop in 1929.

In January 2010, I started digging into my ancestry. I noticed that, over time, an entire life gets reduced to statistics and a tombstone. I want my great-grandchildren and beyond to know me better than I know my great-grandparents and beyond.

I’ve praised my sweetheart, Amy; I’ve written about fatherhood, journalism, stupid things people say to the disabled, and buying a rat for Christmas; but not much about my ancestors on either my father’s or my mother’s side.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been focusing on my paternal grandfather, Louis Daravanis. I knew that Papou (the Greek word for grandfather) was born October 15, 1899 in Saranda Exclesis, Turkey; emigrated to the United States by himself at 16; owned and worked in eating establishments in Chicago, Illinois and Gary, Indiana; married my Yia Yia (the Greek word for grandmother) in 1933; had four children, my father being the second child; and died on June 16, 1978. Of course, Louis Daravanis had a much more interesting life than one long sentence divided by semi-colons.

Louis was a “rabble-rouser” as a teenager. At 16, he was arrested for participating in a student protest, most likely opposing Turkey’s military aggression toward Greece. Though he was born in Turkey, Papou’s parents and grandparents were Greek, and Papou always considered himself a Greek. Papou’s father and brothers broke Papou out of jail and put him on a ship called the Patris heading for America.

My grandfather was a fugitive.

“He never wanted to go back to Greece, even as a tourist, because he was sure he was going to be re-arrested,” my father told me. “We (my dad and his siblings) told him, ‘Dad, that was many years ago. No one would remember,’ but he wouldn’t do it. He was too afraid.”

It’s been more than three decades since I was 16, but knowing what I was like at that time in my life, I can’t imagine going to a strange country where I did not know the language. Papou did, and survived.

The Patris docked in New York on September 13, 1915. He was placed in quarantine until his admittance hearing three days later.

“First and second class passengers who arrived in New York Harbor were not required to undergo the inspection process at Ellis Island. The Federal government felt that these more affluent passengers would not end up in institutions, hospitals or become a burden to the state,” a report on the history of Ellis Island states. “This scenario was far different for ‘steerage’ or third class passengers. These immigrants traveled in crowded and often unsanitary conditions near the bottom of steamships with few amenities, often spending up to two weeks seasick in their bunks during rough Atlantic Ocean crossings. Upon arrival in New York City, ships would dock at the Hudson or East River piers. The steerage and third class passengers were transported from the pier by ferry or barge to Ellis Island where everyone would undergo a medical and legal inspection.”

Five years later, Papou’s parents and siblings made their way to America. Their immigration papers note they would be staying with cousin Christos Georges in Hart, Michigan. I assume that is where Papou lived between 1915 and 1920. How he got from New York to Michigan – if that is what happened – I do not know.

2467 N. Clark in Chicago as it looks today.

The Daravanises eventually settled in Chicago. Thanks to the research desk at the Chicago Historical Society, I learned that Papou, his older brother George and his younger brother Nick owned and operated the Blackstone Sweet Shop at 2467 N. Clark during the late 1920s. Papou probably made and sold chocolates, pastries, candies and ice cream, along with coffee, soda and lemonade. A regular – maybe even daily – customer at Blackstone Sweet Shop was gangster George “Bugs” Moran. I remember my Yia Yia, who passed away in 1991, saying that, one day, Papou could not make Moran’s favorite treat because Papou was out of sugar, so Moran drove Papou to a warehouse packed with sugar. Sugar was an item gangsters hoarded so they could make beer and moonshine during prohibition. Yia Yia said from that moment on, whenever Papou was out of sugar, all he had to do was get word to Moran, and Papou could get as much sugar as he needed.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Moran’s biggest rival, Al Capone, also was one of Papou’s customers. The Blackstone Sweet Shop was three blocks north of Moran’s meeting place, which on February 14, 1929 was the location of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Capone’s men, dressed as Chicago police officers, used the guise of a police raid to enter Moran’s hideout and kill seven of Moran’s henchmen. Capone’s goal for the fake raid was to “rub-out” Moran, but he wasn’t there. According to history books, Moran was five minutes late to a planned 10:30 a.m. meeting. No one knows why he was late. I’m going to theorize that earlier that morning, Moran made a sugar delivery to my grandfather. I have no proof, of course, but it sounds cool. My “fugitive” Greek grandfather saved the life of one of America’s most notorious criminals.

In the early 1940s, Papou moved his family to northwest Indiana, and after working as a cook for a time, bought the People’s Lunch Room at 1420 Broadway in Gary. My dad told me Papou, again with his brother Nick, cooked and served a variety of meals 24-hours per day. You could say the People’s Lunch Room was a precursor to today’s Denny’s Restaurant.

Papou’s rules for the People’s Lunch Room were Gary police officers could get a free meal every day and free coffee whenever they wanted, and no one should spend the day hungry, such as Tom “the appliance guy.”

Yia Yia and Papou in 1973.

“Tom repaired appliances a few doors down the road. At that time, it was nothing to take a fan or toaster to someone to repair,” my Aunt Mary told me. She said Tom slept on a cot in the back room of his shop. “Every day, your Yia Yia or I would take meals to him. One day, your Papou found Tom dead in the back room. I remember your Papou telling the funeral director that this man had no family, that he was going to try to sell the stuff in (Tom’s) store, and whatever your Papou made was all this man had. After everything was done, I remember going to the cemetery and visiting the grave. There was just a small marker on the ground. Your Papou said that that was unacceptable. We went to the (cemetery) office and he bought, out of his own pocket, a head stone for the man. Who would do that today?”

My paternal grandfather was not a big man physically (maybe 5’ 5” and 130 pounds), but Louis Daravanis stood up for those in need and those who protect, and against those who sought to oppress and destroy. That is very big in my book.

‘It’s the Media’s Fault’: No Longer a Lame Excuse

The earth is shaking. Do you feel it?

It’s not an earthquake. It’s not that climactic blast of coital bliss. It’s Joseph Pulitzer rolling over in his grave.

Joseph Pulitzer

“A free press should always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice or corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare.”

This year, 2012, is an election year. In November, America’s populace will determine who will be the Commander in Chief for the next four years. You would hope that the members of that populace would use logic and knowledge to make the best choice on who will lead the country toward a prosperous future while correcting problems of the past.

I don’t see that happening.

Americans of voting age cannot form a legitimate opinion because their primary source of education – the televised media – sides with one of America’s two political parties, supports the demagogues who are part of the privileged class, and has a slanted vision of progress that is devoted to their futures, not to the public welfare.

It really hurts me to type that because journalism – true journalism – has been a lifelong passion of mine. Journalism fed my family and me for more than 20 years. Being a journalist drove me, excited me, and challenged me. And though I am no longer affiliated with a television, radio or print news organization, I consider myself a journalist. I’m not always proud to say that anymore.

It is not coincidence that the polarizing of Americans coincides with the polarizing of the media. Because of the sensory overload of our current age, Americans do not dedicate the effort to fully learn about the public issues and the various ideas to solve the problems. Instead they set their televisions to Fox News or MSNBC and let the opinions of biased anchors and programmers fill the air with ambient noise. Soak within that toxic stew long enough and the toxins will invade your body.

Fox News unabashedly sides with the far right conservative Republican ideology while MSNBC stakes claim to the equally far left liberal Democratic philosophy. Each are examples of the Communist way of spreading propaganda – tell the people who they will like, who they will hate, what they will do and what they better not do.

True journalism shows the viewer, listener or reader both sides of a dispute and believes that each person is smart enough to form his or her own opinion. And in the process of presenting that information, true journalism does not denigrate or interrupt the presenter of the information because the presentation is contrary to the journalist’s personal point of view.

The people vying to become the President of the United States of America – a misnomer since very little is united around America these days – should be telling us how they can contribute to the welfare and future of the nation, not spend all their time telling us how “horrible” the other guy is. These people are in the middle of a year-long job interview. I’ve gone through job interviews, as I’m sure you have, and I’ve led job interviews, and in all instances the best candidate for the job proved why he or she is the best, not because they were “less horrible” than the other candidates.

Almost 45 years ago – April 4, 1968, the day Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated – Robert F. Kennedy, who himself was running for president, told supporters in Indianapolis:  

“In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it's perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in.

“What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another.”

None of the people currently campaigning to be the next president is smarter or more clairvoyant than the other, but each has ideas that, put together with other ideas, will move the country forward. The Founding Fathers combined the positive contributions of each man to “form a more perfect union.”

It is long past due time that the current Fathers – and especially the current journalists – start contributing instead of dividing.

Saving Kettle – Well, Sort Of

I’ve been thinking over the past few months starting my own small business (more on that at another time) but I’ve never considered animal rescue, which makes the couple of animal adventures Amy and I have had this year rather weird.

You may recall last Christmas we bought a female rat for a woman whose beloved pet rat had died (see Act of Rat-dom Kindness). We’ve gone from rats to birds.

When we got home from dinner Monday night November 8, I heard a chirping sound not normally associated to the sparrows, pigeons and crows normally seen swooping around northern Arizona.

“We must have a canary around here,” I said.

“Okay,” Amy responded with a “the-man-has-gone-insane” tone.

 As I got near the door, I noticed what looked like a white sheet of paper between the house and flowers in the flower box under one of our front windows. Then the paper chirped again. “I really am going insane,” I thought.

Upon further review, the piece of paper was actually a cockatiel, a breed you don’t regularly see perched on telephone poles. While Amy turned a dog kennel into a temporary bird cage, I made sure our cat Kirk did not turn the bird into dessert.

Other than having feathers and being able to chirp, neither Amy nor I had much knowledge about cockatiels. Based on information from cockatiel.com, we gave our visitor a small dish of water and a dish of broken up pecans, almonds and peanuts. Amy mentioned our discovery on her Facebook page, and one of her friends mentioned a Lost Bird ad on Craig’s List.

The next day (Tuesday), Amy called the number listed and, sure enough, someone was looking for our unexpected temporary guest. Amy learned the bird’s name was Kettle and she (I did not try to verify the bird’s gender) bolted through an open door to freedom the previous Sunday. Amy made arrangements for her and me to return Kettle to her rightful owners later that day.

I started thinking about how lucky this bird was.

• She escaped being prey to my area’s predators – coyotes, javelins, hawks, eagles, cats.
• She survived a below-freezing night and 2-inch snowfall.
• She was found by two people who actually cared enough to bring her inside, feed her and search for her owners.
• A friend of Amy’s just happened to see both the Lost Bird posting Amy made on Facebook and the Lost Bird posting on Craig’s List.
• Amy was able to contact the owner and make arrangements for an exchange.

And then the bird died.

When I checked on Kettle at mid-day, she had her head tucked under a wing sleeping quietly. Three hours later, she was lying flat on the floor at the center of the cage.

“Uh, Honey? I think the bird is dead,” I told Amy over the phone.

Amy called the owner and gave her the bad news. When Amy got home, we put Kettle in a cardboard box casket and give it to Kettle’s owner as she requested.

We don’t know the cause of Kettle’s demise. Maybe she ate something she wasn’t supposed to while she was “wild”, or maybe she got sick during the cold and snowy night. Whatever the cause, Kettle took her last breaths not at her home but in a strange cage on the floor of my hallway.

Rest in Peace, Kettle. May the winds of heaven be always at your back.

Turning the Final Page

My area’s Barnes & Noble bookstore is beginning the process of clearing its selves in order to go out of business. When someone buys the last remaining book later this year, I fear the repercussion will be much worse than just another empty store front at the Prescott (Arizona) Gateway Mall.

Thanks to my dear Amy, a self-proclaimed book addict, I’m finding myself spending more time in between the covers of a hardcover or paperback book. I’ve read books on living after a divorce; guides to being a good father; and information on the criminal, educational, moral, and emotional damage children suffer when their father is absent and disinterested. I’ve read biographies of George Washington, John Adams, Grover Cleveland, John Dillinger, Babe Ruth, Harry Carey, Bobby Knight and Edward R. Murrow. I’ve read the actual letters and speeches of Abraham Lincoln and an intriguing investigation of the rivalry between John Wilkes Booth and his brother Edwin. I’ve read the autobiographies of journalism icons Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw; and how numerous television, radio, print and photo journalists reacted during the terrorist attacks of 9/11. I’ve read about the 1906 World Series between the Chicago Cubs and Chicago White Sox and the 1954 Milan (Indiana) High School basketball state championship team, the inspiration for the movie Hoosiers. I’ve learned the tricks of professional poker and blackjack players, bowlers, and magicians. I’m currently on the ninth book of an 11 book fantasy series with rangers and knights fighting warlords and robbers and I’m a quarter of the way through The Resolution for Men, the companion book to the movie Courageous (see My Vow to be Courageous).

I’ve read the works of authors John Flanagan, David McCullough, SQuire Rushnell (why he capitalizes the Q, I do not know), Laurie Beth Jones, Carl Sagan, Tony Dungy and filmmaker Ken Burns.

I’ve read The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch, The Quest for Character by John MacArthur, The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren, Leadership Secrets from the Bible by Lorin Wolfe and the writings and recollections of John, Mark, Matthew, Luke, Paul, Moses and others printed in the Bible.

Waiting patiently for my attention is the autobiography of Charles Kuralt; the biography of Ronald Reagan; the guide to active and effective teaching by Ron Clark; the creation, characters and controversies at ESPN; the myths and facts regarding the death of James A. Garfield; and the weird and often comical plight of accused Cold War spy Judith Coplon.

Advances in technology are the supposed cause of Barnes & Noble’s demise. Amazon is selling books electronically to Kindles and Nooks. However, devices like computers and “E-Readers” are obsolete a few months after they’re sold and eventually lose their charge and “crash.” Barring fire or flood, words on pages bound in a book stand the test of time.

If literature is “Food for the Mind”, how long before our brains starve? - if they haven’t already.

My Vow to be Courageous

If you are a father; if you are about to be a father; if you someday want to be a father; if you are a man, you need to see Courageous. Women need to see it, too.

I saw Courageous on September 30 – the first day in theaters. Courageous is the story of five men – four are officers with a Georgia county sheriff’s department and the fifth is a Hispanic man working odd jobs to feed his family. The four officers each grew up in broken homes and they’ve seen the statistics of children raised in single-parent homes. Since my son, Nikolas, is growing up in a single-parent home, I’ve seen the numbers, too.

The statistics are scary. Printed in the fifth edition of Father Facts by the National Fatherhood Initiative:

·         Crime

o   In a longitudinal study of 1,197 fourth-grade students, researchers observed “greater levels of aggression in boys from mother-only households than in boys from mother/father households.”

o   Without two parents working together as a team, the child has more difficulty learning the combination of empathy, reciprocity, fairness and self-command that people take for granted.

o   In a study using a national probability sample of 1,636 young men and women … older boys and girls from female-headed households are more likely to commit criminal acts than their peers who lived with two parents.

o   In a study of 194 white, urban boys, researchers found that … living with a single mother at the age of 10 more than double the odds that a boy would eventually be arrested, compared to children who lived with both biological parents.

o   Teens from single-parent homes are more likely to commit a school crime (possess or distribute alcohol or drugs; possess a weapon; assault a teacher, administrator or other student) than teens from intact homes.

o   In a study using national data on more than 1,600 juveniles in treatment for sex offenses, 27.8 percent were living with both biological parents, 23.1 percent were living with their mother only, and 3.2 percent were living with their father only.

o   Youths in father-absent households had significantly higher odds of incarceration than those in mother/father families.

·         Drug and Alcohol Abuse

o   Of 228 students studied those from single-parent families reported higher rates of drinking and smoking as well as higher scores on delinquency and aggression tests when compared to boys from two-parent households.

o   Father closeness was negatively correlated with the number of a child’s friends who smoke, drink or smoke marijuana.

o   According to the Journal of Marriage and Family, there is significantly more drug use among children who do not live with their mother and father together.

o   In a study involving 11,000 interviews with persons ranging from 18 to 89 … children whose parents divorced had a one-third greater chance of becoming an adult smoker, and boys living with a single parent also had a one-third greater chance of developing a drinking problem as an adult.

o   Males in “mother only” families are about 1.5 times as likely to use alcohol as males in “mother/father” families.

o   In a study of 6,100 high schoolers, living in a non-intact family increased the likelihood of becoming a regular smoker during adolescence.

·         Education

o   In a study of 157 adolescents living in Utah, researchers found that boys in single-parent families spent an average of 3.5 fewer hours per week studying than boys who lived with both biological parents.

o   Children living with two parents are more likely to be read aloud to every day than are children who live with one or no parent.

o   Half of all children with highly involved fathers in two-parent families reported getting mostly A’s through 12^th grade compared with 31.7 percent and 35.2 percent of children of single father and nonresident father families, respectively.

o   Using data from the 1990 test results of 18,000 10^th graders who took the Louisville Graduation Exit Examination … the percentage of students from single-parent families … had a strong negative relation to standardized test scores.

o   A study of 1,700 seventh- and ninth-grade South Carolina students indicated that children whose parents divorced had lower grades than their peers whose parents had stayed together.

·         Self Esteem

o   A study of 40 middle school boys from a Midwest suburb found that those who lived without their father showed poorer sense of masculinity and had poorer interpersonal relationships than boys who lived with their biological father.

o   In a study of 146 adolescent friends of 26 adolescent suicide victims, teens living in single-parent families were not only more likely to commit suicide but also more likely to suffer from psychological disorders, when compared to teens living in intact families.

o   Thirty-six percent of children with single biological mothers are living below the poverty line … roughly three times higher than the number of children with married parents.

Two of the officers in the movie Courageous, Adam Mitchell (Alex Kendrick) and Nathan Hayes (Ken Bevel), live with their wives and children; one, Shane Fuller (Kevin Downes), is divorced and sees his 12-year-old son every other weekend; and one, David Thomson (Ben Davies), has a daughter from an “interlude” with a college sweetheart and he hasn’t seen either for more than four years. The Hispanic man, Javier Martinez (Robert Amaya), lives with his wife, son and daughter.

Like many in his position, Mitchell deals with the grief of his daughter’s death in a car accident by talking with his pastor and reading the scriptures. He writes a series of resolutions to be a better father, husband and man and shares his vows with the other men. Before God and their families, each man vows to live by Mitchell’s resolutions and hangs professionally framed parchment copies of the resolutions in their homes.

As expected, each man’s vows and faith are tested. Four of the five defeat the challenge. The other is left begging for forgiveness. I’ll let you find out what happens next.

Courageous has a lot of action and funny lines to go with the inspiration.

Are you a man of courage? Are you a woman of courage? Do you want to be a better spouse, parent and person? See Courageous as soon and as often as you can.  

Do you want to answer the call? I do and I will. 
To learn more and see the trailer, visit www.courageousthemovie.com.