Joe McKeever

Father-Child Synergies

My lawyer friend Devona Able tells of her daughter instructing her little brother on the way to school one morning. For some reason, they got onto the subject of hunting season. "You cannot kill baby ducks," big sister explained. "Or mama ducks either. But you can kill daddy ducks."

She went on to expound her understanding of the Louisiana game laws. "The baby ducks are still growing up, and the mama ducks are taking care of the baby ducks. The daddy ducks...well, they're just extra."

Devona writes, "Too often, we treat our husbands and fathers as unnecessary, and they're sometimes quite willing to settle into the role of an extra." She adds that in actuality, they have been given the "leading role" in the family by the One who wrote the script.

"I have a funny story for you," Tom Hearon said over the phone. He was prepping for tomorrow's oral exam for his doctorate at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth and took time out to put in a phone call to "my old dad." (Explanation: Margaret and I "adopted" four Mississippi College students in the early 1970's: Mary Baronowski, Gary Pearce, Bill Garrett, and Tom Hearon. We love them like they were our own and pray for them often. It's a great arrangement--they never write for money and we never send them any!)

Tom's father died last summer in Jackson, Mississippi, and his mother just passed away last week. I hugged him over the phone, then listened to his story.

"Dad died on a Tuesday. My brother Doug flew into Jackson and the next morning we went by the funeral home. The man wanted to know, ‘Did you bring your father's clothes?' We had to say, ‘No, we didn't think of that. We'll bring them by later.'"

"Then, we went by the cemetery to make arrangements and the nursing home to pick up his things. When we got home, I was completely wiped out. We were working around there, separating clothes. I picked out Dad a tie and Doug grabbed up the clothes to take to the funeral home."

"Friday evening, we were getting dressed for the visitation at the funeral home, and I could not find my sport coat. I did, however, find Dad's. That's when it hit me--Dad is wearing my sport coat!"

"I called the funeral home and asked the man if I could get my coat back? You could almost hear him laughing. He said, "Sorry. It's too late. The coat was too big for him, so we cut it up the back and made it fit."

"Later, when we gathered by the casket, the last thing Doug said to our father was, ‘Nice coat.' A friend saw us standing there trying to stifle a laugh and said to me later, ‘I knew something was going on.' I had to tell her."

Tom and Bonnie Hearon are long-time missionaries of our International Mission Board in Richmond and parents of Kimberly and Charissa. They are keepers in every sense of the word.

I had to tell him that the reverse is true for me, that I'm wearing my Dad's sports coat. Dad was buried in his dark suit, but later his three sons went through his closet to see if we could wear anything. I chose the black sport coat. It's a Joseph A. Bank and they carry good stuff. It fits so well, I find myself wearing it almost exclusively these days when I dress up.

Two Dads, two sons, and two sports coats. There has to be a lesson in here.

Tom said, "The lesson is that they give to us and sometimes, we give to them."

He told of the way his father changed after Tom and Bonnie went to the mission field. "Dad became more mission minded. He started giving generously to missions, and he began the Macedonian Call Foundation in Mississippi that provides automobiles for furloughing missionaries."

I had forgotten that. The Macedonian Call Foundation is one of the good guys in the Lord's work. I learned from Tom that, while they all share the same name, there are actually several entities that go by this MCF name, and they all do the same thing. They encourage people to donate their used cars which missionaries can drive while home in the states for a year.

I'm not sure how my life influenced Carl J. McKeever, who went to Heaven last November 3, but I could cite a hundred ways in which his affected mine, starting with my very appearance.

It does work both ways, though. The children bring great changes into their parents' lives. All I have to do is look at my three adult children and think how my life has changed because of the grandchildren they have given us. (I'll skip the gray hairs and depleted bank account which they also get some credit for!)

Synergy is the cooperative action of two or more influences working together. Plants provide oxygen which humans need, and humans give off carbon dioxide which plants require.

Parents and children can have that kind of beneficial influence on one another.

In life, there are no extras. We're all essential to the plot.