MY DAD’S BIRTHDAY is today. My birthday present for Dr. Clifford Garland Gaddy, Sr.,
M.D., is a recounting of some of the best gifts he has given to me: things I have learned
from watching him.
Money is not all that matters; it might not even be third or fourth. Once when I was
maybe 10 years old, I was helping my dad send out medical bills because his secretary
had been out sick. One bill was for over $2000. (A lot of money back then.) I said,
“Oh, boy!” My dad looked at the bill, said, “He has headaches already and he can’t
pay this anyway.” He threw the bill in the trash.
Everybody deserves the same respect regardless of their station in life. Just by
listening you couldn’t tell if my dad was talking to Harrison, the sharecropper who
worked our farm, or to the president of American National Bank.
Big isn’t measured in inches. My dad is big man in every way but height. But I will
have to admit that he did enjoy meeting Muggsy Bogues in person, with my dad
verifying that he was taller than an NBA basketball player.
Colorblind is good. My dad is colorblind, literally and figuratively. He can’t tell a red
light from a green light except one’s on the top and the other’s on the bottom. If my
mom didn’t pick out his ties for him, he would look really funny some days. But that’s
not the kind of colorblind I’m talking about. Dad says one of his proudest days was the
first time that a black player started for our formerly all-white high school’s basketball
team — even though his son, my brother Steve, was the player who lost his spot to
him.
Give more than you take; leave the place in better shape than you found it. Once when
our family went to Ridgecrest for a family summer camp, a friend loaned us his cabin.
Our last afternoon at the camp our family did yard work around the cabin, leaving the
grounds looking great, not because we had to, or even we were asked to, but because
it was a good thing to do. At the time I didn’t get it.
Friendships are measured not in days but in decades. My parents have friends, the
Dickersons and the Cresenzos, whose close friendships they kept across seven, soon
to be eight, different decades. My parents always made time to do things with their
friends even when it would have been easier not to. Family vacations with two families
with 11 kids are not easy but are a great way to bond.
Loving your children equally well doesn’t mean treating them all the same. I am sure
that my dad (and my mom) must have had favorites among their six children. But, to
this day, I don’t know who they are — and that’s not because they mechanically treated
us the same, because they didn’t.
If you are going to do something, do it right. My dad took up golf as an adult and
became quite adept — and has trophies to prove it — which you could attribute to his
love of the game. But in his youth he was a Golden Gloves state boxing champion —
though he never really liked the sport — as you might expect of someone born to be
doctor. As a physician he studied continually — and was the best prepared practitioner
of internal medicine you could imagine.
Keep your promises — even those made in haste. My dad promised my brother he
would “build a shuffle board court in our backyard” if he won that week’s campwide
shuffle board tournament. My dad wasn’t too worried about paying off the bet since
my brother had just learned to play that week. Steve beat the man who taught him to
play in the finals. We had a shuffle board court in our backyard.
Love your wife. Every Thanksgiving Dad tells the story about meeting Inez. After more
than sixty years of marriage, it’s a love story every time he tells it.
These are hardly the only things I learned from my dad. In fact, they are just the first 10
that came into my head. Happy birthday, Dad!
Gary D. Gaddy would love to be remembered as Dr. Gaddy’s son.
A version of this column was published in the Chapel Hill Herald on Friday January 8,
2010.
Copyright 2010 Gary D. Gaddy
garygaddy.com 