Happy Birthday, Dad

My dad died over a decade ago. In recent weeks I've uncovered a memory of him that had been hiding beneath the surface of my mind for many years.

It was the fall of 1965. I lived in Ponca City, a nice north-central Oklahoma town of about 25,000 people where there was strong civic loyalty and a sense of familiarity. My dad worked for the local radio station as an on-air personality. In the fall he broadcast the local high school football games for the radio station.

That year the Ponca City High Wildcats had a halfback named Odell Lawson who was great. After graduating in 1966 he played college football, and then 4 years of professional football. He was a big deal in Ponca City. Every Friday evening the Wildcats played at home (I lived three houses away from the football stadium) we watched Odell Lawson do amazing things running with a football.

I was only 7 years old. Though it was the mid-60's, I knew nothing about civil rights or injustice. I didn't know anything of tension between the races. I didn't know the wider issues of the day. I did know, however, that in Ponca City, most blacks lived in one part of town (South Ponca) and most whites lived in another part of town.

That's the back-story. Now, the memory of my dad.

The Wildcats were playing a football game out of town. My dad drove to the out of town games to do play-by-play for the radio station. And for this particular Friday night, my dad invited me to go with him. You can imagine what a thrill it was for a 7 year old boy! It didn't matter how far we had to drive and who we played. Just to travel out of town with my dad to a football game was the biggest thing I could imagine.

The night of the game dad drove the car owned by the radio station for business. After we picked up the car at the station, we drove to South Ponca, off the paved streets and onto some dirt roads I'd never seen before. We stopped in front of a house where an older African-American woman waited on the front porch. As she walked toward the car, my dad turned to me in the back seat and said, "Son, Mrs. Lawson is riding to the game with us. She wants to see her son play tonight."

So she did. Ossie Lawson rode with us. She watched Odell play that out of town football game. Dad said later that she needed a ride because she had no car. She cleaned houses for a living. But that was it. That was all dad said about it. It was no big deal to him. Consequently, I didn't think it was a big deal for a white man to give a black woman a ride to a high school football game in 1965.

All these years later I see that it was a VERY big deal! But I didn't know that. I began to learn at a young age that people are people. Dad didn't have to explain it. He didn't have to justify doing it. In front of his son, he just quietly did the right thing for a woman who loved her son.

That memory has resurfaced for me lately with a lot of gratitude attached. I stayed with it for quite a while yesterday, on what would have been his 73rd birthday.

Happy Birthday, Dad!