My Dad’s Parade

I love a good parade? I even like bad parades. I have seen both kinds. A couple of those parades really stick in my memory.

One of my favorites happened when I was serving my student church while in seminary. The parade took place in Waddy, Kentucky. Yes, that is the town's real name. The word was out. The town was buzzing. We heard talk of the parade at church, when shopping in the little general store in town and down at the gas station. I had been hearing about the Memorial Day Parade for weeks and was getting rather excited about it.

We passed up several offers to go places and do things with family and friends so we could be sure to be there for the "big parade". As far as we were concerned, Waddy was the place to be on that Memorial Day in 1970. At the appointed time my wife and I, with our toddler in tow, we took our places on the sidewalk of the main drag. I must be fair and tell you that Waddy in 1970 was a community of about 255 people and the main drag was the only drag. It didn't take long before the festivities began. At long last, here came the parade.

It was absolutely wonderful. Strung out for several yards behind the town's antique, and only, fire truck were two shiny, brand spanking new pick up trucks. If you are a big city kid you may not know that one's pickup truck is a source of great pride in a small town. The truck doesn't need to be new. I have seen some old, crusty, nasty looking trucks that the owners were so proud of it that it was kind of cute. One of the trucks was pulling the only float in the parade, carrying some of the local veterans riding on a tobacco wagon. The entire local Cub Scout Pack, all six of them, was the color guard. My, it was grand. One the finest parades I have ever seen. My heart was touched. I wouldn't have missed it for anything.

There have attended and been a participant in several other parades in my lifetime. All of them were longer. Many were more exciting and colorful and entertaining. Some were boring. A couple of them have been so poorly done that I regretted having invested the time and energy to attend. None of them was more grand than the Waddy parade. None except one. The best parade I have ever seen is the parade that wandered through my parent's kitchen the fall of 1986.

1986 had not been a great year. The cancer Dad had been "cured of" a couple of years before had reoccurred. The family was bummed out and stressed out having to just watch his losing fight with that nasty disease. In the fall of 1986 my father was busy dying of cancer of the God-knows-what. The Doctors couldn't tell where the cancer originated but it wasn't difficult to see where it had gone. It was everywhere and Dad was so skinny by then that much of it stuck out on various parts of his body. It was a horrible experience to watch the strong, robust, commanding man who had walked me and several other children through childhood and adolescence reduced to a skeleton struggling to live through each day with as little pain as possible. It was horrible, but riveting (Much like those "slasher" horror films young teens flock to watch). Because the degeneration of his physical body and our all consuming struggle to make him as comfortable as possible had so captured my attention, a parade had been passing before my eyes long before I noticed it.

It was a beautiful, breezy autumn afternoon that the parade in progress began to finally register as a blip on my radar screen. It took me some time to focus in on what was happening. There were no fire trucks or cub scouts or floats or marching bands or riders on horseback or pretty young beauty queens seeking our attention or politicians seeking our votes in the parade of 1986. Most of the faces of the participants in this parade were familiar faces. And some were strangers to me. But they all knew my father. He was the "theme" that held this parade together. I was watching a parade of people that was passing through my parent's spacious, warm, welcoming kitchen, in front of the reclining chair that had become Dad's primary place of residence.

Lots of different people came from lots of different places to see my dad. They came to say the same thing in many different ways. They came to say, "Thank you Mr. McConnell. You have made a difference in my life." What a wonderful thing to say. "Thanks for living and letting me be a part of your life. Your life counted for something in my life."

It was a strange mix of people that carried this message to my father. There were the preachers and church leaders from all over Kentucky that Dad had prayed with and for and taught so much about how to be sensitive to the needs of others and to the leading of the Lord. There were some very wealthy and successful friends who had been blessed by my father's advice and counsel in the business world. There was the alcoholic who lived next door that was snubbed by the community but befriended by my dad. He was proud to be called "friend" by "Mr. Mack". There were the young men of the community that had looked to my father for advice and counsel on subjects ranging from family budgeting to how to be a father to how to win an argument without losing a friend. There was the single mother and her children that were helped through the hard times by a man they hardly knew. There were the old people that came to thank the man who had brought them meals when they were too sick to cook for themselves. There were the people from his workplace who had worked with him for over a quarter of a century and really knew him and thus knew him to be a man of integrity, courage, compassion, wisdom and humor. There were his law clients that received much more than just good advice from their attorney. There were the students from 30 plus years of Sunday School classes that came to thank the man that helped make God real and understandable to them. There were the kids I remembered as Little League ball players that had become middle-aged men, wanting to thank him for being a fine baseball coach and an even better example.

It took me a while to tune into what was going on before my very eyes. But when I did I was smart enough to join this wonderful parade. I grasped the opportunity at hand and thanked my Dad for being a fine father, good friend, wonderful teacher and excellent example.

What a parade! My, it was grand. One the finest parades I have ever seen. I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

Copyright © 2009, William T. McConnell, All Rights Reserved