If it matters, keep at it: a father's day story.

Storytime.

On occasion, I’ve been called scrappy. Well that scrappiness comes from somewhere, and today is a good day to share my father’s story.

My parents met in high school. They went to different schools, so if my dad wanted to see my mom, he had to drive whatever clunker he could muster at the time and go pick her up. Despite a couple of them not having a floor under the passenger’s seat, he won her over.

At the time he was a musician, playing gigs - covers where necessary but plenty of original material as well. They were good, and I remember when I met his lifelong friend in my teens, he recalled a time where my dad played a show in college and started shredding; the crowd went wild.

Both of them graduated pre-law from University of Delaware. They knew they were going to start a family, so of course he was going to need to get a "real" job. Over the next several years, he managed pharmacies and sold typewriters. I enjoyed learning that when he was selling typewriters, he managed to sell himself out of a job. His territory was flush with typewriters, so he decided to look into bigger and better things.

Remember, I said both of my parents graduated pre-law. Well, it means that both of them can hold their own in an argument, but it also means that their education was priming them to become lawyers. That didn't happen. Instead, after getting to know his bandmate's father during practice over the years, he was lucky enough to be offered a shot at a corporate gig at a chemical company. This marks a pretty important juncture for my parents, because with a few kids and starter home, they were stretching every dollar. Famously within our family, discount chicken drumsticks were a lifesaver. My mother won't eat them to this day.

Turns out that even though the rest of the roles at this new job were filled by scientists and engineers, he figured it out with his pre-law degree. Not only did he figure it out, but he excelled (yes, it's almost as if education has nothing to do with your capability!), and quickly rose through the ranks. He sold B2B products, then he marketed various product lines. After winning corporate marketer of the year multiple times, he started leading business units. I remember it seemed like every couple of weeks growing up that we had international business dinners at our house in suburban Pennsylvania - particularly with Japanese corporates. They were very polite, and the experience primed me for adventures abroad with just the right amount of curiosity.

Over the years, I remembered sneaking into my parent's closet to pull out my dad's cherry sunburst Gibson Les Paul. I couldn't play a damn thing at the time and it was mostly when he was away on business that I would drag it out and strum incomprehensibly before carefully returning the guitar case to the same spot I found it in. The big thing was that he wasn't playing it. It was a passion abandoned, and mainly because of us kids. There were three of us - my older brother, my younger sister and me. My brother and I ate a lot, so of course they had to bring home the bread.

When high school arrived, we were all whisked away to Asia. South Korea, to be precise. It was an incredible experience for me, but I could tell that it was a pretty intense time for him building a new venture in another country. I was kind of a wild child at the time, which gave my mom plenty of headaches, but we all made it through. One thing we shared during my coming of age in Seoul was music. That was when I really picked up guitar and started playing in a band, recording, and even a few gigs - he even saw one of these. We played together a bit more frequently during this time and it was refreshing to see him come alive while he was jamming out.

The family's return to the United States coincided with my last summer before starting college at Penn State. This was in late 2007, so you kind of know what comes next. Luckily, through each round of job cuts, my father was deemed essential enough to make it through. Until I had a corporate job of my own, I didn't understand the magnitude of difficulty associated with that kind of uncertainty, and I didn't even have children.

He worked harder than anyone I know to make the best of a horrible situation, and that attitude served him well. He put in a good word for me with a colleague at the corporation he was working at, and of course that was a defining role for me. Through thick and thin, he stuck it out and he was able to retire early a few years after I graduated college.

There's his story. The reason I'm telling this story is because all of these years later, not only has he made it back to his roots as a musician, he has finally released his first record on major streaming services, and it tells his story through fingerstyle guitar. You can check him out on Spotify, here.

The level of scrappiness and dedication I've seen from him in all aspects of life has been a great influence on me. A saying I've become fond of that reminds me of him is, "if you're going through hell, keep going."

Happy father's day, Dad.