The True Value of Trophies

Thursday marks the 11th anniversary of my father's death.

Still makes me pause and think.

Think about him.

His life.

And what I've learned and continue to learn from it.

I find that I apply it in all facets of my life.

As much as I love my mother, I am my father’s son.

My love of reading.

Dry humor.

Eye-hand coordination.

My chicken legs.

My temper.

And the effort to place others before myself.

The greatest compliment I’ve ever received came from my Uncle Leo:

You’re the most thoughtful person I know.

I’m not sure that’s true, but I’ll take it!

Because, if there’s any truth to it, that was my father’s doing.

He defined empathy long before people it entered popular culture.

Over the years, I’ve even started to look more like him.

Did we have our differences?

Don’t all fathers and sons?

But even when he didn’t like me, he loved me.

And vise versa.

Fortunately, we both got our act together in plenty of time, and the last 20 years of our relationship was a gratifying as it gets.

As I whispered in his ear as he lay on his deathbed, I thank you. And I love you.

Trophies

He was a helluva athlete, my old man was.

He wasn’t particularly strong.

Nor fast.

He just understood the game.

And his opponent.

He won his first trophy at 12.

The MVP of a basketball tournament.

Another player’s mother told him her son deserved it.

He never forgot that.

In the army, he was his base ping-pong champ.

He recalled epic matches against an Asian-American soldier who held his paddle in the traditional "penhold" style.

Years later, when dad went back to the barracks for his Army reunion, he was sad to find out that his rival had died.

He was a good guy, my dad said.

Good guy status from pops was high praise.

Over the years, my father accumulated 153 trophies.

Baseball, softball, golf, bowling, tiddlywinks... you name the sport, he probably had a trophy for it.

For years, he kept his trophies nestled in the back corner of the TV room.

But he didn’t show them off or talk about them unless asked.

Once on a visit back home, I walked through the TV room.

I could sense that there was a disturbance in the force.

Then it struck me.

They were gone.

The trophies were all gone.

Where on earth could they have disappeared to?

Since Dad wasn’t home, I asked my Mom.

Oh, he gave them away, she casually said.

What?!

My mind couldn’t process this.

Who had them?

And why?

He was proud of those trophies.

Who did he give them to? I asked.

He read about a program in the paper.

Special Olympics was collecting trophies that they could hand out to their athletes.

They would simply replace the original plates with new plates engraved with the names of new heroes.

That stopped me in my tracks.

The only thing moving was the tear rolling down my cheek.

I knew how much those trophies meant to him.

My dad has been gone 11 years now.

If you ask me for the defining story of his life, that would be it.

Selfless. Thoughtful. And kind.

That’s how I’ll always remember him.

And from time to time, I smile picturing the joy on the face of all the deserving young men and women perched atop that Olympics medals platform, so proud of their hard-won hardware. From a man who understood the true value of trophies.