How Do You Measure A Person?

How Do You Measure a Person?                 3-2-2015

By John W. Vander Velden

 

 

Some would say my father was a tall man.  I would not disagree.  But the trees of the wood do not seem as tall as the lonely oak, and my father found himself surrounded by a grove of those with height.  He grew up among the tall, the strong.  The clan that formed here in this country has many taller than even he.  But Jacob Vander Velden’s height could be measured in ways other than the ruler.  Only he could have predicted the heights he achieved in his eighty years, and yet they were heights he never fully realized what he had reached.  If he had the fear of failure, he never showed that side to his children, as time and again setbacks took his family to the brink.  My father thought larger than I -- dreamed bigger than most -- and worked harder than anyone except perhaps my mother.  He considered the family a team, each a player of importance.  Some accepted their place in that group, some, for a time, rebelled.  But each of us, as we matured, were given freedom, the same type of freedom he had set out in 1948 to find.  He placed upon us few demands other than integrity and a willingness to work for our own dreams.  You see my father understood dreams and the effort required.    Farming required a strong man.  Thousands of times I witnessed my father’s prowess, whether strength needed to roll over a downed cow, hang ballast weights on a tractor, or to handle thousands of hay bales.  The daily efforts demanded, made the tall man broad as well.

My father was a man of self-reliance, who believed in respect and fairness.  He stood by a code that seems fading in modern society.  He lived his values, and from watching, we learned lessons far beyond words.  Faith was as much a part of him as the air he breathed.  He did not wear his faith on his sleeve or some metal on a puffed chest, but those that knew him, really knew him, saw a man that understood God in ways few can, for his world was intertwined in life’s and death’s realities.  The recognition of beginnings and endings, of season’s arrivals and departures, of success and failures, of standing upright and being knocked prone, life’s lessons taught, and he saw God in it all.  

We may remember our parents in rosy views, to focus on the finest, which may be best.  But the honest recognize the failings as well.  My father was not a perfect man.  Times of anger and loud frustration are part of his history.  His lack of patience was obvious.  The inability to completely accept a changing world and the changes it brought to his family, haunted him.  The constant frustration with the disease that ate away the physical abilities, brought depression, and that depression burdened all near.  Though he fought MS constantly, he viewed each set back as a personal failure, a loss of field position in that life and death war.  No, Jacob J. Vander Velden was not perfect, he was but a man.

So how do you measure a person?  If you were to use a yardstick to measure my father by his height, six foot three would be a tall man.  But if you use that stick to measure him, the good and the bad, then you would find that he was tall in every way.  I only hope that one day, I will measure up…

(585 Words)