Visited my 86-year-old dad in the hospital yesterday. He’s better; thank you.<\/p>\n
Have never written about Dad – not anything published, anyway. I think it’s because I know how uncomfortable it would make him feel. But Dad doesn’t read my blog; doesn’t own a computer. So I’m safe.<\/p>\n
Sergeant Robert A. (Bob) Bellah came ashore on Omaha Beach (D Day plus 6) with Patton’s 3rd Army. He never talks about it.<\/p>\n
Nor does he talk about being the owner of a dozen businesses by age 40. Nor of his tenure as a city commissioner or his position as an officer in the state grocers’ association.<\/p>\n
One of my best memories of Dad is watching him clean the restrooms of the family grocery store in Canyon – I was, maybe, six – He looked up to see me observing and gave me quite possibly the best advice I’ve ever received:<\/p>\n
“Son, never ask someone else to do a job you wouldn’t do.”<\/p>\n
Thought about those words 15 years ago when I started teaching and decided to write the same essays I assigned my students. Later, I used the pieces as newspaper columns, and, now, I use them to model those same assignments.<\/p>\n
Interesting, isn’t it? It’s not only the words of our mentors we repeat, but their actions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Visited my 86-year-old dad in the hospital yesterday. He’s better; thank you. Have never written about Dad – not anything published, anyway. I think it’s because I know how uncomfortable it would make him feel. But Dad doesn’t read my blog; doesn’t own a computer. So I’m safe. Sergeant Robert A. (Bob) Bellah came ashore […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}