What Barack Obama’s Father’s Day Essay Means to Me

“In many ways, I came to understand the importance of fatherhood through its absence — both in my life and in the lives of others,” Obama writes in his first Father’s Day essay as the nation’s 44th president.

“I came to understand that the hole a man leaves when he abandons his responsibility to his children is one that no government can fill,” he writes. “We can do everything possible to provide good jobs and good schools and safe streets for our kids, but it will never be enough to fully make up the difference.”

On today, Father’s Day, I am grateful for President Obama’s call for men to step up – to assume their responsibilities as men and fathers.

I grew up without a father. My mother gave birth to me at a Catholic Home for Unwed Mothers with every intention of placing me for adoption. Most women who found themselves pregnant and unmarried did in those days. At the final moment she found that she could not part with me and set about creating a life for me.

There were few men in my life as a young child but, when I reached the age of five, my mother married. Her husband adopted me.

Years later I met my birth father in Colorado. He was a former high school history teacher and football coach. He had two daughters (I did not meet them). Meeting him filled in a lot of gaps. I learned that I had a mixture of English, French and Cherokee in addition to my German ancestry. I learned where I got my huge hands and inherent sense of justice. Later on, I realized that I had also inherited a tendency to veer off into the maudlin if not checked.

We did not stay in touch.

It was not deliberate. Rather we both moved at the same time and drifted apart from communicating. I located him again after my second child was born.

I thought that he might want to know that he was a grandfather.

He was entirely disinterested. If anything, he had become exceedingly bitter and was estranged from his family.

I never contacted him again.

Last August he died, alone, in his home in Michigan. It was ten days before his body was found. There were no services.

I feel great sadness for my birth father. He missed the opportunity not only to know me, but to be a grandfather to my wonderful daughters. From the sounds of it, he was not much more of a father to his legitimate children.

Step up. Be a real man and father.

The rewards are unlimited.