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My Father-in-law Loved America and I Loved My Father-in-law
There were three things he hated: racism, men who mistreated women, and people who disparaged the country he fought for.
“Hello beautiful,” my father-in-law always said when he saw me. A formidable bull of a man, opinionated and outspoken, he intimidated those who never glimpsed the tender heart of a man with a magnificent capacity for love.
My father-in-law grew up fatherless, the youngest of seven, after his father deserted the family during the throes of the Great Depression. But the women in his life armed him with strength, faith and the surprising tenderness residing beneath his rough exterior.
His mother managed to eke out a living by running a boarding house, and he remembered his grandmother saying, “Have faith and work and good things will happen.” His grandmother would later give him a steel-covered New Testament that he carried with him into the trenches of war, and in those trenches, without benefit of clergy or church, he read his Bible and became a believer.
The third woman in his life
My father-in-law’s religion had been born apart from clergy in the heat of battle with nothing…
