My father is the most loving, caring person I know. He always encouraged me to look for the silver lining when dealing with disappointment or pain. Dad was somehow able to love me when I wasn’t sure how to love myself. The support for me is unconditional.
He helped me when I was going through infertility issues, waiting for a baby to adopt and when I finally received the best call ever, my son was born in Texas. Dad, now Grandpa, was there at the airport when we arrived home. For all the highs and lows, Dad has been right by my side.
I am so blessed to have the best dad ever!
Kim Krutsch
Warren, Michigan
Appreciating how hard my dad worked is how I honor him
At the dawn of the Great Depression, my grandmother gave birth to her first surviving son in Detroit’s Greektown. She landed there after fleeing the Great Fire of Smyrna, Turkey, as a refugee in 1922. Through an arranged marriage to my grandfather, she would eventually call Detroit home.
At the age of 8, Dad would sell newspapers to help his growing family survive the harsh truths of being financially poor, with a blind father and a mother who could not qualify for gainful employment. The cold, dark nights of downtown Detroit’s winters were the hardest, my dad would recall. He would later operate newsstands with his siblings for a chance of a better future.
Through some luck, chance, hard work and determination, he would enjoy a 40-year career as a humble accountant at Ford Motor Company, serving 30 consecutive years of perfect attendance. He would marry later in life and raise two children who benefited from the happiest of childhoods. He never stopped doing three things until his final days: sharing with his children how grateful he was to have a family, thanking our mother after enjoying a cooked meal and never passing up an opportunity to enjoy a coney dog.
He left this world with a legacy not of survival, but of triumph. Thank you, Dad, for everything.
Harry J. Gaggos
Grosse Pointe Woods
My dad saved lives
My dad shares similarities with many metro-Detroit dads. He cheers on the Detroit Lions with hope. He begrudgingly awakens before dawn to plow our driveway of mountains of snow throughout the seemingly never-ending winters, and he looks forward to sinking his hands into the soil of his garden in the spring and summer. All of this to say, my father is extremely proud to call himself a Michigander.
“We really live in the best state in the U.S.,” he often tells me.
But my dad is unlike most fathers in the entire state. He has overcome a lot to assimilate with the many metro-Detroiters who proudly call this place home.
As Father’s Day approaches, I reflect deeply on the quiet strength of my father — a man whose actions have always spoken louder than words. To many, he might seem reserved or distant. But to me, he has always been a pillar of kindness, intelligence and unwavering love.
I was born in Bosnia, what used to be known as Yugoslavia, in the 1980s. My childhood should have been simple and joyful — and for the most part, it was. But when war broke out in the early 1990s, my life, like so many others, was turned upside down. I was just 6 when my mother, sister and I fled the country. I remember seeing my father for what would be the last time for several years. He stood by a taxi, waving at us as we pulled away. I didn’t fully understand what was happening. I didn’t know it was a goodbye.
While we escaped to safety, my father stayed behind. He was a doctor, and his duty was to help. He treated wounded civilians and soldiers during the siege of Sarajevo, a time when hospitals were being shelled and life was hanging by a thread.
Throughout that gruesome time, my father worked multiple shifts at a hospital in Sarajevo. One afternoon, after dragging himself home to rest, a sniper’s bullet shrieked through the window of our apartment. It struck him directly below his heart. He rarely talks about those years. I know they were unimaginably difficult. But he has never asked for sympathy. He simply did what needed to be done — for his patients, for his country and for us.
We immigrated to the U.S. in 1995. My parents arrived in our adoptive country not speaking more than a few words of English. Once we settled in Royal Oak, in metro Detroit — with no access to proper transportation — my father would walk miles to bring home groceries from a store. He learned how to live a new life after surviving besieged Sarajevo.
You wouldn’t know all of this by looking at him. My father is extremely humble. He is more apt to listen to others’ stories than to share his own personal journey. He is the type of person who always pays attention and will let stressed out moms cut in front of him in line at Costco. Even after he’d witness betrayal, murder and the worst of the genocide in Bosnia, my dad raised me and my sister to never judge a book by its cover. He taught us to be kind and always consider everyone has experienced their own challenges, their own pain.
My father taught us that through education, honesty and patience, you truly can accomplish anything you want.
I reflect on my luck every day. I know that not everyone gets to have such incredible father figures in their lives, and it makes me appreciate my dad even more. My father is a humble man. It’s unlikely the many people he engages with each day have any idea how far he has come from Sarajevo to metro Detroit. Sometimes, though, I truly wish I could share my father’s story with all who live in Michigan. I’d tell them how proud my father is to call the Mitten his home.
This Father’s Day, I want to say what I don’t get to say often enough: Thank you, Dad. For all of your strength, your sacrifices and endless love. Everything good in me, began in you.
Vildana Kurtovic
Berkley, Michigan
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Happy Father’s Day to these great Michigan dads | Letters
Reporting by Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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