HD69-FD-Banquet

I believe the fathers here would join me in saying that we fathers are happy to be here in the company of our daughters -even if you did drag us away from the boob tube.

After Julia said I was to say something I decided to consult her mother on what would be appropriate. She advised that I tell you how we fathers love you and are proud of you.

We do love you and are proud of the progress you've made. Sometimes progress was slow. Like how long it took for you to learn to constrain yourself and use the bathroom. Your technical progress permitted us to relax -when you fiddled with the TV knobs. At first we relaxed because it would stay in focus. Later we relaxed till your program was over. Now, on date nights we have the late show to ourselves -- but we don't relax -- each commercial is a reminder to fathers of how late daughter is still out.

Those are the times when fathers are also reminded that daughters wi1l soon not be teenagers but young women – on your own. We hope you will be able to cope with life's problems and reap its blessing.

When I think of my daughters as young women I'm reminded of their great grandmothers when they were about your age. One was named Julia and one Nancy.

Nancy and her husband terminated formal education with the eight grade which was typical of their generation. At your age they left home in Illinois to homestead land in western Kansas where they built a sod house and started their family.

Problems were different in those days. One morning while baking bread and washing clothes by hand in a tub, Nancy saw a coyote making off with one of her chickens. She grabbed a rifle, ran out, and shot the coyote. She picked up the half dead chicken and brought it into the house giving it all her attention. The chicken was her prized rooster -- prized because he was the only one they had. It survived and its off springs fed her flock. She had nine kids.

Julia and her husband also finished school at the eight grade and were your age when they sought their future home. Oklahoma, Indian territory, was to be opened for settlement, so Julia's husband joined the land rush while Julia stayed in Nebraska with their newborn son. Later she joined him to live in back of a new general store he had built in an equally new town. To get there she drove one covered wagon and pulled another loaded with supplies across Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma. She didn't travel alone -- she had the baby with her.

Those grand old ladies never ceased to tackle new problems. Preparation for travel changed from hitching horses to buggies to jacking up the back wheel on a Model T Ford and turning the crank to start it. The jacked up wheel served as a flywheel to help turn the engine over.

It was an experience to go for a ride with Nancy. She talked to her Tin Lizzy as if it's horsepower ate oats. It would nervously vibrate and shake and loudly hustle along in whatever direction she aimed it.

Nancy and Julia both lived to realize the benefits of things you take for granted as the phone, electric lights, refrigerator and most of all inside toilets (it got cold where they lived). They knew of radio and saw airplanes but never dreamed of TV let alone a man on the moon.

Today we hear of the generation gap. It's really nothing new. At a certain age each generation thinks the older generation is out of step or out of phase. For a while, reaching a peak in the late teens, there is a breach in what each generation considers to be good sense, before the generations tend to drift back in step or in phase.

A man named Rene Descartes, born in 1596, wrote this about good sense. Perhaps it accounts for the conviction of differing opinions.

"Good sense is, of all things among men, the most equally distributed; for everyone thinks himself so abundantly provided with it; that those, even who are the most difficult to satisfy in everything else, do not desire a larger measure of this quality than they already possess."

Each generation is born with a blank memory, learning and experiences are accumulated and stored. A situation that is believed to be right after a search of our memory banks is said to make good sense. A given generation tends to think alike because they learned from similar exposures.

For example, if you had trouble starting your car and an old woman came up and said you needed to jack up your back wheel, you'd probably thing she was senile. She'd think it made good sense.

Fathers never doubt daughters good sense, they simply want them to fill their memories with worth while things so that their lives make good, good sense.

In the future your good sense will be put to test on things other than shooting coyotes to save roosters and tending babies in covered wagons. I could go on and talk about what's ahead -- but I've talked enough.

To us fathers, you daughters are that part of ourselves that will be the future, selfless love of father for daughter is not all selfless.

Thank you again for inviting us fathers.