Tribute to Dad

Next Sunday, June 20, is Father’s Day. In the more than 30 years I have been writing this column I have never devoted an entire column to my dad. I have often thought about it, but my feelings of loss for him have always overwhelmed my ability to write about him.

This year in November will be half a century since his passing when I was 27 years old. He had not quite reached his 61st birthday when cancer took him from me.

He was the oldest of six sons of an immigrant father and mother. Himself an immigrant arriving in the U.S. at 16 years of age, my dad grew up fatherless in Poland.

His father,...