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Susan When somebody wondered why I was going to speak today, in other words for whom or to whom I was speaking, as usual, I did not bother to think before I spoke. I answered, I am speaking for the sake of my children and my mother. But I will let the rest of you listen. Because I am not the storyteller in the family, and because I tend to let my emotions take over, once I knew I was going to speak, I knew that in order to be able to get up here and talk about my father, I had to think of a sort of theme around which I could organize (and limit, for your sake) my many, many thoughts about him. Anyway, while my dad doggedly and some might even say admirably maintained a rather adolescent streak of nonconformity and anti authoritarianism and while he professed not to believe in god, he himself was a bit on the bossy side and did follow rather religiously his own set of standards for living right. Since as our father, he never stopped trying to get us to follow at least some of his ideas about how to live, I have chosen to share with you the ten, actually, as of today, 12 commandments for living of my dad’s that I most treasure. While my own inherited adolescent streak has prohibited me from doing everything my father wished, the more I thought about what I was going to say today, the more I realized how much I really have internalized and how much I basically do follow of what my father truly expected us to. This realization, of course, gives me great optimism as a parent and, I hope, will be a comfort to my mother, since she, too, shares many of these same beliefs. So, here we go. The order I have chosen, though a bit random, does, David Letterman style rather than god/Moses style, end rather than begin with the things I consider to be most important, so bear with me. Here are the Dean family’s rules for proper living as I see them. I do not profess to speak for my siblings. 12. Go for game. Bid 3NT. Though not followed religiously, I’d bet that we Deans bid 3NT more often than your normal amateur bridge players. 11. If it is interesting, clip it and send it. This was the main form of my father’s communication with me in college and beyond. Then, once when Joanna and I went over to Judy Johnson’s house to look at a bunch of Dean family papers and things, we found out that clipping is hereditary. Charles Dean left a huge notebook filled with clippings about all sorts of topics. As a matter of fact, when I thought I would be visiting my dad today, I cut out this clipping to share with him. It is about an artist named Joy Christensen. This is just the sort of thing we like to clip and send. |
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