Fatherhood can be like military service
Three military veterans served, were homeless and now enjoy being dads as more mature men
Thomas Spisak attempted to explain fatherhood by first shrugging his shoulders.
“They don’t give you a book on how to be a dad. You just do your best and keep going,” he said.
“It’s like being in the Army.”
Spisak, a 56-year-old father of four sons, served in the U.S.
Army for three years after growing up in Whiting. He now lives at Northwest Indiana Veterans
Village in downtown Gary, a 44-unit, three-level residential facility for formerly homeless military vets.
Spisak, his younger brother Steven Spisak, and Chuck Gary have been residents since the development opened in 2015. I met with them there to talk about the similarities between fatherhood and military service. All three men served Uncle Sam in different branches. All three were once homeless. All three are fathers who enjoy being dads as more mature men.
“It’s great these days. I can pick up my phone and they would be here in a minute,” said Gary, 75, who has six children.
“Don’t ask me their ages, though.”
The Chicago Heights, Illinois, native served in the U.S. Navy for six years during the Vietnam
War, including a tour of duty in that country. He’s been a father since his service days.
“I’ve got great-grandchildren now,” Gary said, adjusting his black Vietnam veteran cap.
Steven Spisak, 54, served in the U.S. Air Force and National Guard for 10 years. He feels emotionally conflicted about his own military service compared to one of his sons’ military service in the Indiana Army National Guard.
“My brother and I wanted to be in a conflict, but it’s different when it comes to your own son,” he said. “It’s just more scary.”
His insight revealed another universal truth about fathers. When many of us were young, we didn’t take into account our own fathers’ concerns or worries about our choices in life. Even if our fathers didn’t show it demonstratively. Some men are as emotionally expressive as a flat-head screwdriver.
Steven Spisak touched on another aspect of fatherhood that isn’t a common conversation topic among most men — our different feelings of pride for our children. Some fathers appear to be more prideful of one of their children than their other kids, possibly because they share similar sensibilities, like-minded lifestyle habits or the same career path.
It’s not always true.
“I’m equally proud of both of them,” Steven Spisak explained about his two sons, choking up.
A father’s pride can mean everything in the world to some children, regardless of their age. Some kids wait a lifetime for just a glimpse of pride from their father. Too many kids have to wait until their father is old or frail or near death. In too many relationships, a man’s masculinity can sabotage his prideful love for his children.
For those dads who stumble to say, “I love you,” to their children, saying “I’m proud of you” can carry the same emotional weight.
“I handled my kids pretty much the same way my father handled me,” Thomas Spisak said. “He disciplined us when we did wrong and he praised us when we did good.”
Spisak gets together often with his children, he said, either fishing, doing remodeling work or just hanging out. For older fathers, the unspoken joy of simply hanging out with their adult children is the quiet payoff from years of not-so-peaceful parenting. It’s within these moments that a father can feel like a dad.
Zac Linz and his father, Fred Linz, are able to share these moments more regularly than most fathers and sons. They work together in their four-generation family business, Meats by Linz Inc., which operates a processing plant in Calumet City, Illinois.
“Our business started in 1963 with my great-grandfather Martin Linz. We were just a mom-and-pop shop,” said Zac Linz, 27, of Crown Point. “My father dropped out of high school to help my grandfather, Bob Linz, build the business.”
Fred Linz, 52, of Dyer, needed to find something in the industry he could call his own, which gave birth to their own program, Linz Heritage Angus.
“We raise our own genetics in Crown Point using only 100% blackhide Angus cattle,” Zac Linz said.
The family firm delivers meat products across the country as well as to several countries. It also donates meat to Veterans Village at no cost to the residential facility.
“Our walk-in freezer is stacked to the ceiling, thanks to them,” said Dara Kraay Grady, the property manager at NWI Veterans Village.
Grady does anything she can to cater to the 44 vets living at the village, located one block off Broadway.
“Dara goes all out for us,” said Gary, who entered the Navy in 1964.
At that time, the domestic enemy of racial discrimination wasn’t camouflaged by political correctness or battled by Black Lives Matter protests.
“I got through it, though,” Gary said as direct as a torpedo.
Again, this is another truth about many fathers who aren’t given a handbook with that proverbial cigar in the hospital after their children are born. They get through it, albeit with psychological battle scars.
I joked with the three veterans about being a young father who didn’t have a clue what I was doing in the early years of parenting.
“None of us did,” Gary replied with a knowing smile.
Nonetheless, his kids love him and they’re proud of him, he said.
“They act like it anyway,” Gary joked.
jdavich@post-trib.com