Today. September 1st 2006 is the centenary of the birth 9f my father Frank Smith. sadly he died in 1975 so is not eligible for the Royal Telegram
for a bit of the family history.
Obviously the anniversary makes one reflective and nostalgic, and gives a sense of the passage of the years. But from a personal viewpointit makes me thankful and happy that I had the privilege of knowing my Dad and of being my father's son.
The second of ten children in a Lincolnshire Methodist family he lived in the county all his life except for a few years or reluctant military service in World war II. He was far from rich or famous, left school and home at 13 to work "in service" on a large local farm, subsequently moving out of agriculture into the building trade . When he retired in the 1970's he was soon on an old age pension of £30 a week which was more than he had ever earned.
I remember my dad as a loving warm hearted parent, but above all as an intelligent and learned self taught man. Though he had been denied the chance of a thorough formal education, he was a great reader, and had valuable opinions on politics, history and science and loved to talk about these issues with anyone. One of his best stories was how during the war an officer inspecting the barracks had found a copy of Marx's Das Kapital on his bedside table, and asked if he had been reading this sunversive rubbish. In a reply which verged on insubordination he said "Sir, I think if you could be bothered to read it yourself you would find it is not rubbish at all".
To my Dad then I owe much of my own intellectual development, and a fair amount of my personality (we won't go into details there). He also gave me a love of cycling as pleasure and as a means of transport, though undoubtedly he was faster than me. One of my treasured possessions is his medal for the fastest veteran in a club race in 1950, 1hr 8 mins for a 25 mile time trial.
Unlike my mother, and the most of his brothers he found conventional Christian Faith somewhat difficult, and though he rarely talked about it, probably lived and died an agnostic. But if God's grace is as broad as I understand it to be and if you can judge a person by the fruits of their life, then I tend to belief that he has one of the many mansions in our Father's house.
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