My Father Figures: My Step-Dad (but really my Dad), Mark Seelbach

My parents were divorced when I was 4. Bad divorce. That's all I'm going to say. After a few years we moved to the West side of Columbus, to the now super scary but then amazingly wonderful Lincoln Village, a huge apartment complex where my grandparents lived. Until I was 9 it was mom and me. I guess we were living hand to mouth, but I never knew it. My mom worked hard to provide for us and childhood was good.

She liked to eat at Bob Evans and one day a waitress that she knew introduced her to another diner. They hit it off and started dating. Then one day he came over for dinner and I could not get over this wierd guy that mom had invited over. Then I went with mom to his bachelor apartment where I noticed he had Omni magazine, which, at the time, I thought was like Playboy, and I was mortified. But he turned out to be okay (and for those of you that don't know, Omni is a now defunct but iconic sci fi magazine, which said a lot about Mark Seelbach, though I didn't know it at the time) and one day in November 1981 they got married and I had a stepdad.

Mark had no children. He wasn't used to shy, sensitive pre-adolescent girls but he did the best he could. In time, I figured out that he was pretty shy, too, and geeky. He liked jazz music, which I hadn't paid much attention to before then, and played the trumpet. We started going to the Methodist church because he grew up Methodist (in Youngstown, OH, which has an interesting population of Polish, German, and Italian people mostly, so I was introduced to Perogies, red cabbage, and all variety of German sausage). I now love good funky jazz, I still consider myself Methodist, and I LOVE brats and saurkraut.

When computers came to the forefront in the late 80's he started working for the software industry, which began a lifelong love of computers and technology. Yes, my dad is a geek. A big one. He loves Star Trek and Dr. Who, collects vintage toys particularly GI Joes and those with a sci fi theme. My mom loves the geek stuff, too, and I was being molded, so when we went to the Dr. Who convention when I was in Middle School it was quite a moment. Did I mention he loves computers? He currently works as an auditor (he has a degree in accounting), but the computer love is not going away.

He has been a wonderful father to me. He really would do anything for me. When I need him, he's there. I know that he's proud of me, even though he hasn't said it in so many words. He doesn't say things like that, those emotional type things, but with all of the caring and everything he's done for me over the years, I know. You know what I mean?

Redefining the Definition of "Fatherhood" (a guest post by Matthew Peregoy)

Today's second article is by Matt Peregoy, The Real Matt Daddy. He lives with his family in Gettysburg, PA. He gave up a 70 hour work week for a national retailer to be a stay-at-home dad for his daughter and is married to a wonderful woman who "trusts me enough to give this experiment a try while she goes back to work full time." Today he talks about men who are redefining the definition of "fatherhood."

First, I want to thank Erin for featuring dads on her blog. We don’t always get the attention we deserve (and that’s okay with most of us), and we certainly haven’t been painted in a good light by the media over the past several decades. I don’t have to tell you about the stereotypes that the media uses to categorize men and fathers. Just watch Fox on Sunday night. The thing that most concerns me, is what is being done to stop the negative connotation of the words “dad,” “husband” and even “stay-at-home dad.” The only "thing" that is going to change the minds of people and the media is dads becoming more engaged with their families. For many families, that might mean a job change or a "role swap" where dad stays home and mom goes to work. As a stay-at-home father, I felt like I was making a huge sacrifice to walk away from a career to stay at home with my daughter. It was providing, but in a different way than is traditional in America. It took me a while to be okay with that, and the key to wrapping my head around it was finding support from other guys that are doing the very same thing. So, in an effort to help change the negative stereotypes that dads face, I wanted to take the opportunity to let you know about several men that are fighting to get the good image of dad back by defending and advocating for involved fathers everywhere.

Al Watts

President, Daddyshome, Inc

Al has been an at-home dad for 8 years and has four children ages two to eight. He is the President of Daddyshome, Inc. a non-profit organization that provides support, education and advocacy for dads who are their children’s primary caregiver. In addition to his work with Daddyshome, Inc., Al also writes for Momaha.com. Al was largely responsible, along with Dr. Aaron Rochlen, for getting TIME Magazine’s online affiliate “Healthland” to change the headline and URL of a story that claimed, “Stay-At-Home Dads Are More Likely to Divorce” (the URL was worse!). The editors of the story had an angle, and they used a study that was completely unrelated to make a wide generalization that the study’s own data did not support. Through Al’s work, the headline and eventually that URL were changed to more accurately reflect the data in the study that “Unemployed Men Are More Likely to Divorce” not stay-at-home dads. You can read about the entire situation on the Daddy’s Home Blog HERE.

Dr. Aaron Rochlen
Associate Professor in Counseling Psychology University of Texas at Austin

Dr. Rochlen is a licensed psychologist, and a married father of two. His research has focused on men and masculinity, including men’s barriers to help-seeking, men and depression, and men in non-traditional family roles. He has published several studies on stay-at-home fathers and their families, and has appeared as the keynote speaker at several at-home dad conventions. His work has appeared on The Today Show, NPR, CNN, MSNBC.com and in publications like The New York Times and USA Today. Dr. Rochlen’s work is unique in that it studies the relationships of families with a male in a non-traditional role such as an at-home father, a nurse, or a elementary school teacher. His research is helping us understand why more men are rejecting traditional roles in our society, the impact those decisions have on their families, and what we, as a society, can learn from this shift. For more of Dr. Rochlen’s work, you can read the following articles: A Q&A With At-Home Fathers, A Recent Article for Yahoo.com, and Honey, I’m Home – Stay-at-Home Dads’ psychological well-being guaged in this new study.

Bruce Sallan
BruceSallan.com

Bruce is a one-of-a-kind renaissance man with a big smile and a heart for adventure. He’s got a passion for family, and a determination to create great content for today’s dad. Bruce works with dads through his weekly parenting column that is written from the male perspective and is featured in several newspapers. He produces his own internet radio show as well. He has also written a book called “A Dad’s Point of View: We ARE Half the Equation,” and he even translates some of life’s best examples of this idea into a comic strip series called “Because I Said So.” He uses whatever spare time he has left to curate the discussion at #DadChat on Twitter every Thursday at 9PM EST and enjoy life’s adventures with his wife and two sons.

C.C. Chapman
Founder Digital Dads

C.C. Chapman is the Founder of Digital Dads and the author of Content Rules. He is a family first entrepreneur with two great kids. He loves the outdoors, cooking, photography and technology. He consults with companies around the globe to help them embrace the new world of marketing and business. Mr. Chapman is frequently challenging the current trends in media that tend to portray dads in a negative way. For example, he recently went to bat with Ragu and their parent company Unilever about their recent campaign to “rescue dads” from the kitchen, but not only offering criticism, but also suggesting how they could have done it better. You can read about it on his blog HERE. No matter what he is up to, you can bet that C.C. is defending dads and, more importantly, helping companies understand how to change their definition of dad so that this negative trend can be over with.

Lance Somerfeld & Matt Schneider
Founders - NYC Dads Group

Lance and Matt are stay-at-home dads that found themselves looking for a way to provide an opportunity for their kids to meet up and play, and not only that, they wanted to build a support network for other dads that want to be involved with their families. Two years ago they founded the NYC Dads Group, and it has rapidly grown to over 425 active dads! They do playgroup and educational events including a New Dad Boot Camp. Their site also has information about how to start your own dad's group. They have been featured on CBS News and NBC’s Today Show and in publications like USA Today and Parenting Magazine. They were recently asked to be a part of the New York City New Parents Expo. They were asked to sponsor the “Dad Lounge,” and the event planners originally wanted this to be an “escape” for dads, way off in a corner, to hang out and do mindless activities like play Xbox and sit on couches while their wives went around to the vendors at the expo. Lance and Matt did not hesitate to seize the opportunity. They said, “Yes, we will do the sponsorship, but we want to do exactly the opposite of what you’re planning. We want to show dads how to be more involved with their kids... and we want your largest booth... and we want to be in the center of the hall.” How’s that for changing the definition of dad? They showed all of the attendees and vendors just how important it is to be an involved father!

If you want to keep up with my adventures as a stay-at-home father, you can check out The Real Matt Daddy Blog.

My Father Figures: Howard Vawters, Sr.

Have you ever sat down to write something but the enormity of it froze you in your tracks? That's how I am feeling right now writing this post about my Grandpa. He was and will forever be one of the most important people in my life. We were a very tight knit extended family and from as early as I can remember got together for any occasion, no matter how small. It was well known among everyone that I was Grandpa's favorite. He was mine, too.

I went fishing with him. And camping. He taught me my first piano lessons. I would go to his house often just to visit with him and Grandma. Grandma and Grandpa were interwoven into each other, having known each other since grandma was 5 years old. They were second parents to me, just not quite as strict as my mom.

He had many jobs during his life, including administrative positions, teaching at a local community college, tuning pianos on the side, working as a security guard, the list goes on. To me, he will always be tuning a piano (or playing one, songs like "Fascination" and other standards; he loved to play his piano, which now sits in my living room) and a cool college professor who talked to his psychology students about metaphysics.

Metaphysics. He was a Rosicrucian who had passed all but the highest level. He believed in all ghosts and aliens and telekinesis and claimed to have astrally projected to another country. But then, he believed every cover of The Weekly World News and Enquirer as if they were The New York Times. He truly believed in Bat Boy - really, I'm not kidding (which astounded us as he was an educated man and an educator). When I was a kid, all of this was Amazing to me; now that I'm older it just adds to his character, which was larger than life.

I've yet to meet someone who could talk more than him. And he had an opinion on everything. And he was gonna tell it to you. I have to tell you, there were areas where his prejudice would arise and times when he would talk and you wondered what the heck he was talking about. He wasn't perfect, and he didn't know everything he thought he did (even though he was a highly intelligent man), but I loved him just the same.

I don't even know how to put into words how much I loved him. He was a kindred soul, someone who seemed to understand me and was every bit as quirky and eccentric as I was, just in other ways. He could be very cranky and mean at times, but I couldn't imagine him not being there, with his astounding stories or huge pronouncements, and just being able to sit and watch him, be in his presence.

He was a lifelong pipe smoker, started in WWII when he was barely out of his teens. And he was never more belligerent than when someone told him that smoking his pipe wasn't good for him. That pipe was a part of him (we all have one of his pipes now - I smell mine quite a bit to remember him). In the end, he got lung cancer that metastasized everywhere in his body including his brain. In his final few months, he became befuddled, argumentative to an extreme; it was like all of the worst traits that he has magnified. And then there were moments when he was himself, claiming that with herbs and right living he would get rid of the cancer.

But he didn't. He was put in hospice at the same time I was in the hospital having William. I always pictured that I would be buy his bedside in his final hours, but I was on absolute bed rest and had a preemie and there was no way for me to get to him. And he was at most 2 blocks away from me, which stung even more. One of the greatest pains of my life is that he never was able to see William and I wasn't able to tell him goodbye in his final hours. To have just held his hand one more time . . .

He knew that I was going to give William his name as a middle name and as he was dying, shortly after I had Will, he asked my cousin if I really had given him the name Howard. She told me that when she told him yes he smiled and seemed calmer.

And when I talk to William about his name, I tell him daddy picked out William, but Howard came from my grandpa, someone who I still love almost as much as I love him.

9 Great TV Dads

These days you'd be hard pressed to find a wonderful TV dad. They are out there, but really, where are the Cliff Huxtables and Andy Taylors of today. Cartoons give us bafoonish examples like Jimmy Neutron's completely lost father, i Carly's dad is absent and she's more mature than Spencer, and where is Victoria Justice's dad on Victorious? Our kids are being exposed to some pretty bad examples.

Back in the day we had amazing father figures to look to. Here is my list, in no particular order, of great TV dads.

Ward Cleaver

He is my prototypical TV dad. Always a wise word, loving with his wife, great with his boys, he knew how to take his shoes off, put his slippers on, and read the evening paper before dinner. He got mad at the boys when they were bad, but not too mad. Just angry enough that the Beeve and Wally knew they'd disappointed the old man, which was just something you didn't do to Ward Cleaver. He was too good to be someone you'd want to disappoint; instead, he was the type of man you aspired to grow up to be.

Steven Keaton

Always the wise word, because he used to be a hippie. Which made him cool, even though he was now a sort-of-yuppie. Also, he lived in Columbus, OH, and NO t.v. show was set in Columbus, ever (although us Columbus kids couldn't really figure out where he lived, in his lovely Victorian house and safe neighborhood, a combo that wasn't as common then as it is now). His son Worshiped at the alter of capitalism and Ronald Reagan, something he was totally opposed to (remember, hippie), but he loved him and listened to him just the same. His daughter brought home a scary looking artist dude and he accepted him. He got angry, and the kids didn't want to disappoint him, either, because at the heart of it, he was a good man who loved his family and he wasn't afraid to say it. And his son was Michael J Fox.

Dan Conner

Dan was an every man. He worked on motorcycles. His business failed. He worked hard to keep his family supplied for. He didn't like his life at times and at others loved it and everyone in it. He threw angry fits at times, but usually saw the humor in life. Dan took things as they came at him and handled them the best he could, which was usually pretty well, given that he was poor and had a crass, domineering wife, rebellious, disaffected kids, and an absolute mess of a father, sister-in-law, and mother-in-law. He gave funny yet insightful advice to his family and was as protective as he could be. Blessed with a big belly and a big heart, we all loved him.

Andy Taylor

Probably one of the moral people ever on TV. The town sheriff who wouldn't let his deputy load his gun (for obvious reasons). He raised his son in an authoritative yet gentle manner; you were never in doubt of who was in charge. When Opie killed a bird, he didn't like it and let Opie know it, but he let Opie work out the ethics of it all on his own. He was always there for his son, Aunt Bea, Helen, and everyone in town. The handsomest man in church, he ate the kerosene pickles just to make sure Aunt Bea was happy. If every boy aspired to be an Andy Taylor, just imagine what a fabuous, Mayberry of a world we could live in.

Charles Ingalls

Frontier dad who built a log cabin, could dig a well, and saw his children through a life threatening illness practically every episode. Could deal with tragedy better than any human being ever born, and had the authority to get his family (and everyone else in town for that matter) through it as well. Strong, silent, loving, godly. Was Charles Ingalls perfect? Maybe.

Steve Douglas

Widower, aeronautical engineer, and understanding father to Mike, Chip, and Robbie, and later, Ernie. A family of boys who grew into men, accompanied by grandfather "Bub" and housekeeper Uncle Charlie. Along the way, the boys got married, had a few kids, they moved from Illinois to California, and Steve ruled the family along the way.

Howard Cunningham

A man who found his calling when the toilet overflowed. Local hardware store owner, devoted husband, lodge brother, and bowling league member. Let a greaser live over his garage and eventually became the closest thing to a father that greaser ever had. Raised a superb son of fine moral fiber (even though he barely tolerated his goonie friends) and a spazzy girl in a poodle skirt (even though she eventually ran off with the greaser's cousin to live over a pizza shop and sing cheesy duets). Had it going on long before "had it going on" meant anything.

Tim Taylor

Sure, he was a TV handy man who couldn't fix anything. That didn't matter when he got home (well, it did, but there was always Al to fix what he broke). At home, he was a manly man, raising three boys to become honorable men, drinking a beer here and there, and restoring his series of amazing hot rods. He and his wife had IT going on, even though they had a fight here and there. Slightly befuddled but spot on where it counted, he knew when to ask his sage neighbor for advice, and always seemed to get it right in the end.

Cliff Huxtable

When Americans were asked which TV dad they would most like to have, all of the above men made the list, along with Ben Cartright, Ozzie Nelson, Mike Brady, and, inexplicably, Peter Griffin, but Cliff Huxtable was #1 by a landslide. And lets all face it, Cliff is the best dad on TV, ever. He's funny, smart, likes to play with kids, love his wife, may not get what he wants all the time but can laugh his way through it, and will go to unending lengths to teach his kids a lesson (such as when he cleared out Theo's room, created a fake job, made him rent his room back, buy all the furniture, leaving him, of course, with nothing at the end of the day to have fun with, all the while enlisting every member of the family as bit players in Theo's lesson in economics). Who didn't love his wacky sweaters, his love of jazz, and his attempts to eat whatever he wanted despite Claire's watchful eye. I really could write an entire thesis on Cliff (and I'm sure a few people have), but I will end it here, wondering "Will there ever be another Cliff?"

Who are some of your favorite TV dads, and who did I forget?

My Father Figures: Pierson Gilliland

Grandpa Gilliland. The name conjures up warm fuzzies and massive feelings of love. He was actually my great grandfather, my paternal grandma's dad. My paternal grandfather died before I was born, so my earliest memories are of Grandpa Gilliland.

I worshiped him. There is just no other word that explains my feelings for him. I remember eating Cheerios with heavy cream with him because that's what he liked to eat. I remember just being with him. But the truth is, as the years have gone by, I've forgotten more and more about him.

He died when I was still very young. I think I was 8 or 9. Someone took me for a walk and told me he was dead and that I would never see him again. It took a few days, but it was the first time that I was completely, totally devastated by a person's death. At one point I wrote a letter to God asking for Grandpa Gilliland back. There was a large part of me that was sure that God would give me my wish. When he didn't I think I truly understood the finality of death.

But the most important thing that Grandpa Gilliland taught me was that I was loved. He loved me entirely and completely. And I felt the same thing for him. I still feel it all these years later when I think of him.

Look at that little girl. She loves that man. She will forever,

but she just doesn' t know it yet.

When I think of Grandpa Gilliland, I think about love.