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On the most basic level, there is of course gratitude for my very existence and that of my sister and each of my six brothers. Thanks to our lives, in turn, the extended family now also includes my wife, Valerie, a brother-in-law, sisters-in-law, and many nephews, nieces, grandnephews, and grandnieces.

My parents were part of "the greatest generation," folks who dealt with the world's worst economic depression and the Dust Bowl in the 1930s and went on to join the mammoth World War II and Korean War struggles against tyranny and aggression in the 1940s and 1950s and then through several succeeding decades took up the Cold War campaign of "detente" with the Soviet Union as well, ultimately besting this adversary too.

Lucile, Leon, and Mable, about 1923

These were not times for sensitivity, appeasement, or "nice" forms of confrontation. They called for a tough-minded, often stoic steadfastness of purpose against great odds, a favorable outcome never assured.

My father tried a number of ventures in his youth, then served in the U.S. Army, Border Patrol, and Air Force for close to 30 years. With both depression era privations and prior relatives' and teachers' accomplishments in mind, he and Julia, my mom, were brilliantly frugal during most of these their financially prosperous years and invested wisely so that, from being nearly penniless and living with parents in the late 1930s, Leon was able to retire in 1960 at age 48, despite their having eight kids, all still living at home at the time. Though I would leave for college a little over a year later, my siblings all needed our folks' provision of room, board, transport, medical care, and clothes for a number of years to come.

The time following Dad's retirement and after I had left for university courses was by all accounts not an easy one for my sister and brothers, yet all, like me, grew up strong and healthy, intelligent, and capable of making their own individual ways in the world.

As I have gained insight with advancing years, my father, in some ways a hard man, has better come into focus, and the picture I see of him now is far more human and worthy of respect than I had recognized two or three score years ago.

His relationship with his own dad was not the best. Papa Frank, while later affable and amusing with his grandchildren (like me), could be severe and judgmental with his own offspring. As a preacher, helping to found several fundamentalist congregations around the country, he had little tolerance for Dad's growing intellectual questioning of dogmatic religious tenets. Even more than might generally have been the case between a father and his oldest child and only son, Papa Frank must have felt compelled to insist on Leon toeing the doctrinaire line, and, when this attitude was not effective, have been rejecting.

Dad's "male authority" was also undermined in being surrounded much of the time by rather independent sisters, the older two of whom were competitive, uncooperative, and enjoyed teasing him, and by a mother who liked things in her home to be always correct and "just so." No room was left for a young man's free spirit, even less so for my future dad to feel he had any others' support if he would "march to the beat of a different drummer."

The sister whom he really loved, Wilma, was the youngest of three girls in his birth family. He was 12 and she 5 when she died from congestive heart failure. In that hostile environment, he must have felt then that he had lost his only friend. Even to have admitted his misery would probably have been used against him.

Mabel, Leon, Lucile, Papa Frank, and Mama Pearl, about 1930

His second sister later turned out to have a significant drinking problem as well as mental illness at times and tendencies to believe in esoteric realms and arts that Dad saw as wish-fulfillment at best, delusional at worst. These challenges were sufficient that she was institutionalized and then, under the Big Brother knows best policies of the time, forced to undergo a hysterectomy to prevent her bearing any others like her.

Dad apparently reacted with self-righteousness, believing she had brought it on herself. Overall, his response was one of forcefully endorsing only pragmatic, analytical realism combined with the compulsive perfectionism that characterized much of his adult life. He never went along with either what he saw as her fantasies or with her and her older sister's persistent rebellions against his directions, ideas, or attempts at having any satisfaction in life. He must have felt the only way to know a sense of real personal pride or pleasure would have been to completely create and control his own more friendly environment, a family he "owned," so to speak, even if his wife, Julia, did not completely go along with his outlook on that!

Trained as a military manager, intelligence analyst, and an interrogator of war prisoners, Leon had difficulties relating in a "warm and fuzzy" way till, much later in life, he began to adapt to his new role as grandpa, one he eventually took to, though, with obvious delight.

Having "psychoanalyzed" the fellow in this way, so I might better "walk in his shoes" and see him in a sympathetic context, I find I am not looking on him at all as the "monster" he occasionally seemed when we were growing up. Does this mean I excuse his flaws? Not exactly. I see him though more with my eyes wide open as neither angel nor ogre but, like most of us, somewhere between, a guy who did the best he could, got some things wrong - and we can surely learn even from these errors - but also quite a few right.

I think a good way to show what I mean is to say he was similar to a lead character played by Robert Duvall in a 1979 movie, "The Great Santini," about a military officer struggling to be the kind of father and husband everyone wanted him to be, not quite making it, yet in the process being so darned and genuinely real that one's heart goes out to him.

With all that preamble, let me note a few things now about this tough yet deeply feeling man, things that are not faint praise but represent a serious salute to the neat individual who was not merely my father but in important ways my mentor as well.

Here then are 100 of the many "How to" things I have learned by example or demonstration from my dad, Leon, who did them all long before I could:

• Look at things from a practical, down to earth point of view;

• Be strong;

• Meditate;

• Follow necessary rules to achieve my objectives;

  Leon and Julia with Larry, about 1944

• Be smart;

• Use a geometry compass;

• Be analytical;

• Care for animals;

• Be a good investor;

• Look after my possessions;

• Savor a scientific or mathematical argument;

• Play good games of checkers and ping-pong;

• Look after and care for my wife when she is not at her best;

• Be concise;

• Show affection toward others;

• Be conservative;

• Shoot a rifle well;

• Be neat and orderly;

• Hike in and enjoy the great outdoors;

• Be self-reliant;

• Appreciate the heavens and astronomical lore;

• Be Spartan;

• Have a hearty laugh;

• Be skeptical of "bull----;"

• Have a sense of wonder;

• Be curious;

• Enjoy a sense of humor;

• Find plenty of interesting ways to fill my time;

• Get along with others in my workplace;

• Make a positive difference;

• Be competent;

• Celebrate special occasions;

• Appreciate war documentaries;

• Have a sense of history;

• Know key things about great past leaders;

  Leon playing checkers with an unknown opponent at the Rockin' B Ranch home, around 1989

• Be charming in groups of people or when meeting someone new;

• Take lots of good walks;

• Be very frugal;

• Have a picnic;

• Make and fly paper airplanes;

• Enjoy fireworks;

• Appreciate air shows;

• Make rockets out of matches and aluminum foil;

• Admire the achievements of astronauts;

• Have a sense of progress and that, despite some short-term appearances, things are getting better;

• Look after my tools;

• Make the right choices about end-of-life issues;

• Treat people with reasonable fairness;

• Be a good observer of nature;

• Make and enjoy a fire;

• Straighten nails and hammer them in efficiently;

• Work hard;

• Have a good memory;

• Enjoy the arts and PBS;

• Have a big vocabulary;

• Keep up with current events;

• Look at two or more sides of an issue;

• Burn the midnight oil;

• Have a jolly good time;

• Help make my wife feel appreciated;

• Look good in a suit;

• Enjoy live TV;

• Rise above pettiness;

• Like fine movies;

• Have goodwill;

• Not whine about things;

• Be a man;

• Look things up;

• Keep a car (or truck) "forever;"

• Churn ice cream;

• Make myself useful;

• Do fun stuff;

  Leon in a Rockin' B kitchen doorway, about 1991

• Read a map;

• Be Santa Claus;

• Make hamburgers on a grill and hotdogs or marshmallows on a campfire;

• Use a directional compass;

• Play dominoes;

• Use a slide rule;

• Work on a car;

• Play horseshoes;

• Send and receive Morse Code;

• Change a flat tire;

• Write a promissory note;

• Keep a knife sharp;

• Be honest in admitting a mistake (like backing into daughter-in-law Valerie's car) and paying up promptly;

• Keep orderly records;

• Be generous with my money;

• Get the rubber bands around a calf's balls;

• Look after firearms and handle them safely;

• Treat cattle for pests and infections;

• Tell an interesting story;

• Wash dishes the right way;

• Cut down and saw up trees;

• Make a fence;

• Sing well in the bathroom;

• Respect and show interest in our parents;

• Endure great pain without giving in to it;

• Be strict when the occasion calls for it;

• Have self-confidence;

• Make no excuses.

Not bad, Dad. Happy one hundredth!

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