Father teaches son by example

Editor's note: This is the fourth part to a column in honor of former TIMES publisher and editor, Jack Beisner, by his son, E. Calvin Beisner.

He showed me how a father takes responsibility, despite high costs and a longer commute, to move his family out of heavy smog when one daughter reacts so badly to it that her life is threatened, and how a father gives his daughters away at their weddings, trusting but wondering, but never forgets that they're always his little girls. He also showed me how a man controls himself when, having smoked two packs of cigarettes a day for about 30 years, he simply quit, cold turkey, never mentioning it to anybody until my mother, still smoking (she quit later), said in shock, "Jack! I haven't seen you smoke in three weeks!" and he responded simply, "No, I quit." That was all.

He took me out to the Anza Borego Desert State Park to camp from time to time, where in the dry desert air we could see more stars than I'd ever dreamed existed. And when he took the family to the outdoor Ramona Pageant in Hemet, where he knew the newspaper publisher and his wife and lots of other people, and I watched Jose Ferrer as the villain (whose name I cannot recall) murder Victor Jory as the hero Alessandro and then we all attended the opening-night dinner and I saw Mr. Ferrer walking toward us and told Dad, "I hate him so much I want to spit in his face," Dad walked me right up to him, shook his hand, and said, "Mr. Ferrer, my son wants you to know that he hates you so much he wants to spit in your face," and Mr. Ferrer got down on my level and looked me in the eye and said, "Thank you! That's a great compliment!" and I learned something of what it means to be an actor.

He had taken us to church all along, but it had never meant anything much to me, other than a time to learn to sing and read music in the children's choir. It apparently hadn't meant much to him, either, other than an opportunity to clip his fingernails, which he did faithfully during every sermon. Then one day in the spring of 1969, seeming to think it was kind of a social duty granted the fame of the affair, he took my mother and me to a Billy Graham Crusade at Anaheim Stadium, and there he and I both went down to the field and asked Jesus to come into our hearts and forgive our sins and make us His own. A couple of years later, as it became clear that God was calling me into lifelong ministry, he told me of his prayer when my mother had been paralyzed and that now he knew that God had answered it--He had taken his son, not, as my father had been willing, to die, but to serve Him.

He taught me hard work when he got me started on my first newspaper route, and then mowing neighbors' lawns as well as our own. He encouraged me as I learned to play trumpet, cornet, and French horn, and then as I sang classical music in school choirs. He prodded me to sharpen my chess skills till I was one of the best on my high school team. And when it came time for college, he approved my saving money by starting at a junior college but after the first three semesters found a scholarship for me at the University of Southern California, where he'd hoped I'd major in journalism but didn't object when I chose Interdisciplinary Studies in Religion and Philosophy instead. And he made sure that we got to lots of Trojan football games together, including some historic ones against Notre Dame, and to the Rose Bowl several times, too.

He taught me how a husband loves his wife when, after she'd fallen down our stairs in the middle of the night and broken multiple bones and nearly died, he nursed her for months during her recovery and never complained about the burdens he bore.

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Editor's note: This column is the third in a series by E. Calvin Beisner, son of Jack and Mary-Lou Beisner, who owned and published The Times of Northeast Benton County from 1978-1989. He served at various times as reporter, editor and assistant publisher as well as in other capacities. He is now Founder and National Spokesman of The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation www.CornwallAlliance.org. He and his wife, Deborah, an artist, live in south Florida.