This is a speech I gave in 2010 for my Walker Talkers Toastmasters Club

1. Mr. Toastmaster, fellow toastmasters and guests, Good afternoon.
This past Sunday was Father’s Day. For those of you who are fathers,
you may have received gifts of lazy lunches, tacky ties or corny coffee
cups.
My niece backed chocolate chip cookies for her dad, and a friend took
his out for a round of golf. Some of you may have only received a phone
call from forgetful daughters and sons like me.
I want to tell you a story today about a father I once knew and the gift he
received.
It was about this time some seven years ago when they left the Tri-Cities
on a Tuesday, headed to California like prospectors seeking something
more important and more elusive than gold.
Their burgundy Honda Accord was loaded with whatever was left
behind in their apartment after movers had come by the day before.
Also in the car was a father, his wife and their young son.
They had been my neighbors for a year and a half, living in the upstairs
apartment next to mine in Richland, one of three small communities that
make up the Tri-Cities in eastern Washington.
I didn't know them that well, but we always made sure to say hello when
we saw each other. And we would alternate weeks on who would sweep
the porch clean of spider webs and the ever present Mid-Columbia dust.
The father, upon hearing I was recovering from surgery earlier that year
had come to my apartment one morning loaded with a selection of juices
and bottled water to aid in my recovery. He also was generous with
prayers of healing.

2. I still regret never being able to return that generosity.
He and I had talked briefly the day before they left. He told me his son
had developed some sort of tumor on the lower left side of his face.
Several doctors had seen the boy, but they hadn't returned with a
diagnosis – at least one Dad could understand.
No, he said to me, they didn't even know whether it was cancerous.
What made it difficult, he said, was that their son was autistic. He
couldn't describe the pain to his parents. He didn't talk.
Desperate, the father and mother had decided to go to California where
they could be near family and friends as they sought medical care for
their son.
I think my unplanned arrival home for lunch that afternoon was a much-
needed opportunity for Dad to have a person with whom he could share
what was going on. He had been standing on the porch, staring into
space, and apparently waiting for me.
Perhaps I was just at the right place at the right time, or maybe there was
something else, call it karma or God’s will.
Whatever it was, he seized the opportunity. He talked and I listened. He
talked about children. And he tried to explain to me a parent's love.
He said he was in awe of how much love his parents must had for him if
it was only a fraction of the love he felt for his son.
He talked about the anguish and frustration he felt in not being able to
help heal his son. And he talked about the pure joy he felt those few
wonderful times when his son appeared to be pain free, laughing and
smiling.

3. I don't have children. But his reflections prompted me to call family
members, including my dad, letting them all know that I loved them and
how I appreciated their love for me.
My neighbor told me he was taking three months of leave from his
Hanford-area job as a research scientist, a dream he’d had since being a
boy back in his native Tunisia. It was a dream nurtured by his father.
He told me he hoped to return, but I never saw him or his family again.
We can't see the future. Not now and not that Monday afternoon,
standing on a porch under the hot Richland sun so many years ago.
But we can bet there may be a neighbor out there who needs someone to
talk with, just as there may be a neighbor out there willing to listen; and
that may be just what defines a community.
And we can remember this small family of a mother, a father and a son,
who once upon a time were my neighbors.
We can see how one man was given the gift of a parent’s love the day he
became a father, and how that was a pretty great gift, indeed.