Father/Son Banquet
FEBRUARY 2004
James M. May

I would like to take this opportunity to welcome all of you fathers and sons who have come to share in this fellowship of food and camaraderie and to thank Kerry Gervais and the Father-Son Banquet Committee for honoring me with the request to address you today.

In planning my remarks today, I decided to follow a couple of old adages as informing principles of this address. The first was mentioned to me by a friend and colleague in the Physical Education Department, after we had just finished listening to a rather long-winded chapel talk. He told me always to remember that “after 15 minutes preachers don’t save any souls.” The other thought comes from Cato, a terse, rugged old Roman who, when speaking about composing orations said, “Rem tene, verba sequentur,” i.e. “Hold onto an idea and the words will follow.” Thus, aiming at brevity, frankness and sincerity, I would like to share with you some of my personal observations and feelings about fathers and sons.

It was graduation day at St. Olaf, many years back. I was preparing to attend the reception which is held for parents and students outside on the lawn of the Old Main, when I heard a knock at my office door. It was Christopher, one of our graduating seniors who had majored in Classics. He was carrying under his arm a large book. “Here, this is for you,” he said as he handed me the book. As I took the book from his hand, I remember thinking that his was not the normal course of events on graduation day. The graduates are traditionally those who receive gifts. I opened the book and read the inscription which Christopher had written on the first page. It was written in Greek:

Je›nÉ, ∑ toi m¢n taËta f€la fron°vn égoreÊeiw

Õw te patØr ⁄ paid€, ka‹ oÎ pote lÆsomai aÈt«n

I recognized these lines from Homer’s Odyssey and translated them to myself: “Stranger, in truth you speak these things with kindly thought, as a father to his son, and never will I forget them.” These verses from Homer were more meaningful to me than Chris ever imagined. Chris, you see, was no ordinary student, far from it. He had completed his major in Classics with honors and was now heading to Harvard on a full scholarship to continue his studies. Over the years we had spent much time together, poring over Greek and Latin texts, seeking their deeper meaning, talking about them and a million other things. I gave him advice the best I could and he heeded it the best he could. Reading those lines, my heartstrings were tugged, for I held and still hold for Christopher the kind of affection that a father feels for a son.

At the same time, that quotation struck me in a very different way for I remembered its context. You might recall that Homer’s Odyssey is primarily the story of Odysseus (Ulysses), one of the Greek heroes of the Trojan War, who after fighting in the war for 10 years, spent the next decade following the sack of Troy wandering over the world, trying to reach Ithaca, his home, safely. Waiting there in Ithaca for him was Penelope, his faithful wife, who for 20 years has been dutifully checking the advances of many suitors who would have her hand in marriage as well as Odysseus’ kingdom. Telemachus is on Ithaca also, Odysseus’ and Penelope’s son, now a grown man, who has never known or seen his father.

The first four books of Homer’s Odyssey deal with the plight of Telemachus brought on by his father’s absence – his inability to exert any authority over the interloping suitors, his search to find out from others about his father, his quest to become a man, and his efforts to reestablish his household, which is now in disarray because of the suitors. He speaks these words in Book 1 to the goddess Athena who, disguised as a stranger, encourages him to seek out information about his father. When Odysseus does finally return to Ithaca, as you may recall, Telemachus discovers his father. Together, father and son, they rid the home of their enemies and reestablish Odysseus’ domain.

Upon reading those words which Christopher had so thoughtfully inscribed in this gift to me, my own childhood flashed through my mind. I empathized with Telemachus and recalled the heartache I had felt often as a young boy growing up without a father, the help given to me by so many loving and generous mentors who, like Athena, “spoke things with kindly thought, as a father to his son,” and the feeling of fulfillment I experienced when, as young man, I had met the man who, someday to be my father-in-law, had enough love in his heart not only to be a father to his own daughter, but to me as well – the man who enabled me to experience for the first time that very special feeling a boy has for his dad.

At first appearance, these incidents might not seem to have much relevance to a gathering such as this. After all, we are celebrating the father-son relationship and you fathers have not, like Odysseus, been searching for your homes or separated from your sons for 20 years. Nevertheless, I believe that Homer’s text has deep relevance, even for those whose furthest voyage from home might have been from Des Moines to St. Olaf.

I’m sure that all of you can remember holding these guys in your arms when they were infants – a feeling which is really impossible to describe to one who is not a parent. It was a feeling of enormous love, pride, hope, promise, and expectation. And although my little son could not yet speak, I sensed that somehow he felt the same things about his dad. Remember those days as kids when there was no one on earth greater than “my dad.” Little boys are so convinced of this fact that they willingly risk life and limb in fights with their fellows over whose father is the biggest, the strongest, the best.

As the years pass by, however, something strange, but certainly natural and inevitable happens; we drift away from that absolute acceptance, much like Odysseus in his wanderings drifted far from home. As imperfect human beings, this is bound to happen, yet in a relationship between parent and child, father and son, this drift apart can be particularly painful. So in our relationships with our fathers and our sons, there will certainly be times when we can liken our situation to Telemachus’ and Odysseus’. We can feel alone, deserted, out of favor with our fellows, or what is worse, out of touch with our loved ones.

There are, of course, serious causes for estrangement, alcohol, drugs, and the like; but more often than not, the slow but gradual revelation of one’s imperfections is the cause. Sons can think their fathers old-fashioned, strange, out of touch with their world, unrealistic, too educated, or not educated enough. Fathers can feel disappointment in their sons’ failure to follow in their footsteps, to excel in school, to star in sports, to make wise decisions in difficult situations. I doubt seriously that there are fathers and sons in this room who have not – at least to a minimal degree – been affected by such concerns.

Despite these storms, be they great or small, we, like Odysseus and Telemachus have survived and we have come this day to this place to celebrate that survival and that special bond between father and son. The sons present here today are just about the age that Telemachus would have been when his father returned to Ithaca. He had grown in age, stature, and wisdom, yet by himself he was still unable to rid his father’s household of trouble and set it in order. Sons, I ask you to remember this.

Fathers, Odysseus had seen many people and many lands in his wanderings and had performed many deeds of courage and daring. He had also committed along the way many costly errors and acts of indiscretion which brought death and destruction to his men. When he finally returns to Ithaca he must disguise himself as a beggar and enlist the aid of Telemachus to effect his plan. Together, father and son, with all the past behind them, rely on each other and that special bond between parent and child to restore the house of Odysseus.

This afternoon we honor that same bond which Odysseus and Telemachus shared so many centuries ago according to the legends of Homer. It is a sacred bond sanctioned not by any earthly arbiter but rather by the Arbiter of the Universe. Although our journeys are from the suburbs of Minneapolis or the farmlands of Iowa, and not from the plain of ancient Troy, we, nevertheless, here today experience in some sense a reunion, a return to Ithaca, a reuniting of elements that are, in fact, never meant to be separated. As young men on the threshold of life, you are about to set out upon your own adventures. My hope for you all is that there will be many such reunions throughout your lives – encounters between you and your fathers which in spirit recall those encounters of early childhood, when all hardships and sufferings are put aside and fathers and sons embrace in an expression of love, the specialness of which they share in a unique way.

I began these reflections with a quotation from Homer. I would like to close with another quotation. The scene is the reunion of Odysseus and Telemachus. Odysseus reveals to his son his identity, but Telemachus thinks the figure before him must be a god. Odysseus assures his son with these words:

“Telemachus, it does not become you to wonder too much at your own father when he is here, nor doubt him. No other Odysseus than I will ever come back to you. But here I am, and I am as you see me, and after hardships and suffering much I have come, in the twentieth year, back to my country. So he spoke, and sat down again, but now Telemachus folded his great father in his arms and wept…”