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Today is Father’s Day, and I wanted to use my space to not only celebrate my dad but to encourage current dads in their everyday lives.

My dad, Dale Grossman, was 73 years old when he died on March 2, 2005.

He died after a series of strokes. What we found out later was that the strokes were not caused by the normal blood clots and blockages keeping blood from getting to his brain—it was cancer cells.

The day before his first stroke, Dad found out that the pain he had in his abdomen was colon cancer. The cancer cells had gotten into his bloodstream and made their way up into his brain.

He admitted after the first episode, just before Christmas in 2004, that he’d been dealing with that pain for “a while”, but he didn’t say anything because he “didn’t want to make a big fuss.”

Obviously, his six living children wished that he had.

But that’s part of who my dad was. He was a giver. He was always thinking of others and always deferring his time and energy to other people to make their lives better.

He was a tractor mechanic for the entirety of his adult life, and he worked at the same place the whole time. If you drive west on State Road 14 through the tiny Fulton County town of Athens, glance to your right and you will see the remnants of Athens Oliver Sales.

For more than 50 years, my dad showed up there six days a week and worked on every kind of engine imaginable.

We’re talking about combines, regular tractors and all their accessories, and lawn mowers—he worked on them all.

And he was the best at it.

The phone at the Grossman household (which was mounted to the wall and the receiver was on a long cord) rang at least once a week from farmers looking for my dad. One of them famously would imitate the noise their machine was making to see if Dad could identify the cause of the problem.

It was like a farm version of Name That Tune, and my dad often solved the mystery in five notes.

He was not a big man, but his hands were strong and bore the scars of sticking them in between metal parts of tractors where hands were not meant to go. He almost never wore gloves because he said, “I need to be able to feel what’s going on in there.”

He took one week of vacation a year, but we never went anywhere special. Remember, there were seven kids and nine people total at my house, and I don’t blame them for not want to try a crazy stunt like trying to take us on a real vacation.

He was 10-years old when Pearl Harbor was attacked and 14 when the Japanese surrendered in 1945. Despite not being old enough to fight, my dad was part of that generation that did. Those people lived by the mindset that you worked until the job was done, you never let anyone down, and you never quit.

He was a football player at Plymouth High School. He was the center in the days when players wore leather on their heads, and his nose was flattened out because he claimed not being afraid of hitting someone hard made him better at blocking.

He liked sports, and one of my great joys was taking my mom, dad and sister Jodi on bus trips to Wrigley Field to see the Cubs play. It’s part of why our radio station’s bus trip means so much to me.

But Dad’s big activity was fishing.

He only went a few times each year, but his bucket never came home empty.

Now, it should be noted that he rarely threw fish back for being too small. That’s because he scaled his fish instead of filleting them. He always said, “guys who filet fish are wasting good meat.”

Full disclosure … I fillet.

And now my boat bears his initials on the back, along with my father-in-law’s initials and my own. And there is a space on there for my son’s initials, because someday I will hand that over to him to take his family out on the lake.

I wish Dad could have seen me be inducted into the ISSA Hall of Fame in April, because he and Mom sacrificed a lot for me to get into radio. They thought I was crazy at first, and they weren’t wrong.

My encouragement to dads today is threefold.

First, spend as much time as you can with your kids, collectively and individually. Never pass up a chance to make them part of you and you part of them.

Second, include your kids in what you’re doing. I take Oliver with me to games, and he often sits with me. Sometimes he puts on headphones to listen to dad describe a junior varsity boys basketball game, which is extra cool for him because he’s seeing what I am talking about while I am talking about it.

Finally, teach them what you know. My kids know I am about people, and I am trying to teach my kids how to be a good friend, neighbor, and co-worker. And also teach them what you don’t know and link them to people who can teach them those things. Maybe things like hunting or how to drive a nail or even changing your oil.

Happy Father’s Day, and “thanks,” Dad.