I'll never forget it. It was Father's Day of 1977. I was in the Air Force and was returning to my assignment in Turkey or South Korea or some other armpit of the world after my mid-tour leave. Just as I stepped out the door of the Albuquerque terminal, my 2-year-old son, Jason, clamped onto my leg and looked up at me with a desperation I had never seen in the eyes of any person before or since. He didn't cry or speak, but the look of terror in his eyes said everything. He did not want to lose his dad for another six months -- a lifetime in a toddler's mind. As a tear rolled down his cheek, a tear also rolled down mine. The last time we had been this close was at the minute of his birth in the delivery room, when I looked into his eyes and saw his soul and he saw something in me. We actually connected with each other. I could see Jason in those blue eyes. After that connection, I could have picked him out of a roomful of a hundred babies. It took the combined efforts of my wife and me to pry him off. As I made my way across the dimly-lit tarmac, everything was a blur because of the tears that flooded my eyes. I turned my face to the rainy nighttime sky so other passengers wouldn't see I'd been crying. It remains the most emotional moment of my entire life. Happy Father's Day to military fathers stationed all over the globe! You are sacrificing SO much to truly change the history of the world for the better!
