Fathers

Today was the day my Dad was born – in 1907. Some 14 years ago I paid my extended tribute to his memory which started thus - 

We are all shaped by our upbringing – family; neighbourhood; and education. My father was a Presbyterian Minister (in a Scottish shipbuilding town) whom I would like to have known better. Last year I found myself discussing the possible establishment of a series of lectures (better perhaps “conversations”) which would celebrate my father’s passions and values. These can be tentatively but not adequately expressed in such words as understanding.. tolerance.. sharing.... service....exploration.... reconciliation.... and also, in pastimes, such as "boats, books, bees and bens".

The discussion involved me drafting the following thoughts - partly in an effort to clarify why I felt my father's memory deserved resurrection;

partly because I was aware that he represented a world we have lost and should celebrate. And partly, I realise, because I was trying to find out what being Scottish now means to me. Memorials are normally for famous people – but the point about my father is that he had no affectations or ambitions (at least that I knew about!) and was simply “well ken’t” and loved in several distinct communities. It was enough for him to serve one community (Mount Pleasant Church in Greenock for 50 years) and to use his time on earth to try to open up - to a range of very different types of individuals - the richness of other fields of knowledge. So he tutored in ancient languages and history – he was a prison chaplain – he was chairman of Greenock’s McLellan Gallery and Philosophical Society – latterly he was a lecturer on a British circuit about his travels (which included an expedition to Greenland in his sixties!). In all of this, of course, he was quietly supported by my mother. His well-known passions for books and travel were expressions of his passion for the world. His service as an independent (“moderate”) councillor (and Baillie) on Greenock Town Council equally showed his lack of dogma and his openness. When, in my late teens, I became both an atheist and socialist (offending some of our West-end neighbours) I felt only his quiet pride that I was, in my own way, searching for myself and, in different ways, living up to his values