A Tribute to Father Figures

Some of us are fathers by law and biology. Today I celebrate a man who became like a father and pay homage to all those great men who seek out those left behind, changing their lives in the process.

Bill and Linda Cunningham, on my wedding day

Regular readers will know that my history with fatherhood from the perspective of a son has been a bit swervy, ultimately coming to a good place of understanding about my father’s many challenges in his short and tragic life.

I am quite sure I will take more occasions to write tributes to my father in the years to come. I have a lot more stories to tell.

Today, though, I write in tribute to fathering of a different kind, where neither law nor biology requires it, but where choices to mentor can change worlds and save lives.

Combustible Compost

In January 1999, my mother’s house caught fire. I have sometimes relayed this story with a raconteur’s flair as “my house burned down,” but that’s not quite right. I was a senior in high school at the time. For most of that year and the one before, I was barely home, sleeping on my best friend Nick’s couch or floor. So it’s more accurate to say that my mom’s house burned down, not mine; it wasn’t really my house.

And to be clear, the house didn’t burn down so much as it was gutted by flame. Our compost heap, to which I had contributed metric tons of grass clippings over the years, apparently needed to be stirred from time to time. Who knew? Some spark or pressure or something else unknown caused it to erupt; fire gutted the house and required us to evacuate for months as the insurance company rebuilt it.

I spent so little time at home during those last years of high school largely because home life at the time was not healthy. One of my siblings and I had epic clashes of personality and physicality. In so small a home, we were the compost heap; combustion was constant. It was easier for me to essentially move across town.

When the insurance company proposed that we relocate the family from our 1700-square-foot home – already tight with three teenagers – to a 600-square-foot apartment, I knew that the mayhem such proximity would release, even in short bursts, would be psychologically and probably physically unsafe. I asked Mom if I could live elsewhere on a more permanent basis, at least while the house was rebuilt. She readily agreed.

My first option, Nick’s house, was certainly available to me. I asked him today why we didn’t just formalize what was already informally established and have me make an honest couch out of that furniture. Neither of us remembers why we didn’t pursue that option, but I suspect we understood that for three days out of the week, separating ourselves from each other is what made our bond such a tight one. (It was good thinking: we’re as close as ever, thirty years later.)

Meet the Cunninghams

So it was that I approached Bill and Linda Cunningham, already the closest thing I had to surrogate parents in my life. They were fellow members of our church, each with service responsibilities in the church that put them in almost daily contact with me – Linda was my early-morning seminary teacher, and Bill was my home teaching companion.

They were so much more than this. Bill started it all when I was 12 years old. At the time in the church an annual event was the “father-son campout,” which was just what you think. (Today, we just call them “family campouts.”) For me, these were awkward events: was I, a fatherless son, invited too? Who would take me if so?

I quickly learned that the answer to the first question was “yes” and the answer to the second was “Brother Cunningham.” The first time I was in a meeting where someone asked for a head count for the campout, my hands and my eyes were down. Bill quietly sidled next to me and leaned over: “Do you want to go to this?” I knew him only vaguely from his role at the time serving with the youth. I nodded and he said to the group: “You can add two more. Pete Brown and I will be there together.”

What Bill Taught Me

From there, we were mostly inseparable as a church father-son duo, five years before the fire. Bill is a quiet man with a searching intellect, a giant heart, a subversive sense of humor, and a passion for his hobbies. The last point is a big one: he is among the most interesting people in America. He taught himself how to invest, to build stained-glass windows, to manufacture a greenhouse, to build an 1840s-era wooden handcart, to rebuild a 1950s Ford truck, to convert his home to a solar grid with backup batteries, and so much more. And those are just off the top of my head, projects I have personally observed. Although we are obviously not genetically related, I think I inherited this passion for hobbies from him. I see so much of Bill in my avocational fixations.

I learned so much from Bill. To cite a big one: Bill first introduced me to index fund investing. He is the reason I opened my first Vanguard account as a teenager. He walked me through the first model I used on Excel to plot annual net worth targets. I still use that original model, which has completely transformed my financial life. (Immodestly, I will add: it has grown in complexity and sophistication, but is built on the same bones.) I still have that Vanguard account.

Another one: He was my wingman when I started dating. He and Linda would double date with me as often as I wanted, paying for dinner or bowling or ballroom dancing. He wanted to keep me out of trouble and wanted to vet the girls I was bringing home; I mostly wanted free dinner at nicer restaurants than I could otherwise afford. It was a nice synergy.

That might sound awkward to 2020s readers, but Bill and Linda made me much cooler with girls than I would have been natively. When my girlfriend my junior year told me that a Pontiac Sunfire was her favorite car of all time, I asked Bill if I could borrow one from General Motors—he was a GM executive at the time, with a choice of cars on some rotational basis—so he secured for me a Pontiac Sunfire to surprise my date for her senior prom. I was the talk of the town, especially since the alternative was my little 450cc Suzuki motorcycle.

Bill also taught me how to be a Mormon who could also be myself, a lesson that has stayed with me forever. For example, I sometimes found the empty repetition of standard Mormon prayers a little tedious and hard to feel. In one outing to visit a family as home teachers, he prayed for direction, inviting kindness to accompany us on our visit, and then broke the fourth wall to say, mid-prayer,

“Pete, remind me who it is we are going to see again? Her name starts with a C.”

“It’s Deborah Jones,” I whispered, unsure what exactly was happening.

“Are you sure? Well, Father in Heaven, please bless Sister Jones, who Pete thinks is named Deborah, but I have my doubts.”

In another conversation, he asked me what I would do if I were offered drugs or alcohol, verboten in our religion. I was fourteen years old – this hadn’t happened to me yet. I answered with the stock response,

“I would say no, it’s against my religion.”

“What does that even mean, against my religion?”

“I guess it means I can’t do it because I am a Mormon.”

“Do you want to drink alcohol or do drugs?”

“No”

“Then just say that. Say ‘I won’t do it because I don’t want to do it.’ The key here is to learn who you are and not to be ashamed of that.”

And Bill was the one who taught me, frankly and with age-appropriate candor, about sex. I debated whether to include this fact given how culturally taboo it is to discuss sex, perhaps especially in Mormonism, but those very taboos make what Bill did so remarkable and so important. When I lived with him, he and Linda made clear that I couldn’t have girls in the house when they were gone.¹ He also gave me rules of thumb to guide my over-engaged teenage behavior. But he did more than set boundaries. He helped me understand why religious commitments to fidelity and chastity mattered so much to him and could matter to me, through our common religious commitments, if I chose to adopt them for myself. We had several iterations of these conversations, each more specific than the one before, right up until he stood by me in my wedding party as my “father” and gave me incredibly useful, practical advice about, well, how to be a good and empathetic lover.

Learning Marriage from Bill and Linda

I lived with the Cunninghams during the last last months of my senior year. They remain the happiest of my childhood. The main reason for that happiness is because the most important thing that Bill and Linda have taught me was what it means to have a loving marriage. I had never observed an example at close range, and now I could. Bill and Linda were deeply in love. We would have nightly prayers together, the three of us, which would often turn into a wrestling fight. I can still remember Linda squealing with laughter as Bill chased her around the couch.

Much more importantly, the way that Bill talked to and about Linda made me think that she was probably one of the most important people I had ever met. It was not gushing or maudlin. Bill is not one for stemwinders. It was just how he felt about her. And, as a result, this is also how I started to feel about her. (I could write an equal Mother’s Day tribute to Linda, whom I love like a mother.)

Recently, my 16-year-old son asked me and Nikki how you know when you are in love.

I felt like the second-string quarterback who had spent his life in preparation, and now the coach had tapped me in. This was the big game. I was so ready for this conversation. We talked some about what love might mean at age 16 versus 26, about first loves, about romance and stability and much else.

Soon Nikki and I were just making eyes at each other and talking about how, 20 years later, we are still head over heels for each other, more in love that day than we had ever been before. We explained to him why we felt that way about each other and what it takes to cultivate that kind of love.

It may not surprise you that I often pull my boys aside for some perhaps over-scripted didactic moments where I want them Take. A. Knee. And. Learn. Something. I have no idea how much these conversations penetrate, if they do at all, but in the midst of that conversation about love a few weeks ago, gathered around the kitchen island just as I had done so many times with Bill and Linda, our son paid us the highest compliment I know.

“You know, I think the most important thing you two have ever done for me is how much you love each other.”

I say that is a compliment to me and Nikki, and so it is. It is also a compliment to Bill and Linda Cunningham. I am my father Bill’s son. His garage and my garage look an awful lot a like, if you swap his car parts for my bike parts and his woodworking for my guitars and weightlifting. And I treat Nikki the way he taught me to treat women. I learned from him, and now my boys — his adopted grandchildren — are the beneficiaries of his legacy.

Happy Father’s Day

I hope the fathers by biology and legal adoption enjoy their weekend. I know I will. I have already caught a glimpse of what my boys and Nikki have in store. Fatherhood as an institution has changed me forever. I love being a dad. Happy Father’s Day to me and to all of you.

Today, though, I raise my glass to those men who have stood up and found in their communities young people who required a little more attention, a little more care, a little more parental direction than law or biology would require.

I am now the age that Bill and Linda were when they took me in. In the alternative timeline where the Cunninghmans did not come into my life, I would not be here writing this post. They changed me and changed my world. And so to my adopted father, Bill Cunningham, and to all the Bill Cunninghams of the world, I say:

Happy Father’s Day. You are giants among men. May God bless you for the ways you have done what was not required of you. You make the world a better place.

1. I broke this rule almost immediately, poured my heart out in guilty shame by letter as a missionary a couple of years later, and then learned that they knew all along because I was very bad at hiding my misdeeds and their large house had security features of which I was unaware.