My father died of stubbornness...a condition too many of us suffer from.

My Father died of stubbornness, a trait that had served him well for most of his life.

It was his stubbornness that allowed him to discipline himself completely. After growing up during the Depression, he enlisted in the Navy for two terms (’43 – ’51) right out of high school.

A few months after his marriage to my Mom, he was assigned to Engine Company 201 in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn.

From the start of his FDNY career, he disciplined himself to study for the FDNY promotion exams – 10, 12 and sometimes 16 hours a day on his days off. It helped him rise up through the ranks to the pinnacle of the job, while garnering bachelor degrees in Mathematics, Fire Science and Philosophy along with a M.B.A. in Business management.

It was also that same stubbornness that kept him from getting a D.R.E. (digital rectal exam) that would’ve detected his prostate cancer earlier, very possibly prolonging his life. Even though his head knew the D.R.E. might’ve saved his life, he stubbornly refused, for not wanting to be “poked and prodded.”

If he could still talk he’d say, “You’ve got to take the good with the bad.”

That’s the way most in his generation lived...and died.

I miss him and his cohorts – they were, in so many ways, a better breed.

My Dad’s been dead for over fifty months now, and still I think about him every day.

Not a day goes by that I don’t hope that somehow, in some way, that what the old Celtic Druids believed is true – that the dead are still with us. The hope that I could still make him proud keeps me striving toward that end.

Just before he died, he said, “I could never hold a candle to you.” Nothing could be further from the truth. In all honesty I’m not half the man he was.

Like my Dad, I break into homes for a living – homes that are on fire. I’ve met a lot of exceptional people on the Fire Department.

Two of the most exceptional were John Goss and Jim Graney and the reason they stand out is that they were two of the most truly humble men I’ve ever met.

My Dad also made personal humility an art form. He used to abhor self-aggrandizement of any kind. He’d say, “Self praise stinks.” I say, “Only adders and a$$holes need to puff themselves up.”

Still, we live in a world where humility is always and at all times eschewed. “If you don’t sell yourself, know one else will buy,” goes the saying.

John Goss was a great artist. Many of his fire scenes hang in the New York City Fire Department Museum, in the Fire Academy on Randall’s Island and in the quarters of Engine 35 & Ladder 14 – John’s firehouse for all of his thirty plus year career. John was a member of Engine 35 from 1963 – 1994. Still, right up until the end of his career, John remained the same easy-going, self-effacing guy he was when he first walked through the doors of “Thirty-five and Fourteen.”

Jimmy Graney worked for over a decade in Ladder 33 in the South Bronx, before his promotion to Lieutenant. During his tenure at the Jerome Avenue firehouse he garnered numerous medals for individual acts of bravery.

Such medals are hard to come by in the FDNY, as most such acts are considered a “part of the job.” Jimmy never wore a medal on his dress uniform. His reason?

“Engine Companies are never rewarded for all the things they do. I know the Engine’s saved my life a lot of times, so, since they never get medals, I don’t wear mine either.”

These attitudes are considered “foolish,” and/or “self-defeating today.

Humility is considered “a losers” code by most people. Garnering the most attention is the name of the game.

“Confidence” (in the guise of arrogance) is the virtue de jour. It’s sad, the

American Indians knew the value of humility very well, but we certainly don’t.

In most tribes, the Chief was the poorest man in the tribe. The cost of leadership was true public service. No pomp and circumstance, no arrogance of power, the Chief was humbled in every way by the burdens of his position. If any member of the tribe came forward to ask for help, the Chief was duty-bound to give from his own table, from his own supplies, to oblige the needy member.

Many of us today suffer from the same terminal stubbornness that killed my Dad. Our heads know that government cannot, and even if it could, SHOULD NOT seek to equalize people nor solve the problems of those who cannot solve their own.

The same people who complain that our government is “bought and paid for by multi-national corporate interests” (this is correct) cling to the idea that a “People’s Government” could save the day, yet nothing could be further from the truth.

Government is an invention of the rich and is therefore rightly a tool of the rich. It is, as Clarence Darrow pointed out, “The tool by which the strong [rich] despoil the weak [poor].”

The only way to limit the tyranny of the rich is to severely restrict the powers of government. It is government that regulates smaller, faster and more innovative companies out of the market. It is government that makes it harder for the poor to use the leverage of ideas to catapult themselves out of poverty and it is government that outlaws an ever increasing number of consensual acts that restrict cash-poor people from making a living “off their wits.”

Government is a cancer at best. It cannot be “reformed,” it cannot be transformed.” The only way to limit the inevitable abuses of authority that every big government groans under, is to limit it, shackle it and restrict it at every turn.

The problem of overcoming our own stubbornness seems harder to solve. Too many of us believe so many things that just aren’t so.