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Lee Lapointe, Bob Miller and Betty Peecher were interviewed this past week and asked to share special — or mundane — memories of their fathers.
Lee (nee Clark) Lapointe sits for a portrait in the sitting room of the Victorian Place Senior Living facility in Washington.
Bob Miller, a former Union resident, sits for a portrait in the sitting room of Victorian Place Senior Living facility in Washington.
Betty (nee Finney) Peecher, a retired schoolteacher, poses for a portrait in the sitting room of Victorian Place Senior Living facility in Washington.
Lee Lapointe, Bob Miller and Betty Peecher were interviewed this past week and asked to share special — or mundane — memories of their fathers.
Lee (nee Clark) Lapointe sits for a portrait in the sitting room of the Victorian Place Senior Living facility in Washington.
Bob Miller, a former Union resident, sits for a portrait in the sitting room of Victorian Place Senior Living facility in Washington.
Betty (nee Finney) Peecher, a retired schoolteacher, poses for a portrait in the sitting room of Victorian Place Senior Living facility in Washington.
Even though Bob Miller, 95, hasn’t set foot on his family’s farm in decades, he can still vividly picture his father, Frank, on a Sunday afternoon sitting in the shade of an elm tree there in rural northeast Missouri.
“He would be out there sitting in a rocking chair, eating homemade ice cream,” Miller recalled Wednesday in an interview with The Missourian, as residents at Victorian Place Senior Living facility in Washington were asked to recall special — or mundane — memories about their fathers in honor of the Father’s Day holiday.
As the father to three children, grandfather to six and great-grandfather to seven, Miller said he expects much attention will be on himself this holiday. However, he was grateful on Wednesday to think back on his father.
“I’ll definitely think about Dad, though,” said Miller, who described his father as “one of the hardest-working men I have ever known.”
“About the only time he would take a break from working on our farm was to go to church on Sunday,” Miller said of his father, who died in 1949 at the age of 83. “He didn’t believe in smoking or drinking, but he believed in the Bible.
“In my mind, I see him out in the field, working with a team of four horses and a plow. I see him at home out underneath the shade tree. I see Dad in the pew in church on Sunday morning,” Miller said.
The last time Miller returned to his hometown in Edina, he ventured out to the family farm — or at least what is left of it. The once bustling 250-acre farm has been all but erased by progress, as the farm has been merged into a much larger farm now and the new owners have torn down his mother’s chicken coop, the car shed and even Miller’s childhood home.
“It’s all gone now, but I’ll always remember it,” Miller said.
Miller said his father, who was 78 years old when his youngest son was drafted into the U.S. Army in the waning days of World War II, was unlike most fathers today.
“He believed the best way to raise us was to show us what it meant to work hard. So once you were big enough to do something on the farm, you did it,” Miller said, who recounted stories of pitching hay onto a wagon, baling hay, gathering eggs from chicken coops, feeding horses and hogs, and other farm tasks.
“My brothers and I were raised on hard work. That’s just the way it was back then, but I don’t regret a thing about it,” said Miller, who spent his career working for Southwestern Bell Telephone Co., first as a lineman and then in a variety of positions. Prior to moving to Washington, Miller had called Union home since 1970.
“I am grateful for Dad,” Miller said.
Meanwhile, Lee (nee Clark) Lapointe, 88, said there is nary a day that she doesn’t think about her father, Jim Clark.
“I don’t necessarily consciously think about him, but I’ll see something that will remind me of him or I’ll think of something that I would want to tell Pa,” said Lapointe.
Clark was the superintendent of streets for Holyoke, Massachusetts.
“I mean, he was as Republican as they come. So there will be something on television and I’ll think, ‘Oh, Pa, wouldn’t like that,’ or ‘Now Pa, that is just the way things are right now,’” Lapointe said.
Lapointe said her father set the example for her on being a good person.
“He worked hard at his job and was proud of the work that he did,” Lapointe said. “He showed me and my sister that when you work, you should really give it your all.”
That doesn’t mean that Lapointe’s father didn’t ever relax.
“He would come home from work, change out of his suit, get into casual clothes and then crack open a beer,” Lapointe said. While he wasn’t loyal to a particular beer brewery, Lapointe said her father had two weaknesses — Major League Baseball and gambling on the occasional horse race.
“He loved baseball with a deep passion, though he absolutely hated the Red Sox,” Lapointe said. “His favorite team, and he would travel to see them a couple of times each year, was the New York Yankees. My dad just thought the world of Mickey Mantle.”
Lapointe said she grew to love the game, too, especially since it meant she could spend more time with her Pa. She said her father took great pride in seeing his younger daughter play softball.
“There was just something special about our relationship,” Lapointe said. “I don’t know how to explain it other than he was my father and I knew he loved me.”
She said she thinks her father would be proud of the lives she and her sister, Barbara, have led.
“My father took himself out of the factories there in Holyoke and went to the Navy, because he knew that was the only way to make a better life for himself,” Lapointe said. “Once he got out of the Navy, he went to college and became a civil engineer. He always stressed to us about doing the best you can.”
Her brother, who was also named Jim, died in World War II. He was a pilot in Europe.
Lapointe moved to Missouri in 1963 for her husband, Gene, who was hired by Monsanto. She raised their four children before opening Farmer’s Hotel Restaurant in Augusta and running it for six years. She later opened Lapointe’s along Washington’s riverfront, but closed the restaurant following the Flood of 1993, according to Missourian archives.
Following a brief stint running another restaurant’s kitchen in Augusta and publishing her own cookbook, she worked for more than 17 years as a chaplain at Mercy Hospital Washington.
Lapointe said she hopes those who have fathers still living will take the time to celebrate them this holiday.
“You don’t realize it now, but that time together is absolutely precious,” Lapointe said. “So cherish them while you can. Let them know you love them, because they are special to you. And years from now, you’ll be grateful that you did spend that time together.”
Also missing her father this holiday weekend is Betty (nee Finney) Peecher, 92. A retired Louisiana, Missouri, schoolteacher, Peecher grew up on a nearly 200-acre farm near Greenfield, Illinois, about an hour’s drive north of St. Louis on Highway 267.
The eldest of her four siblings, Peecher said her father, Russell Sr., could do “just about anything” with his hands.
“He could be an electrician. He could be a plumber. He could be a carpenter. He was just an amazing man and a very hard worker,” Peecher said.
She recalled, how as a child, she would wake up and see her father already at work in the fields, having been awake before dawn. Then, how after returning home from school, she would see her father toiling in the fields until well after dark.
“There were many nights that he wouldn’t come inside until 9 o’clock and that’s when we would have dinner together,” said Peecher, who moved to Washington to be near her children and grandchildren.
Despite the long hours her father worked, she said he found time to serve on the school board for her one-room schoolhouse and later for the consolidated school district once the schools were merged.
“My dad believed in education and the opportunities it presented for every child,” said Peecher, who said her father had attended Millikin University in Decatur, Illinois, for one year before having to abandon his studies.
“I think he would have become an engineer, if he could have stayed in school,” Peecher said of her father, who died in 1970. Her father pushed each of his children to pursue college or post-secondary schooling, which all four did. One sister graduated from nursing school and worked at the University of Illinois Hospital, Peecher and two of her other siblings have bachelor’s degrees from Illinois State University. Peecher later graduated with a master’s degree in teaching from Webster University after having taken night classes for two years.
Peecher’s father passed before he could see her receive her master’s.
“I think he would have been the happiest man on earth that day,” Peecher said. “He would have seen it as evidence that he had been successful rearing my siblings and I. He was proud of all of us.”
Over the course of the interview, Peecher recalled how her father, often clad in blue overalls, a blue work shirt and a straw hat, would diligently clean hundreds of feet of fence rows, because he wanted the farm to be neat and tidy.
She remembered how her father would always wear a bow tie to church, and how he was there to walk her and her sisters down the aisle on their wedding days. She recollected how her father would dress up as Santa Claus, delivering candy and oranges to children in the area, while also discreetly delivering a new jacket or coat to a family in need at the holidays.
Peecher described how her father dutifully volunteered year after year for the local 4-H Club, teaching his children and others how to properly exhibit cattle.
“In my eyes, he was the best man in the world because while he worked hard, he also made sure to make time for us,” Peecher said. “If he walked through the door right now, I’d run up to him, hug him and I’m honestly not sure if I would ever let go. I miss my dad.”
At Westlake Ace Hardware in Washington, Father’s Day is a small boon in a usually slow month.
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