Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 14, 1990 TAG: 9006150599
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: N-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETSY BIESENBACH SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
All of the fathers have one other thing in common - children who love them and are willing to write a letter explaining why.
Spending time with children is nothing new for her father, Edward Dunbar, Pam Kreger wrote in her nominating letter.
Kreger said that when she was small her father made pancakes or waffles for Saturday breakfast and then spent the rest of the day going to the park, to athletic events or to piano recitals.
"Dad never missed a recital, ball game, PTA meeting, or Girl Scout banquet," Kreger wrote. "As a parent now myself, I wonder how he has done and continues to do so much for others."
Dunbar, 63, is the Father of the Year for Civic Affairs. His wife, Dot, was Mother of the Year for Arts and Sciences in 1979. Dunbar, a native of Chesterfield County, has been with Roanoke Gas Co. for 34 years, serving as president since 1986.
He is active in the Second Presbyterian Church; the Roanoke Valley Chapter of the American Red Cross, of which he is chairman of the board; and the American Small Gas Company Commission. He is on the boards of directors of Roanoke Valley Industries, Sovran Bank, the YMCA, the Roanoke Symphony, the Southern Gas Board, and the Roanoke Regional Chamber of Commerce.
He also enjoys an occasional game of golf when the weather is just right, and likes to read.
Despite the hectic schedule, Dunbar still has time to spend with his family, often watching his 6-year-old grandson play in a soccer game, or minding his 1-year-old granddaughter while their mother, Kreger, enjoys the game.
In his nominating letter, Dunbar's son, Brian, pointed to his father's "caring, interested attitude" as one of his best points. Although he is grown and on his own, Brian wrote, "he is always the first person I contact for advice or counsel."
Despite the closeness between Dunbar and his children, Dunbar said he was "shocked" when he found out he had won the award. It took him by surprise, he said, "that my children thought enough of me to do that."
Dunbar gave Dot much of the credit for his being able to maintain his commitments to his job, his civic activities and his children.
"She has always been very supportive," he said. She stayed at home with the children during the day, but Dunbar made sure he was around to help out on weekends and in the evenings, often reading the children to sleep.
His community involvement, he said, is a result of his belief that "you have to give something back" to the community. This is an attitude that the children grew up with, as well. The children, he said, didn't "just sit on the sidelines and do nothing. They did things they wanted to do."
Along the way, however, Dunbar and his wife were careful to nurture their children's individuality. "We really tried not to force them into things."
"I can't carry a tune in a bucket," he said, but both children were heavily involved with music. Brian even played with the Roanoke Valley Youth Symphony.
Dunbar said he had hoped his son would become an attorney, but Brian decided to work for the federal government instead. Although other people disapproved of his decision, his father was behind him all the way, Brian said.
One of the most important things a father can do, Dunbar said, is to spend time with his children.
"If your children are going to do something, when they get an award for an achievement, I think you ought to be there."
"I can never remember being disappointed because Dad had `prior commitments,' " Kreger wrote.
In his letter, Brian admitted that it took him many years to realize his father is not "superdad."
"I have come to view my father in a different light," he wrote. "He is not Dunbar perfect, and much to my surprise, he makes mistakes just like everyone else. However, in his role of father he has not made many."
Dunbar, Brian said, is not just a Father of the Year. "He is the father of all my years."
For Dunbar, the greatest reward of fatherhood is that both of his children "turned out to be absolutely marvelous individuals."
Like Dunbar, John Mack Welford, Father of the Year for Education, belongs to a two-award family. His wife, Nettie Alice, was Mother of the Year for Education in 1987.
Welford, an associate professor of education at Roanoke College, was nominated by his 20-year-old daughter, Beth. He has two other daughters - 17-year-old Julie and 12-year-old Catherine.
Welford, 50, is a member of several national and international honor societies and serves as the alumni counselor for Roanoke College's Roanoke Valley Alumni Chapter. He belongs to the Virginia Education Association, the National Education Association and the Virginia Association of Colleges of Teacher Education.
He is a member of the board of directors at Greenvale Nursery School and a member of the School Advisory Board for Roanoke public schools. He also has been a PTA president, and a General Equivalency Diploma tutor for convicts serving in a field unit at Troutville.
Welford, a native of Mobile, Ala., has been at Roanoke College for 20 years. Originally, he said, he had planned to be a doctor, but he ended up following in his mother's footsteps.
"I came to it by inheritance," he said.
His eldest daughter, Beth, recently decided she wanted to be a teacher, too, something that gives him a great deal of satisfaction.
On her nomination form, Beth wrote: "My dad has proven to be an excellent leader in the field of education. Not only has he taught thousands Welford of students important things for their future, he's also taught me plenty of important things for my future."
Welford was in Australia with a group of students when he learned he had won the award.
"I was excited, and totally surprised," he said.
As an education teacher, Welford is very involved with the public schools, where his students go for their classroom experience.
Education, he said, "is our whole future. It transfers our heritage and our culture. Our system of values is passed on by the schools."
With the rise of single-parent families and families with two working parents, as well as the increased number of problems facing young people today, "the public schools are being asked to do more than they're capable of doing," he said.
One of the biggest problems he's noticed, he said, is a lack of a male role model in many children's lives. When he visits schools, he said, children from single-parent homes seem to be automatically drawn to him, to the point where some will even climb into his lap and ask to be read a story.
As a father, Welford said he has tried to spend a lot of time with his daughters. He came from a single-parent family himself, he said. His father left when Welford, the oldest of three boys, was a teen-ager. In his role as a father, he said, he has consciously tried to do things differently than his own father did.
Other parenting skills, he said, were "kind of a natural thing. Being a parent, he said, "is the most important role in life for which there is no training."
Welford said he has enjoyed watching his children develop and mature. "It's an unfolding, like a flower opening. You really learn to appreciate how unique each one of them is."
Hubert Leonard was pretty excited when he learned he was being named Father of the Year for Religious Activities.
"I ought to be. It took me 32 years, but I finally caught up with my wife," said the 74-year-old Leonard, whose wife also has been honored.
Frances, his wife of 55 years, was Mother of the Year for Family Life in 1958.
Leonard, a native Roanoker, graduated from Jefferson High School in 1934. He worked for Standard Register Co. for 29 years, retiring in 1981.
Leonard attended West End United Methodist Church for 60 years before moving to Raleigh Court United Methodist 10 years ago. He and Frances made the change, he said, because they had many friends at Raleigh Court, and because West End "was too small to do all the things I wanted to do."
Leonard has taught Sunday School at both churches. At West End, he was superintendent of the Sunday School, a board member, chairman of the finance committee and served as an usher most Sundays.
At Raleigh Court, he works two mornings a week, keeping the church's books and handling the payroll and tax chores on a volunteer basis.
Once a month, he and other members of the congregation participate in a feed-the-hungry program sponsored by Maple Street Baptist Church. He also volunteers at the Roanoke Area Ministries day shelter.
Although he has been a Methodist all his life, Leonard is very relaxed about the fact that his wife is a former Leonard Lutheran, and his three children are now a Baptist, an Episcopalian and a Presbyterian.
Religion is important, he said. "You can't make it without it. You can't make it on your own."
These days, however, "I see a declining interest. It's very hard to get people to do church work."
Leonard was nominated by his daughter, Bonnie Powell, who lives in Roanoke. His son, Robert, and other daughter, Jean Hull, live outside the Roanoke Valley.
When the children were growing up, Leonard said, he purposely took a job that would allow him to come home every night. "I liked to be here with my family."
The Leonards took vacations and went on picnics together, and on Sunday afternoons, they would go the the old Clover Creamery for ice cream.
When Bonnie was in college, Leonard's work schedule allowed him to stop by to visit occasionally.
"All the other girls thought it was so great that my father would come to see me in the middle of the week. It made me feel so very special," Bonnie wrote.
Leonard said he is very happy with the way the children turned out. The hardest part of being a father, he said is "keeping your mouth shut. You need to let them make their own decisions."
But even now, he said, his children will bring him their problems. "I'm thankful that they come to me. It's still nice to be needed."
In addition to his church work, Leonard works around the house. The secret to a happy life, he said, is to stay busy. In fact, he added, when he retired, his children told their mother to keep him busy. She has done so well, he said, that "she made a list of things to do that is so long, I don't think I'll live so long to do it all."
Maria Szumanski, the wife of Father of the Year for Family Life Mike Szumanski, has not been voted a Mother of the Year yet, but it may be only a matter of time.
The Szumanskis have two teen-age sons, Martin, 14, and Matthaeus, 18, with widely differing interests and personalities, who will actually admit that they love each other.
Instead of the sometimes-not-too-gentle joking put-downs many families aim at their members, the Szumanskis spend their time encouraging and appreciating each other.
Matthaeus said that one of his friends once remarked that one of the most common sayings around their Szumanski house is: "Isn't Martin cool?"
Szumanski, 43, was born in Poland. His family moved to Denmark when he was 22 years old for "personal and political reasons."
He met Maria, who also was born in Poland, while he was studying engineering at the Polytechnical Institute of Copenhagen, Denmark. Both of their sons were born there, and they speak Danish as well as English.
Szumanski was working in Denmark for an American company, Cooper Industries, when he was invited to transfer to Dallas, Texas. The company moved its facilities to Roanoke in 1982 and bought Gardner-Denver Mining and Construction, and the family came with it.
After some initial problems with moving to a small city, the family has come to enjoy Roanoke, although they retain their Danish citizenship. Because of all the international influences, however, Szumanski said they consider themselves to be "citizens of the world."
When the boys were small, Szumanski said, Maria went to school part-time and performed most of the caretaking chores. But as the demands of her work toward a doctorate in biochemistry, which she completed last year at Virginia Tech, grew more demanding, he took over most of the cooking and other household jobs.
These days, Maria doesn't get home from work until 6:30 p.m., and since Szumanski's job involves a lot of travel, the boys don't see their parents as much as they would like.
"But all of it is quality time," Martin said.
Szumanski has been active in his sons' schools' PTAs, and in Martin's soccer club.
On the nomination form, Maria said her husband "provides the best example of the nurturing qualities that can be displayed by a man without any loss of his masculinity."
"His recipes are magnificent, to say the least," Martin wrote in his letter. "He has also tried to influence me to be as secure as I possibly can in doing chores which always were supposedly meant to be the woman's job. Thanks to my father, I now know how to iron, bake, clean house, [and] do the laundry."
Matthaeus is the intellectual in the family, and he claims, the only one who can't cook.
"Don't worry," Maria said, "I can't, either."
"Dad has always shown great faith in our ability to succeed at whatever we try," Matthaeus wrote. "I am proud to say that there is nothing - sexuality, morality, substance use/abuse, and all manner of deeply personal issues included - that my father has not been perfectly willing to discuss candidly and constructively. He is both an excellent father and a close and irreplaceable friend."
The boys said their father has never resorted to corporal punishment, preferring, instead, to reason with the children.
"He's the director," Maria said. Szumanski knows how to organize the work and how to convince the boys to do their part.
"We're normal kids," Martin said. Sometimes they don't feel like cooperating. But their father has a way of making them want to please him.
"I say: `I help you, you help me,' " Szumanski said. He also admitted that he is not above using a little blackmail occasionally.
One of the biggest worries Szumanski had about his boys was over how they would adjust to the move to the United States. As it turned out, there have been very few problems.
The hardest part of being a father, Szumanski said, is that "you do a lot of things you think are right, but you never know. You can guide yourself, but you never know if they appreciate it."
Rearing children, Maria said, "is the biggest experiment of your life. You have no idea if you're doing it right."
Seeing his sons' letters was even better than winning the award, Szumanski said. "They're my sons; of course they love me, but there are very, very few times you have something written down about their opinions of you."
W.F. "Bill" Mason, the Father of the Year in the Youth Leadership category, walks, talks, eats and sleeps Boy Scouting.
"It's the only thing I can talk about," said Mason, 71. "I didn't do anything else."
Mason first joined a Boy Scout troop in 1930, when he was 11 years old, and has been with Scouting ever since. He is one of only two men in the Roanoke Valley to hold a 50-year gold card, and he has been to no less than 10 Scouting jamborees.
Mason is retired from Norfolk and Western Railway. During his employment, he said, the railroad was "very good" to him, and supportive of his activities. "They believe in Scouting."
Mason has always enjoyed nature, he said, and because he lived in an inner-city Roanoke neighborhood, Scouting provided his only opportunity to be outdoors, aside from occasional visits to relatives in the country.
He was nominated for the award by his daughter, Betty Mason Burrows. So many of his friends have won the award in the past, he said, that he was glad that it was finally his turn.
Throughout his years of Scouting, Mason has started a troop and served on the Eagle Board of Reviews that evaluates candidates for the rank of Eagle Scout. He is Scouting coordinator for his church, Grace United Methodist. He has had to cut back on his Scout work because he suffered a stroke last year. But as Burrows said in her letter, "He continues to live a productive life."
"I've met some fine young men in my time," Mason said, adding he couldn't even begin to estimate the number of boys he has worked with.
One of the biggest problems today, he said, is that adults are not involved enough with young people. "If more adults devoted their time to the Scout program, it would be a better world to live in."
Mason said he's proud that his son, Bill Jr., and his grandson have been involved in Scouting. When Bill Jr. was young, Mason refused to allow the boy to join his troop.
"So many times, a Scoutmaster shows favoritism to his son. I never believed in that."
If her son had not joined the Scouts, said Betty Mason, her husband's "heart would have been broken."
Last year, he and his grandson went to a jamboree together, although they were not with the same troop.
The best part of working with young people, he said, is "to take a Mason little old boy and give him a little help. They never forget it. Years later, they still respect you."
"You never have trouble going to sleep at night when you're helping young people."
Mason is also involved with the Izaak Walton League, a conservation group, and the Masons. He also grows roses.
Mason served two years in the Navy during World War II. He volunteered, Betty said, because "He couldn't stand before a Scout troop unless he had." He felt he had to go and serve his country.
"I'm mighty pleased to be a part of it," Mason said. "It makes me feel good. As long as I can get out and go, I will be somehow involved in Scout work."
by CNB