IN MY SHOES: Estranged Father And Son Meet, Come To Terms
To commemorate Father’s Day, The New York Times offered an op-ed by John Burnett, author of “Where Soldiers Fear to Tread: A Relief Worker’s Tale of Survival” - who met his adult son after skipping out on him and his mother 27-years earlier – along with a companion op-ed by his son, telecommunications engineer Jason Burnett, who described how he and his father achieved a sort of détente.
Editorial Note: In an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal historian Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, co-editor of "Franklin's Thrift: The Lost History of a American Virtue," makes the case that Founding Fathers Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson believed in a tough love that “[j]udged by today's psychological standards, these 18th century fathers sound harsh and unfeeling” – but that’s what it took to “pass on the passion for freedom, educational excellence and civic virtue to their children and grandchildren.”
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