Casual
Casual My Father's Day Aconceit of the modern age is that we're free and independent-thinking people who decide, wholly on our own, how to live our lives. Stereotype plays on this theme. One is...
...He never claimed to have swayed anybody's life (if credit was to be given, God got it...
...But he never criticized my decision to my face...
...He'd become a tough-minded anti-Communist, a fan of the House Un-American Activities Committee, and, naturally, a conservative Republican...
...My father had gone to West Point, class of 1934...
...But he changed mine more than once, and I'll never be able to thank him enough for it...
...Maybe I operated under that illusion because my father never told me what to do...
...Another is the leftie kids donning suits and dresses and becoming Reaganites and Newtoids in the 1980s and 1990s...
...In 1980, my wife and I knelt in our living room and became Christians...
...He and my mom began counseling people in trouble...
...Visit after visit, he and my mother told us about the joys and rewards of their heightened Christian faith...
...He served in the cavalry and intelligence, then transferred from the Army to the Air Force after World War II...
...He loved Human Events...
...West Point was a big part of his life...
...After he retired from the Air Force and spent 10 years as a stockbroker, he and my mother moved to Vero Beach, Fla...
...I'm almost completely the creation of my father, Frederic Barnes (I'm Jr...
...He took over as head of Christian education at his church...
...When I got out of college, the only jobs I sought were in journalism, and a few years later, I began covering politics...
...He was a charter subscriber to National Review in 1955...
...I don't know if he was aware of how much he'd shaped my life...
...I balked at reading the Christian pamphlets and testimonies pushed my way...
...My father died on June 14 at age 87...
...By the time classes started, he was 22, probably the oldest plebe that year...
...As a kid in St...
...After all, he had to know I wasn't rejecting him...
...My dad was livid, I'm told, at least for a spell...
...He simply made clear what he thought was most important in life, and I eventually came around...
...When I got an appointment at age 18, however, my dad's interests had changed...
...Louis, he had scrambled to line up an appointment...
...He read the Wall Street Journal every day, especially enjoying the political reporting of a young writer named Robert Novak...
...My family and I were prime targets...
...I turned down the chance to be a cadet...
...But one example was overpowering to me-my father...
...So John became an Episcopal priest...
...He proselytized...
...My dad's shifts in focus were played out on only one person: me...
...I'm dubious, particularly because my case and that of practically everyone I know is quite the opposite...
...After a bit, I was reading newspapers and magazines regularly...
...His chief interest was now politics, not the military...
...He barely made it under the age limit...
...They prayed for us and with us...
...I didn't realize this until a year or two ago...
...My sister and her husband were first to accept my parents' renewed faith, but I resisted for six or seven years...
...I was amazed and, initially, appalled...
...He went on retreats...
...My 70-year-old father had a new personality...
...An evangelical, charismatic faith pervaded his life...
...And since his faith had become the most important thing in his life, I was sure to follow...
...And when he began writing letters to the editor, I soon followed suit...
...Going to West Point became my goal...
...I failed to bond with young Christians my dad sent my way in hopes their example would prompt my conversion...
...Fred Barnes...
...Of course, I thought each time I was acting of my own free will...
...He talked a lot about Jesus Christ...
...He prayed in public...
...But in Florida he experienced a powerful religious awakening...
...Folks dropped by at all hours for advice and prayer and warm attention and fellowship...
...A friend of mine, John Yates, mentioned that his older brothers had gone into business because in their formative years, their father's life was concentrated on his career...
...My first interest was the military...
...I was only following his lead...
...Or to put it another way, I'm a lagging indicator: When his interests and ideas and obsessions changed, mine changed, only a few years later...
...I refused to go to church with my parents...
...But when John hit those years, his father was focused more on having a deeper Christian spiritual life for himself and his family...
...When my wife, kids, and I visited, there was often some stranger there...
...He had always been a devout Christian, though not a demonstrative one...
...One is the rebellion of children of conservative parents who transformed themselves into counterculture radicals in the 1960s...
...I saw how his life was changed for the better...
Vol. 1 • July 1996 • No. 41
