Tribute to My Dad

In light of Father’s Day, I want to honor the man who’s meant more to me than any other — my dad.

He’s shown me what it means to live with conviction, character, and vision.

a different path

At 17, my dad faced a defining choice: take a full-ride scholarship to a top university — or follow a calling that made no sense on paper.

He chose the latter.

Raised secular, he encountered God in a real way, and everything changed. At 18, he married my mom. They started their life together on the western slopes of Colorado, in a rented 100-year-old log schoolhouse with almost nothing but each other.

He started out as a ranch hand. After my oldest brother was born, he learned plumbing, and eventually launched his own plumbing business.

I remember mornings in his tiny office shed located in our front yard, lining out the crew before coming inside for breakfast and prayer time with all of us. Some days we’d ride along on service calls in his gold F-250, and if we were really lucky, we’d stop at the sandwich shop or BBQ joint for lunch, a soda and cookie to go. Some of my fondest memories to this day.

Business always came well after his real priorities.

starting over

In 2009, in the thick of the financial crisis, my dad felt called to help plant a church community in a rural town in Idaho. He gave the plumbing business away to a young friend who’d lost his own dad some years before and now worked for him, and moved our whole family 2,000 miles north.

He started all over, renting a farm where we lived and taking on small jobs — whatever he could find. My teenage brothers, already skilled carpenters by this time, worked alongside him.

I was still in school.

a bigger vision

Within a few years, the business was flourishing, setting the stage for something bigger.

Together with friends from church, we bought the collapsing brick Ford service station in our tiny downtown and transformed it into a home for our bakery and creamery — ventures that my siblings, mom, and I had begun. Then came the old appliance shop, which became my mom’s charming, old-fashioned quilt store.

And then, the train car.

My dad’s always loved trains, and learned the local railroad history inside and out when we moved to north Idaho.

One snowy December day, an elderly neighbor called, worried about the weight of snow piling up on his barn roof. My dad went to help, and after shoveling, he peeked inside. There she was: 120-year-old WI&M Car 306, forgotten, rotting and home to two dozen feral cats.

But he didn’t see junk. He saw incredible potential, and he bought it. For $3,000.

During COVID lockdowns, my brothers and I restored it. Today, it’s one of the most iconic train stays in the country. Way off the beaten path, hours from a big city or interstate — but because of his vision, there’s a full experience around it for guests to have. And come they do… from all over.

Deary, the quiet logging town of 550, has become an unlikely destination. And a template of transformation for so many hundreds of tiny towns across rural America, in my opinion.

He has a gift for seeing what others don’t.

He found the old derelict farmhouse and barn that became Morning Glory Farm, the cabin we restored at Palouse Meadows, the old train depot and caboose, and a dozen other projects.

And then there’s Live Oak Lake. He believed in me enough to put his business on the line, open up the small operating line of credit they’d received from their local bank, and co-sign when I found a construction loan to make my dream possible.

The more I see how rare it is, the more I appreciate how all of us siblings have been able to work together as a family to this day in these (and many other of our own) ventures.

It’s incredibly fulfilling to work with family members you can totally trust, and who compliment your own skills in beautiful ways.

This is possible only because of the faith and character our parents instilled in each of us.

And seeing it pay dividends for them (in more ways than one) is deeply inspiring and gratifying.

more than projects

Today, nearly 40 years later, my parents live in a beautiful home they just built on a ranch in Idaho. The whole family (except for me and my oldest brother who live in different states) gathers once a week for a lively, delicious family dinner. We travel there as much as we can, and they come visit us in Texas often as well. (We’ll be joining them for a couple weeks in July:)

They’ve raised 10 children and have 14 grandchildren (and counting).

They help lead a small, vibrant church community and continue to revitalize their little town with multi-generational businesses. They also spend time traveling the world to serve similar fledgling communities in other countries.

Ask any of my seven brothers or two sisters — we had a magical childhood. No TV and no video games. Homesteading, homeschooled, pulling weeds in the summer heat, raising animals, building trails, barns, wooden boats, additions, decks, and just about everything else.

Life was real, and it was good.

lessons to live by

Watching my dad live out his example for us, three lessons rise to the top:

• It's okay to break the status quo. He walked away from comfort and chose faith over certainty. That has led to a life of purpose and impact no degree could have produced.
• Character comes before everything. Skills, hobbies, business or career wins — they’re nothing without integrity. He and my mom built their lives — and a family — on that foundation.
• Invest in relationships over everything else. He never sacrificed people for projects — and maybe that’s why so many of his projects succeeded. But his real legacy isn’t what he built. It’s the people, like me, who couldn’t imagine life without him — and wouldn’t be here without him either.

I don’t have the space or words to capture what an awesome dad I have. But I can try to live it forward. That’s the best tribute I know how to give.

To all the fathers out there: make time for the little things. Be present. Be rock solid. Build your life on something bigger than yourselves. The world needs you more than ever before, and your children do, too. They’ll thank you some day.

I love you, Daddy. Thank you.