My Mentor

[klacr]

Thanks don_budge. I concur.
The irony is not lost on me that the article was about my Father and yet the thing he could not tolerate was the vortex of chat rooms and forums. Thanks again for reading. I appreciate the kind words.

Kyle LaCroix USPTA
Boca Raton

[don_budge]

Every word pings like a soundly struck, crisp volley. Few words...tons of impact. Your father's influence is written all over your forum personna...privately too. Just like Kyle's...and Phil's and Stotty's. Even all of the forum contributors. God Bless all, each and every one of you and your families. All of your words help to bolster me as I hope mine do you. Like brothers. The respect between men is a strong love indeed.

Kyle...it is an act of brotherly love I am sure that John extended to you in his stay during Del Ray. You reciprocate to all of us with your touching memory. I feel like I know your father. I feel like I know your father 10splayer. They remind me of mine. My dear Father. Fathers who have taught their sons the word Respect. Fathers who have taught their sons where the point is to push back...to fight back if necessary.

Thank you Lord. Thank you Guys.

Kyle...it's important for me that for you we end this thread on a sincere note. Thanks again to you and the others for sharing. This article and thread mean a great deal to me...just so you all know. Sincerely.

[bottle]

Gee, thanks for preserving it even after I deleted it.

Well, thanks for deleting it again. Sometimes we all need a brother in blackface to help us out. (I refer to Al Jolson singing "Mammy" in case someone still wants to go online and watch it-- the one in blackface with white ladies in nice jewelry listening with tears rolling down their face.)

[bottle]

Oh yeah...he is all of that. He posted this video as well.

Gee, thanks for preserving it even after I deleted it.

[don_budge]

Heart warming, thanks for sharing Kyle.

My Dad was my mentor too. He showed me by example, never to complain, always be positive. He was always kind and generous. My mother, too, never complained once and was always kind, warm and cheerful.

When we came back to Switzerland in the late sixties, Dad was double crossed by his partner, and we lost almost everything. Dad quickly found an American cosmetics company that needed a representative in Switzerland, and began recovering. My Dad, instead of telling me that because of the hard times, I would have to apply for a job, insisted I go study at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich to become an electrical engineer.

Unknown to me, he was very ill, and Mom and Dad did not tell me, (though I saw he lost weight and had rings below his eyes.) so as not to distract me in my final year as I was preparing for exams to get my diploma. It was tough because it was in German, which I barely knew, but I managed. My terror was to let my parents down.

Then shortly before taking my exams, father had to go urgently to the hospital. Even then he told me do not worry "Soon as I am out we will go to Sicily on vacation.."--- His last words...

Everything I became I owe to my parents.

Thank you don_budge.

My father's time of death was 11:35am. Eerily, that was also my time of birth in 1982. Kinda crazy huh? Grateful to John for publishing it. Been busy with lots going on so that explains my sporadic silence on the forum. Believe it or not, having John visit me for the week during the Delray Open event helped immensely with some stuff.

Happy Birthday to your father. 91 is an amazing accomplishment.

Kyle LaCroix USPTA

Boca Raton

I always appreciated this about you. Family. Like you, my brothers and I idolize our father, who is a man of integrity, and always, always, faithfully devoted to our favorite person, our mother. It is difficult for us to watch our hero begin to fail. But like you, we celebrate him and what he has meant to us. We feel blessed to still have him after 80 yrs.

Every word pings like a soundly struck, crisp volley. Few words...tons of impact. Your father's influence is written all over your forum personna...privately too. Just like Kyle's...and Phil's and Stotty's. Even all of the forum contributors. God Bless all, each and every one of you and your families. All of your words help to bolster me as I hope mine do you. Like brothers. The respect between men is a strong love indeed.

Kyle...it is an act of brotherly love I am sure that John extended to you in his stay during Del Ray. You reciprocate to all of us with your touching memory. I feel like I know your father. I feel like I know your father 10splayer. They remind me of mine. My dear Father. Fathers who have taught their sons the word Respect. Fathers who have taught their sons where the point is to push back...to fight back if necessary.

Thank you Lord. Thank you Guys.

[bottle]

Yeah. Philip Wylie must have worked for the 1955 FBI.

[10splayer]

Oh please. It's getting to be too much. We all had great fathers. And great mothers. Could we please now cut it off?

When I'm doing the kind of substitute teaching I call lion-taming, I sometimes will ask the kids to write about "My Father" or "My Mother" or "My Uncle" or "My Best Friend," but only when the class is truly awful and I'm desperate enough to know I have to come up with something that will kick in their juices.

The best paper ever was by a girl who detested her mother. It had satirical edge. I thought I had Sylvia Plath in my clath. Her paper was unbearably funny in a dark way that nobody could believe when I read it out loud, especially the ones who had just been blubbering about how "My mom is the most wunnerful person in the whole wide world" (the most typical first sentence by the way). And those students, at least some of them, had to be impressed by the originality of her paper. The people in this forum are mostly too young to know Philip Wylie, the American author of GENERATION OF VIPERS. Learn now however: he coined the phrase "Gentlemen, Mom is a jerk."

(https://csivc.csi.cuny.edu/history/f...er/momism.html)

You're all class Bottle.

[10splayer]

Deep in thought Kyle. Today is my father's 91st Birthday. Your story was touching as well as enlightening. Thank you.

I always appreciated this about you. Family. Like you, my brothers and I idolize our father, who is a man of integrity, and always, always, faithfully devoted to our favorite person, our mother. It is difficult for us to watch our hero begin to fail. But like you, we celebrate him and what he has meant to us. We feel blessed to still have him after 80 yrs.

[klacr]

Loved the article. Hit home with me. Kyle, sometimes relationships are complex, and yet I'm sure your father would be proud of the man you are. My experience (thru your writing) exhibits qualities that are admirable. I concur with Stotty's comments wholeheartedly. Whether or not it was spoken, I'm sure your father, was proud of his big, bulking, studly, kind, professional son. How could a father think otherwise?

Thank you 10splayer. I appreciate you taking the time to read and post. Complex is an understatement but yeah, we do our best right?

Kyle LaCroix USPTA
Boca Raton

[10splayer]

Loved the article. Hit home with me. Kyle, sometimes relationships are complex, and yet I'm sure your father would be proud of the man you are. My experience (thru your writing) exhibits qualities that are admirable. I concur with Stotty's comments wholeheartedly. Whether or not it was spoken, I'm sure your father, was proud of his big, bulking, studly, kind, professional son. How could a father think otherwise?

[gzhpcu]

I am out of the old "never complain, never explain" generation.

[klacr]

Deep in thought Kyle. Today is my father's 91st Birthday. Your story was touching as well as enlightening. Thank you.

Thank you don_budge.
My father's time of death was 11:35am. Eerily, that was also my time of birth in 1982. Kinda crazy huh?

Grateful to John for publishing it. Been busy with lots going on so that explains my sporadic silence on the forum.
Believe it or not, having John visit me for the week during the Delray Open event helped immensely with some stuff.

Happy Birthday to your father. 91 is an amazing accomplishment.


Kyle LaCroix USPTA
Boca Raton

[klacr]

Heart warming, thanks for sharing Kyle.

My Dad was my mentor too. He showed me by example, never to complain, always be positive. He was always kind and generous. My mother, too, never complained once and was always kind, warm and cheerful.

When we came back to Switzerland in the late sixties, Dad was double crossed by his partner, and we lost almost everything. Dad quickly found an American cosmetics company that needed a representative in Switzerland, and began recovering. My Dad, instead of telling me that because of the hard times, I would have to apply for a job, insisted I go study at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich to become an electrical engineer.

Unknown to me, he was very ill, and Mom and Dad did not tell me, (though I saw he lost weight and had rings below his eyes.) so as not to distract me in my final year as I was preparing for exams to get my diploma. It was tough because it was in German, which I barely knew, but I managed. My terror was to let my parents down.


Then shortly before taking my exams, father had to go urgently to the hospital. Even then he told me do not worry "Soon as I am out we will go to Sicily on vacation.."--- His last words...

Everything I became I owe to my parents.

Great story Phil. Thanks for sharing. Missing you and all my friends in Lugano.

Kyle LaCroix USPTA
Boca Raton

[klacr]

Nice article, Klacr. Now I know where your intense love of food comes from!

Oddly enough I am half way through a course on mentoring with the LTA. I have a project where I have to find a person to mentor and help guide them where they are going. It's a bit of a skill when you read up about it. It's really about allowing a person to find things out for themselves rather than directly trying to influence them as such.

I never had a mentor. I am an extremely singular person, but I have reasonably good judgement and have learnt from others I've bumped into along the way.

It was a warming article to read. You're a warm person who never abuses another or runs anyone down. We've never met but I've got you down as a really nice bloke.

Thank You Stotty.
I try my best.

Kyle LaCroix USPTA
Boca Raton

[don_budge]

Everything I became I owe to my parents.

Thank you Phil.