Being 'Bob': A Tribute to My Father

Our country considers Father’s Day a celebration, not a holiday. It’s always held on the third Sunday in June, so those normal Monday to Friday workers don’t get a day off.

It should be a holiday, and rightly so. An observation should be warranted, for today is one of not just national significance, but cultural, as well.

Without a father, none of you would be here.

A father helps mold you into a well-rounded citizen—unless you and your father are a crime spree duo, then nevermind.

Some men and women still have their father around, and they should be grateful. Some don’t have a father anymore, and I can feel their sympathy. Some don’t know who their father is, and I understand that pain.

Some fathers are deadbeats, and some fathers fill the role of a best friend.

I have a father, and his name is Robert Anthony Di Domizio Jr., or “Bob.”

If you ever wanted a definition of a “Bob,” just spend time with my father.

While I am a tertiary Robert, do not call me Bob. I am not a Bob. I am Tony.

Once, when I was 16, the Genuardi’s Market management gave me a nametag that said “Bob Tony” because what to call me confused them.

Look at me—I’m a Tony.

I am a Tony because my father made me a Tony.

And I am the one that made him a father.

If you know my father, then you know he’s too smart for his own good.

Let me rephrase that: He’s really intelligent, and he’s always letting you know.

Some see this as a bad thing; I see it as he’s just being Bob.

My father has two sons and a daughter. My brother is also really intelligent, majoring in chemical engineering at University of Delaware. Coincidentally, my father is a Drexel-educated mechanical engineer with his own business, RAD Engineering Corp.

I once went through eight grades as an “A” student and built a wooden shelf in shop class.

We all have flaws, and it is these flaws that define us as human beings, that define us by name and character.

At 31, I look back on my life and realize my father honed much of my character. 

Without him and his wisdom, I wouldn’t know how to do a lot of things in my life.

What follows are some skills and talents that I can trace to my father. Most of them are outdoorsy, survivalist skills:

• Shooting guns and killing things: I come from a long-line of NRA-card-carrying-Second-Amendment-loving Republicans, and I have been around guns and weapons my whole life. In Scouts, I earned rifle shooting, shotgun shooting and archery merit badges.
  
  I remember my father and I driving up to Souderton-Harleysville Gun Club and popping off some clay pigeons with a .410-gauge shotgun. Once, I shot 24 out of 25.
  
  The first time I went hunting, at age 15 I believe, was filled with trepidation. I’m not talking about waking up at 4 a.m. to eat, get dressed and trek out into the woods. I’m talking about walking through a thick, unknown forest in the early morning, dark, winter hours. You hear sounds, and you don’t know what they are or where they're coming from. Then, you have to climb a tree and sit in it for 13 hours, and keep your eyes peeled for movement. Mine were always closed because I feel asleep.
  
  The only thing I ever killed—aside from that praying mantis, which I did unintentionally because I had no idea the coffee can I used to capture it had remnants of paint thinner in it—was a young deer, also known as a button buck. I aimed, I fired, and I got it. But it ran off. And then my father taught me some tracking skills, like an ancient Native American warrior.

• Gutting a deer: Yeah, it’s about to get gross. But, thanks to my father, I learned how to not only track a deer, but also how to what we call “field dress” it and drag it back to your car.
  
  Once you plunge a Buck knife into the gullet of a dead animal and remove all its entrails and organs, and then drag it back to your car several hundred yards away over rocks and felled trees, and then hang its head on your wall or drape its skin on your couch and call it a “blanket,” you’re a man.

• Fishing: My dad loves fishing. He taught me everything I know about baiting, choosing the right worms (usually nightcrawlers), tying fishing line, reeling, casting and digging a hook out of a bass’s mouth with pliers. Some of the best father-son moments were sitting on a boat on Beltzville Lake.

• Hammering, nailing, drilling, sanding, staining, sawing, painting, measuring, dissing Bob Vila: If there’s one other thing my family knows how to do, besides hunting and shooting, it’s carpentry.
  
  I’ll need more than two hands and two feet to count the number of times I’ve either assisted in or watched members of my family building decks, hanging drywall, framing an addition to a house, pouring a patio, designing a mantel, I could go on forever.
  
  Most of the handiwork and home improvements in my parents’ home were the tag team of my father and me. We framed out two rooms in the basement, using a cartridge hammer to attach two-by-fours to the concrete floor. (If you’ve never used one, wear ear protection. You are literally firing a nail into the floor like a bullet in a gun).
  
  If you’re a man in my family, then you know the importance of putting your name on your tools. And not just in permanent marker. You better etch your initials in that socket set. Things get borrowed, lost, passed around. You could have sworn you owned a Milwaukee cordless compact driver drill. Well, no harm in having two.
  
  I anticipate the day when I do home improvement in my house, with my father on assist this time.

• Music knowledge: There was a point in my life, I was about 12 or 13, when my father and I would be driving somewhere and he’d take a good hour to quiz me on the songs playing on the radio. He’d ask me “Who’s the artist?” or “What’s the name of this song?” Ninety percent of the time, I was right. The other 10 percent were the times where I learned more about music, specifically classic rock. I think that’s where my passion for that style of music came from: Dad’s weekly music quizzes.

• Mathematics: Ask my father today about math, and he’ll tell you he hates it. Funny, coming from a man whose entire career is based around mathematics and physics.
  
  In middle school and high school, I struggled with math. I would dread a test coming up, knowing I had to memorize all those formulas for circumference, diameter, cylinders and the like.
  
  So, leave it to my father to instill math in me through fear and anger. A typical night studying found myself and my father at our kitchen table, math book and homework spread out in front of me. He would give me a problem and I, with my entire muster, would try and solve it.
  
  After a while, he got frustrated.
  
  “Look, here’s the problem. I showed you how to do it here."
  
  “OK.”
  
  “Now, figure it out. It’s not that hard. I’ll be right back.”
  
  That line—“I’ll be right back”—meant he was stepping out back for a cigarette. That meant I had to figure out this problem in one cigarette’s time.
  
  I racked my brain, looked at the problem, wrote some stuff down, and looked out the window to see how far he was on that cigarette. This repeated for some time, until he came back in.
  
  “Figure it out?”
  
  “... No.”
  
  “Well, WHAT THE F***!?”
  
  That was my homework help. It worked, though, and I have him to thank.

I could go on forever about the millions of ways my father has helped me in life, and the things he has taught me: the way to till and plant and harvest a garden, rigging up electrical lines, installing toilets and faucets, changing my car's oil, replacing brake pads, refurbishing the head in a straight-6 Chevy Nova, knowing how to punch the correct way.

But it comes down to one major thing my father has taught me: how to raise a family. And for that, I graciously thank him.

It’s rough seeing your father get older as you get older; it warns you of what you’re going to experience in years to come.

I’m very proud of my father: he quit smoking, he’s dropping weight, and he’s made a happy life out of being self-employed. He’s the epitome of a great dad.

One day, hopefully within the next couple years, he’ll become a granddad to my children.

It will be an exciting moment in both our lives.

For me, it will be a chance to teach my child the things my dad taught me.

For him, it will be a second opportunity to do everything over again.

Happy Father’s Day, dad. I love you.

----- Update: Leave it to my dad to find two mistakes in this article on him.