Your loving,
“DAD.”
Dad Surrenders When the Boy Lands the Big Job
Dear Hal:
For once in my life, I confess to you that I’m starting a letter that I don’t know how to write.
Mother and I just finished reading your telegram that announced you had just been made general sales manager of your company. While it was not so much of a surprise in one way—it has been a long while since you received your last promotion and naturally we knew you would not be satisfied until you had climbed even further up the ladder—still, I am somehow differently impressed with this last elevation of yours than I have with your previous steps.
I don’t know how I could better illustrate my feeling than to say that when you were a little fellow about ten I started in to give you what I thought at the time was training in the fundamentals of the different stages of boyhood. I can look back now and see where I used to hold myself up to you as a sort of example. Yes, I’ll admit now that I used to paint the Old Man as being quite some fellow in his youth. While you seemed impressed from year to year as the so-called schooling progressed and were interested in my teachings, I realized finally when your voice began to change and a peach-skin fuzz began to form on your upper-lip that you weren’t a little boy any more. Altho I recognized your growth, not until your twenty-first birthday did I realize that I must needs pursue a different plan, for lo—my once little lad had suddenly grown to manhood and if you’ll remember I ceased advising you against the pitfalls that the boy must guard against and began talking he-man language from then on.
Similarly, from the time you started as a salesman for your company, until the present, I have taken a keen delight in listening—sometimes with a good deal of patience, but withal a great relish—to your trials and problems as they came to you along the same old road that I myself had traveled and I kidded myself into thinking, at least, that probably I was doing you some good by tearing pages from my experience in the past and applying them to your problems, and I never realized until just tonight that like the other experience, I had been so busy being a pal of yours that momentarily your gradual growth had escaped me and I must now look upon you in a new light—as being the equal, if not the superior, in experience, knowledge and acumen of the Old Man who’s tried to tutor you along the way.
General sales manager—Well, Boy, Howdy! My hat is off to you, Red, with a couple of Salaams! Needless to say, I knew you’d get there and again, needless to say I know you’ll fill the chair.