this book was inspired by a conversation with Ethan Wayne, son of legendary actor John Wayne. Ethan had written a story for Fatherly.com in which he described toddling around small Mexican towns on the Sea of Cortez hand in hand with his famously imposing father. This image was so at odds with the Duke’s popular persona—the squinting, the smoking, the stoicism—that it made us curious: How wide, we wondered, is the gap between what the public thinks of notable men and what the sons or daughters of those men experience? Do great men make for great fathers? What about terrible men? And what can we, who likely fall somewhere in between, learn from those answers?
We at Fatherly are journalists obsessed with fathers and the experience of fatherhood, so we did the only logical thing: We asked. We sought out the children of renowned scientists, athletes, musicians, innovators, and even criminals. We collected happy memories and a handful of regrets. We heard stories that surprised us, and a few that didn’t. (Jeff Bridges turns out to be exactly who you’d hope. Pablo Escobar was a doting dad. Samuel L. Jackson is a nerd. Kurt Vonnegut was a sucker for board games.) We learned that public acclaim for a man both matters to his children and, at the same time, profoundly does not. We discovered how the by-products of fame—money, shame, the demands of the public—can transform a child’s life and thinking.
What follows are essays about the private lives of public men written by their grown children. Taken all together, these pieces are about not just famous fathers but also relative velocity—that is, the ways in which families speed along together, even as they become blurs to the watching world. Many of the men profiled here were luminaries and leaders, men who moved fast. But the kids sitting on their laps saw them as steady hands. They saw in them goodness as well as greatness.
The writers of these essays remember their fathers playing catch, not pro ball; sitting on picnic blankets, not prestigious boards; giving praise, not receiving it. They remember patience, kindness, and humor—and the longing they felt when those qualities were absent.
They also remember their fathers trying to balance professional and paternal ambition. Sometimes successfully, sometimes not. After all, many of the men featured in this book were monomaniacal. This was readily apparent to their children, who struggled to calibrate their fathers’ renown with their own needs. Many now hold on to the moments they spent in the company of their dads with much more tenderness and care than they do these men’s outward achievements.
For fathers, this book begs a question about how we will be remembered. What stories will our children tell? What will they have to say about the sacrifices we made and those that we didn’t? What will they think of our life’s work? As these essays show, in the formulation “My Father the __________,” “my father” is by far the more important descriptor than whatever fills the blank.
If the stories in this book are any indication, our children will remember quiet moments—reading together, curling up on the couch—and adventures alike. They will also remember when we didn’t show up and what we were doing at the time. Everything will be recorded. How they will calibrate these feelings is impossible to predict. But hopefully, they will see time spent with us as proof that they were loved—and they will remember their fathers moving with speed and purpose but never leaving them behind.