Two Lessons from One Good Dad

DO GOOD. LOVE THY NEIGHBOR. MANTRAS FOR YESTERDAY AND TODAY

His four daughters at Earl Moreland statue (on R-MC campus) dedication, 2002. (L to r, Oldest sister Jane, yours truly, closest sister & bff Mimi, second oldest Helen.

“Do good, and love thy neighbor,” my father would say. “That just about sums it up.”

Not that he didn’t have plenty of other lessons and admonitions. My father, J. Earl Moreland 1897–1987, was a fierce believer in books & education (the more the better,) in interfaith relations, music and the arts, justice and equality, God and country. But when pressed for something like the secret to long life or prosperity he was prone to rely on that two-pronged moral motto: Do good and love thy neighbor.

My father didn’t set out to raise four daughters. The second of five sons himself, he grew up poor but proud — at least, that was how he told it — in a sturdy, God-fearing home. Left in charge at age 10 when his mother died, his tale was all about rough and rugged Texas, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, that sort of thing.

But stuff, and daughters, happened.

My dad left Texas, but kept his Texas soul. After SMU, Class of 1917, he set out for Brazil where, as an educational missionary for the Methodist Church he helped start a college that’s still there and happily met my mother. Then came the daughters. Not long after we came back to the U.S. for good in 1935 he wound up heading another college this one in Virginia.

Aboard ship to Brazil, c 1925 (He was back & forth a half-dozen times in twelve years)

For the record, keeping a family & a college afloat through the Great Depression and World War II was a full time job — (twice that for my mother) — so my father worked 18-hour days and spent a lot of them on the road. But there were always hand-written daily cards and letters, and paternal wisdom wasm freely dispensed.

The only moment of deep disappointment I recall creating was the night my date and I won a jitterbugging contest at a dance chaperoned by my parents. Their love of music and dance did not extend to be-bop and jitterbugging. But episodes of that sort magically disappeared by morning, as if they’d never happened.

My father was, by design and necessity, a feminist ahead of his time. He firmly believed and regularly proclaimed (sometimes to our extreme embarrassment) that his daughters could do anything, be anything, accomplish or inspire anything — as long as it was within the parameters of doing good and loving neighbors. The same applied to his flawless granddaughters — he had 10 of those, though he did finally acquire two flawless grandsons.

In the haphazard one-room schools of his upbringing my father memorized countless speeches and parables — I think the way those 19th century teachers kept order was by setting their charges to memorize entire books of wisdom. One poem that stuck with him forever, and was forever repeated, bore the wisdom of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

Each morning sees some task begun, each evening sees it close; Something attempted, something done, has earned a night’s repose.

Wasting time was not an option, though creative daydreaming, especially if you had a book in your hand, was respected and that was my usual excuse.

Because he loved the country chosen by his immigrant grandparents, loved justice and democracy and his fellow humans, my father would be appalled at the U.S. today. I am sincerely grateful that he and my genteel mother never had to hear the words, especially the lies (Thou shalt not) and vulgarities that spew from our narcissist in chief. But while his three-piece-suit persona didn’t lend itself to protest marches I am absolutely certain he’d be cheering on this daughter, along with her pro-democracy rantings and KAKISTOCRACY sign. He’d also be writing letters and making speeches and admonishing ordinary citizens and government leaders alike:

DO GOOD. LOVE THY NEIGHBOR.