Being a great father

Erick Kalenga
Published: June 21, 2008

This past Sunday we celebrated Father’s Day. For most people Father’s Day is a day where fathers are appreciated and honored. However, there are also people who have lost their fathers due to death, divorce or substance abuse or they have never seen their fathers.

The idea of celebrating Father’s Day originated with a woman named Sonora Smart Dodd from Spokane, Wash. It was 1909 after her mother had died, and Dodd was listening to a Mother’s Day sermon when she decided to honor her father, Henry Jackson Smart. She selected the month of June to celebrate Father’s Day because it was the month in which her dad was born.

This is my second year as a father and I will tell you this experience has changed my life. When I come home in the evening, as soon as I open the door I will see this little man running towards me screaming “Daddy!” He wants to be picked up.

As a father that moment helps me forget my own issues. My goal is to be the best dad that I can possibly be to my son. I would like to model — to the best of my abilities and with God’s help — godly characters. It is my duty to train him in the way he should go.

To be perfectly honest, it is very scary due to the fact that I am human and also responsible for the child’s daily needs. That’s why I count on God and His wisdom to help me with this task.

Almost anybody can make a baby but it takes someone special to be a father.

In the 1970s, Jesse Jackson said, “You are not a man because you can make a baby. You’re only a man if you can raise a baby, protect a baby and provide for a baby.”

I was shocked by the news Friday morning as reported by Fox News about a large group of teen girls who decided to get pregnant at the same time.

This from the report: A pregnancy boom at Gloucester High School in Massachusetts is shocking many, and it’s not necessarily because teens didn’t have access to birth control.

According to officials at the school, 17 girls made a pact together to get pregnant at the same time and raise their kids together. School principal Joseph Sullivan told ‘Time’ magazine, which first broke the story, that he started noticing something suspicious when the pregnancy rate had risen to more than four times the school’s average. He also observed more girls visiting the school clinic to get pregnancy tests.

“Some girls seemed more upset when they weren’t pregnant than when they were,” Sullivan said.

The girls slowly began revealing the truth to officials after they confronted them, none of whom are over 16 years of age.

“We found out one of the fathers is a 24-year-old homeless guy,” Sullivan told Time.

Some of the other fathers are reportedly in their mid-20s, leading officials to explore statutory rape charges. Why the girls would do something like this remains a mystery. But 18-year-old Amanda Ireland, who gave birth her freshman year, said many girls would tell her how lucky she was to have a baby.

“They’re so excited to finally have someone to love them unconditionally,” Ireland told Time. “I try to explain it’s hard to feel loved when an infant is screaming to be fed at 3 a.m.”

Gloucester student Kaitlyn Delong said she knows some of the teen moms and that their lives have changed for the better.

“They don’t party as much, they don’t drink as much,” she told Fox 25 in Boston.

This is also a quote from the My Fox DC Web site which says: “Babies are not the newest things in accessories. These girls, I don’t know what they were thinking.

Things happen, teens get pregnant (I am the product of a teen mother) —however, getting pregnant on purpose? If you want to take care of something as a group — grow a tomato plant.”

This is a problem that Culpeper is also facing. As a community what are we doing in order to address these issues and help educate our young people? Who is going to raise those innocent children?

I am having a very difficult time understanding what it happening with our young people. What will this generation be like in 12 years if we continue like this?
It is time to change and it time for America to return to God.

Erick Kalenga is an independent columnist who appears Sundays in the Star-Exponent. He lives in Madison County. E-mail