Daniel Patrick Patrick Barlow was born in November of 1923. By the late 1940s, he was attending Notre Dame University, where he met Teresa Murphy. The two found quite compatible dreams and visions in each other. They both wanted to change the world, but they knew they could not reach as far as they wanted to if it was just the two of them going out and becoming missionaries or the like. So they decided before they got married to have 12 children. Train them up and send them out! That was the motto. When they got to 12 children, my father said, “That was supposed to be 12 boys.” They ended up having 14, and the last 6 were all boys. My father said he finally figured out the system. Who’s to argue with him?
As the 10th child of this family, many of the harsh edges in my father had been worn away by the time I came along. So I got to know a very sensitive man. A deep-thinking man. A kind man. one who was always trying to get me to dream bigger. As an adult, I am very thankful for this. I know that this trait has been one that has made me quite valuable to those who need encouragement or hope. As a pastor, I meet many people who need encouragement and passing along to them the lessons of my father is rewarding.
Years ago, when our older children were young, Nancy and I took the family down to visit my parents when they lived in Quincy, Illinois. We had a wonderful time. It was an enjoyable weekend, but then we were all standing in the front yard getting in the car to head back to Chicago. We said our goodbyes, got in the car and started driving toward the highway. Just as I got near the edge of town, my car started to act up. It started making funny noises, and I knew I needed to pull over to find out what was going on. I looked in the rearview mirror to see if the right lane was clear. When I looked, there was my father and my mother right behind us. I pulled the car over, and my dad walked up to me and said, “As soon as you left, I knew right away that we were supposed to follow you.” He seemed just to wave his hand over the engine, and it worked perfectly. I’m not sure what wires he fixed or what he did in there. But I was so glad that he was there to help me.
Another time my mother was out on a walk in the afternoon, as she loved to do, while he was taking his nap. She was two or three blocks from home when she tripped and fell on the sidewalk. She was over 60 years old at this time. So as you could guess, this would be a very vulnerable position for her to be in, but as she turned and looked down the street, Daniel was pulling up in his car. He knew he was supposed to go and find her.
Another episode that quite intrigued me was when we were living in our first home. I was finally a homeowner. There was a problem with the light switch in the bathroom, and I wanted to fix it, but I am not an electrician. Daniel was an electrical engineer, so I called him to talk me through it. He was telling me what to do and what not to do. As we were working through the problem, he says to me, “Do you see that red wire laying down in the back of the box?” I said, “yeah.” He said, “That’s hot. Don’t touch it.” Now, I know enough about electricity that there should be no red wires lying down in the back of the box. My dad was hundreds of miles away, and we did not have FaceTime or camera phones at the time. There was no way in the natural that he could have known that there was a red exposed wire laying down in the back of the box. Things like this made it easy for me to place my dad in the superhero category, even as an adult. Good fathers are the first superheroes in their children’s lives.
Remember to say “Happy Fathers’ Day” to all the superhero dads out there this weekend.
Joseph Barlow 