Happy Father’s Day, Jean

By Justin Stakes

by Dr. Mark Hendrickson

Grove City, PA -(AmmoLand.com)- Father’s Day invites us to ponder the father figures we have known—not just our biological fathers, but any man who has blessed us with fatherly action at some point in our lives.

Several years ago, I wrote about never having known my father, but having an uncle who was my “Pop.” I am forever grateful for Pop, but in terms of parenting style, he believed that I should learn in the “school of hard knocks,” not by his mentoring. The problem with this philosophy is that virtually every young man needs some paternal mentoring at crucial junctures in life. For me, that time was when I was in college.

Enter: Jean Keller. J. P. (Jean Paul) Keller, Ph.D. was the Chairman (in those days when we didn’t use the gender-neutral “Chair”) of the Foreign Languages Department at my undergraduate school. The French-sounding name combination “Jean Paul” proved problematical. Once he declined an invitation to join an association of female scholars on the grounds that he hadn’t met the minimum qualifications. At commencement, I introduced him to my mother, whose name also was Jean, saying, …Read the Rest

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