Editor’s Note: This column was previously published on Jan. 6, 1999.
Bob Taylor couldn’t explain why it was so important for me to meet his daughters.
Taylor has been calling and emailing me for months about what a great story his daughters would make. He calls them his angels. His first preference was a Mother’s Day story, but one angel lives in California and couldn’t make it. They were all here for the holidays, so we met for lunch.
An emergency kept Taylor from joining us, so I found myself at a table with three strangers and no idea what to ask them. A note from Dad helped, but not very much.
“Just get them fired up and you’ll see what a remarkable world has been mine for 30 years with three girls.”
The conversation began awkwardly. Just when we needed him most, the guy who could explain what we were doing there wasn’t in the same county. It was soon apparent, however, that this wasn’t a story about daughters. It was a story about parents.
“Our dad reads a book a day,” Cecilia Rinn, the youngest angel, said. “He can read an article and tell you every detail. He taught us how to learn and figure things out for ourselves.”
Kathleen Hoover, a California marketing agent, said their father “raised us to be independent and hard-headed. He’s old school, but he taught us not to be submissive females and have guys do things for us. If the car needed detailing or the engine needed work, he told us to learn to do it ourselves.”
Stockbroker Marissa Taylor put it simply:
“He made us strong. He taught us that we had the strength to get through anything that happened in our lives.”
“He wouldn’t let us play the victim role or pity ourselves,” Rinn added. “He told me I could get a degree and raise two boys alone. He was right.”
When Hoover spent four months in bed with a difficult pregnancy, her father was “the one I cried to. He told me he loved me and that I was strong and would be OK. I was.”
From their father, the sisters learned self reliance. From their mother, Monica Taylor, they learned compassion.
“She taught us to give and forgive,” Hoover said. “She’s a nurse. She’s had surgeries on her feet from all her years of taking care of people, but she keeps right on going. She taught us to focus on what you can do for people instead of what they can do for you.”
“She’s so sensitive and caring,” Taylor added. “She thinks of other people’s feelings first and looks for the good in everyone, no matter who they are. She taught us to do the same thing.”
From both of their parents, the sisters learned the importance of family.
“They taught us that your family and the people close to you are the most important thing,” Rinn said. “We have a lot of love in our lives because of them.”
Now I know why Bob Taylor wanted me to meet his daughters. At a time when it’s trendy to blame problems on parents or whoever else is handy, we need to know about people who solve their own problems, look for the good in others and credit their parents for doing one of life’s toughest jobs well.
If you’ve got a favorite column Tim wrote that you’d like to see in print again, send headline or key words to Niki Forbing-Orr at nforbing-orr@idahostatesman.com.
