Fathers seek to leave legacy using written word

The Rev. Mark Puckett believes the most important area where a dad should  strive not to fail is in building relationships.

“It’s hard to tell a guy who has a wife and kids with a stable job and a nice house that he has a need in life,” said the pastor of Morningstar United Methodist Church in Chelsea. “What we found is that a lot of relationships with dads and their loved ones are lacking.”

In Puckett’s dad’s generation, the Baby Boomers, fathers showed love by providing for their families, he said. He thinks that form of a father is an Americanized version of the dad’s role. Adding to that, he sees how TV shows and commercials portray dads as morons.

“Bill Cosby was one of the last dads on TV that had some wisdom to him, and since then we’ve lost that,” he said. “We wanted to create an environment that teaches dads to not only provide for their families, but to also instruct and lead.”

To confront this culture definition of fatherhood, Puckett started a Letters from Dad Ministry at his church last year. Over the course of 12 weeks, a group of men meet four times to spell out their thoughts to their loved ones in letters.

It was a personal experience of a friend of Puckett’s, then 28, that inspired him to start Letters to Dad. The friend had contracted a rare and deadly form of cancer. His doctor gave him seven months to live if he went through the most intensive treatment.

After the father heard the news, he was determined to leave something special for his wife and child since he would not be there to watch his son grow up. He decided to write a series of letters. After his death, his wife, family and friends read one of the letters at his funeral.

“It was a powerful, 13-page letter that left everyone there moved and in tears,” Puckett said. “The men in our church, including me, thought, if we were in that same situation, what would we do?”

 Soon after, Puckett stumbled across a man from Texas named Greg Vaughn who founded the ministry Letters from Dad. Vaughn has written a series of books that came from his experience and memories from his father and started a curriculum for men to write letters.

The first time Puckett ran the ministry, 37 men in his congregation improved their marriages and relationships tremendously through it, he said.

“This is something that will forever change your life,” he said. “Any guy that holds his loved ones dear to his heart but struggles in showing that emotion will benefit from this ministry.”

Puckett said all men, if they’re honest with themselves, want to leave a legacy behind them. Some men leave legacies with a nice house or a vintage car. He thinks those are all great and meaningful things, but they are nothing like the written words a dad can leave.

To learn more about Letters to Dad ministry, visit graceproductscorp.com/lettersfromdad/index.php. Morningstar will wrap up its session of the ministry this month and plans to offer another session at a later date.  For more visit morningstarumc.co or call 678-2572.

The Letters

The foundation of each of the Letters from Dad is based the “five pillars of manhood.”

1. Blessing Letter: Designed for the spouse or the most important relationship in a man’s life.

2. Blessing of a Child: Intended to show a father’s children how much they mean to the dad.

3. Letter of Gratitude to Parents or Guardian Figure: Puckett said he’s met men who never got to tell their parents how strong of a role they played in their lives. The letter is often as important as the letter to a wife or children, he said.

4. Sago Mine Letter: Named after the Sago Mine tragedy that happened in West Virginia in 2006, the purpose behind the fourth letter is to say everything you would want loved ones to know in 19 minutes. When the miners had only 19 minutes of breathable air left, they wrote letters to their loved ones.

5. Lifetime Letter: The final piece is kept until the man dies so he can add memories made with family and friends throughout the remainder of his life .