Daddy Daughter Dance

by, Jamie Spaulding on Saturday, February 19, 2011 at 1:21am

   Tonight I had the pleasure of accompanying my daughter to the Annual Hillcrest Elementary Daddy/Daughter Dance. I was amazed to see so many of my Goodyear co-workers there with the apples of their eye. I couldn’t help but think about the fact that this time next year our jobs will be gone.

    As I looked around at the men that I have spent a good deal of my life with, I realized that these are good men, hard-working, honorable, family men. Not the slackers that many outside of the plant seem to think make up the majority of the workforce. I consider it an honor to work with these men. 

     I watched the girls and their dads having fun dancing and laughing and wondered if the girls knew the concerns hidden behind their fathers smiling faces. I decided that they didn’t. It’s a dad’s job to see that his family’s needs are met and these girls have faith in their dads. 

    The truth is that I do too. These are the kind of men who won’t flinch when times get tough. They are men from the heartland of America. Not the namby-pamby, Hollywood types, who run to their therapist when the pressures of their vain existence become too much for them to handle. I know that most of them have talents and smarts that Goodyear has never tapped. That’s Goodyear’s loss. 

    There was more character in that room than has ever been in an Akron board room. I realized that if these men ran a business during tough economic times, their first concern would be for their employees. I also realized that with men like these in our community, we are going to be fine. This may be naïve but I honestly believe that the good guy always wins in the end. The Daddy/Daughter dance reminded me that we have more than our fair share of good guys.