Remembering my kind, patient dad on Father’s Day | Opinion

My father, Donald Kenneth Johnson, was born in 1914 and grew up on a farm in South Dakota. They had no indoor plumbing or electric lights. The old jokes about walking through the snow to school? He really did that.

He lived through the great depression of the 1930s and put himself through the South Dakota School of Mines to become a civil engineer, working nights in a printing press.

Yet he never begrudged the life his children were born into. He was happy to give us all the luxuries we took for granted.

Dad served in World War II before I came along, landing on Omaha Beach in the D-Day Invasion on June 6, 1944. I have since learned about the carnage that happened that day on that beach. He lived through that.

He then served in the Pacific until the end of the war, and was gone a total of two years from my mother and two older brothers.

My mother said he had nightmares for years after he came back from serving. They didn’t know about post-traumatic stress disorder then. But he didn’t show that side of himself to any of his four children. I was the youngest — my sister and I were born in the Baby Boom generation after World War II. He was kind and patient with us, so happy to be our dad.

Dad then served in the Korean War and was gone for two years, from when I was three to when I was five. During those two lonely years, I ached missing him, remembering how he’d hold me tight and carry me, the coins in his pants jingling as he jiggled me up and down, and I giggled and gasped with joy.

As I look back on my life of over seven decades, I can see all the ways he cared and showed his love — sometimes hidden in the details of everyday life.

For example, he drove 30 miles to work every day so that we could grow up on three acres in a small town.

I got scared a lot at night when I was little, and he would sit on the side of my small bed and comfort me, never saying “be quiet” or being grumpy that I woke him up.

Later, when he attended events I was in, he was not shy about running up to the front with his beloved Argus C-3 camera to take pictures. The old flash bulbs would pop and make me see red for a few seconds, but I have so many photos of my childhood thanks to him.

When I was in eighth grade, I remember one particular band concert. No one had practiced, and even we knew we sounded terrible. But he sat in the half-empty auditorium on those squeaky metal chairs and clapped with great enthusiasm.

I wasn’t great at math, and we spent a lot of hours at the yellow Formica kitchen table as he explained my math homework to me, over and over, and didn’t lose his patience.

When I got my learner’s permit, he taught me how to drive a stick shift in his VW Bug. I would stall it, usually in the main intersection of our small town, but he would stay cool and collected as he coached me along.

“Start the engine again, that’s good, now put in the clutch, let it out slow and easy, there you go,” he’d say, as we lurched past the honking horns and flailing arms of the other irate drivers.

My dad died in 1991. He was 77.

To this day, I can get choked up when I see a daughter having lunch with her elderly dad.

I still miss him, especially on Father’s Day. I will never forget who he was in my life.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad. You are so missed, and so loved.

Diane Covington-Carter is an award-winning journalist and author who lives in Nevada City.

This story was originally published June 21, 2026 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Remembering my kind, patient dad on Father’s Day | Opinion."