Father’s Day Archives - News Now Warsaw https://www.newsnowwarsaw.com/tag/fathers-day/ Sun, 21 Jun 2026 11:21:17 +0000 en-US hourly 1 Thank you, Dad! https://www.newsnowwarsaw.com/thank-you-dad/ Sun, 21 Jun 2026 11:21:17 +0000 https://www.newsnowwarsaw.com/?p=132687 Roger Grossman
News Now Warsaw

Today is Father’s Day, and I wanted to use my space to not only celebrate my dad but to encourage current dads in their everyday lives.

My dad, Dale Grossman, was 73 years old when he died on March 2, 2005.

He died after a series of strokes. What we found out later was that the strokes were not caused by the normal blood clots and blockages keeping blood from getting to his brain—it was cancer cells.

The day before his first stroke, Dad found out that the pain he had in his abdomen was colon cancer. The cancer cells had gotten into his bloodstream and made their way up into his brain.

He admitted after the first episode, just before Christmas in 2004, that he’d been dealing with that pain for “a while”, but he didn’t say anything because he “didn’t want to make a big fuss.”

Obviously, his six living children wished that he had.

But that’s part of who my dad was. He was a giver. He was always thinking of others and always deferring his time and energy to other people to make their lives better.

He was a tractor mechanic for the entirety of his adult life, and he worked at the same place the whole time. If you drive west on State Road 14 through the tiny Fulton County town of Athens, glance to your right and you will see the remnants of Athens Oliver Sales.

For more than 50 years, my dad showed up there six days a week and worked on every kind of engine imaginable.

We’re talking about combines, regular tractors and all their accessories, and lawn mowers—he worked on them all.

And he was the best at it.

The phone at the Grossman household (which was mounted to the wall and the receiver was on a long cord) rang at least once a week from farmers looking for my dad. One of them famously would imitate the noise their machine was making to see if Dad could identify the cause of the problem.

It was like a farm version of Name That Tune, and my dad often solved the mystery in five notes.

He was not a big man, but his hands were strong and bore the scars of sticking them in between metal parts of tractors where hands were not meant to go. He almost never wore gloves because he said, “I need to be able to feel what’s going on in there.”

He took one week of vacation a year, but we never went anywhere special. Remember, there were seven kids and nine people total at my house, and I don’t blame them for not want to try a crazy stunt like trying to take us on a real vacation.

He was 10-years old when Pearl Harbor was attacked and 14 when the Japanese surrendered in 1945. Despite not being old enough to fight, my dad was part of that generation that did. Those people lived by the mindset that you worked until the job was done, you never let anyone down, and you never quit.

He was a football player at Plymouth High School. He was the center in the days when players wore leather on their heads, and his nose was flattened out because he claimed not being afraid of hitting someone hard made him better at blocking.

He liked sports, and one of my great joys was taking my mom, dad and sister Jodi on bus trips to Wrigley Field to see the Cubs play. It’s part of why our radio station’s bus trip means so much to me.

But Dad’s big activity was fishing.

He only went a few times each year, but his bucket never came home empty.

Now, it should be noted that he rarely threw fish back for being too small. That’s because he scaled his fish instead of filleting them. He always said, “guys who filet fish are wasting good meat.”

Full disclosure … I fillet.

And now my boat bears his initials on the back, along with my father-in-law’s initials and my own. And there is a space on there for my son’s initials, because someday I will hand that over to him to take his family out on the lake.

I wish Dad could have seen me be inducted into the ISSA Hall of Fame in April, because he and Mom sacrificed a lot for me to get into radio. They thought I was crazy at first, and they weren’t wrong.

My encouragement to dads today is threefold.

First, spend as much time as you can with your kids, collectively and individually. Never pass up a chance to make them part of you and you part of them.

Second, include your kids in what you’re doing. I take Oliver with me to games, and he often sits with me. Sometimes he puts on headphones to listen to dad describe a junior varsity boys basketball game, which is extra cool for him because he’s seeing what I am talking about while I am talking about it.

Finally, teach them what you know. My kids know I am about people, and I am trying to teach my kids how to be a good friend, neighbor, and co-worker. And also teach them what you don’t know and link them to people who can teach them those things. Maybe things like hunting or how to drive a nail or even changing your oil.

Happy Father’s Day, and “thanks,” Dad.

The post Thank you, Dad! appeared first on News Now Warsaw.

]]> Roger Grossman
News Now Warsaw

Today is Father’s Day, and I wanted to use my space to not only celebrate my dad but to encourage current dads in their everyday lives.

My dad, Dale Grossman, was 73 years old when he died on March 2, 2005.

He died after a series of strokes. What we found out later was that the strokes were not caused by the normal blood clots and blockages keeping blood from getting to his brain—it was cancer cells.

The day before his first stroke, Dad found out that the pain he had in his abdomen was colon cancer. The cancer cells had gotten into his bloodstream and made their way up into his brain.

He admitted after the first episode, just before Christmas in 2004, that he’d been dealing with that pain for “a while”, but he didn’t say anything because he “didn’t want to make a big fuss.”

Obviously, his six living children wished that he had.

But that’s part of who my dad was. He was a giver. He was always thinking of others and always deferring his time and energy to other people to make their lives better.

He was a tractor mechanic for the entirety of his adult life, and he worked at the same place the whole time. If you drive west on State Road 14 through the tiny Fulton County town of Athens, glance to your right and you will see the remnants of Athens Oliver Sales.

For more than 50 years, my dad showed up there six days a week and worked on every kind of engine imaginable.

We’re talking about combines, regular tractors and all their accessories, and lawn mowers—he worked on them all.

And he was the best at it.

The phone at the Grossman household (which was mounted to the wall and the receiver was on a long cord) rang at least once a week from farmers looking for my dad. One of them famously would imitate the noise their machine was making to see if Dad could identify the cause of the problem.

It was like a farm version of Name That Tune, and my dad often solved the mystery in five notes.

He was not a big man, but his hands were strong and bore the scars of sticking them in between metal parts of tractors where hands were not meant to go. He almost never wore gloves because he said, “I need to be able to feel what’s going on in there.”

He took one week of vacation a year, but we never went anywhere special. Remember, there were seven kids and nine people total at my house, and I don’t blame them for not want to try a crazy stunt like trying to take us on a real vacation.

He was 10-years old when Pearl Harbor was attacked and 14 when the Japanese surrendered in 1945. Despite not being old enough to fight, my dad was part of that generation that did. Those people lived by the mindset that you worked until the job was done, you never let anyone down, and you never quit.

He was a football player at Plymouth High School. He was the center in the days when players wore leather on their heads, and his nose was flattened out because he claimed not being afraid of hitting someone hard made him better at blocking.

He liked sports, and one of my great joys was taking my mom, dad and sister Jodi on bus trips to Wrigley Field to see the Cubs play. It’s part of why our radio station’s bus trip means so much to me.

But Dad’s big activity was fishing.

He only went a few times each year, but his bucket never came home empty.

Now, it should be noted that he rarely threw fish back for being too small. That’s because he scaled his fish instead of filleting them. He always said, “guys who filet fish are wasting good meat.”

Full disclosure … I fillet.

And now my boat bears his initials on the back, along with my father-in-law’s initials and my own. And there is a space on there for my son’s initials, because someday I will hand that over to him to take his family out on the lake.

I wish Dad could have seen me be inducted into the ISSA Hall of Fame in April, because he and Mom sacrificed a lot for me to get into radio. They thought I was crazy at first, and they weren’t wrong.

My encouragement to dads today is threefold.

First, spend as much time as you can with your kids, collectively and individually. Never pass up a chance to make them part of you and you part of them.

Second, include your kids in what you’re doing. I take Oliver with me to games, and he often sits with me. Sometimes he puts on headphones to listen to dad describe a junior varsity boys basketball game, which is extra cool for him because he’s seeing what I am talking about while I am talking about it.

Finally, teach them what you know. My kids know I am about people, and I am trying to teach my kids how to be a good friend, neighbor, and co-worker. And also teach them what you don’t know and link them to people who can teach them those things. Maybe things like hunting or how to drive a nail or even changing your oil.

Happy Father’s Day, and “thanks,” Dad.

The post Thank you, Dad! appeared first on News Now Warsaw.

]]> https://www.newsnowwarsaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/roger.png What my dad taught me https://www.newsnowwarsaw.com/what-my-dad-taught-me/ Wed, 11 Jun 2025 13:28:47 +0000 https://www.newsnowwarsaw.com/?p=112958 By Roger Grossman
News Now Warsaw

WARSAW — You’ll see a lot of printed columns and videos in tribute to fathers in the days leading up to Father’s Day this Sunday.

Please add me, quite proudly, to that list.

My dad was a big strong guy. He was about 5’10” tall, with a barreled chest and a strong jaw.

He never lifted weights, but he was strong as an ox.

He was a tractor mechanic at a small sales and service operation in the tiny town of Athens east of Rochester.

He worked there for his entire adult life — basically from the time he graduated from Plymouth High School in the late 1940’s until he suffered the first in a series of strokes over the course of a week that took his life in 2005.

As I stood in front of the church and spoke of who Dale Grossman was that early spring day, I described him as a man who was always in control but never controlling. He was the kind of person who seemed to know everything about every kind of combustible engine ever made.

He could listen to a running tractor as its owner held up the telephone receiver to the kitchen window and have a 90-percent success rate in diagnosing the problem.

My dad could take any tractor made to perform any job and make it sing a song of his own choosing.

He was creative and clever. He took the oddest collection of inanimate objects and turned them into something that was functional if not aesthetically pleasing. The doghouse in my backyard, made of old pallets and leftover roofing shingles, is the perfect example of that.

Another is the temporary air filter he created using one of the socks he was wearing underneath his work boot.

He was also a very ironic man.

As strong as he was with a tool in his hand, he was quiet and unassuming.
In my 18 years at home, I can remember him raising his voice only three times…THREE! I am sure that he wanted to let his voice roar more often, but he chose to hold it in instead.

He never saw himself as a teacher, but he stood in front of a group of people at his church and opened the Word every week.

In a world where there are only “takers” and “givers,” he was a master giver.

A farmer would call the shop in Athens in the late afternoon and ask him to stop by their place on the way home to take a look at one of their machines — and he never said “no.”

And that farmer, realizing the time Dad devoted to swinging by on the way home, fed him supper. Dad had every right to charge him for that time, but he never did. He told the farmer, “Supper is all the payment I need.”

He spent many Thursday evenings driving through the countryside, stopping at people’s houses to see if they had a home church and talking to them about Jesus.

And when his chest stopped heaving and he breathed his last that Wednesday night, twenty years ago, many people lost something in their lives — devoted one-woman husband, faithful dad, trusted spiritual leader, reliable handyman, and friend.

I realize that many of you reading this don’t have or never have had that kind of relationship with your own dad.

I am so sorry. I know this time of year can be very painful for you, or it used to be and now it’s just not anymore.

I am not my dad. When my loud mouth is silenced, those who remember me will not do so with the same loving tributes as they did with Dad. I accept that as truth. I don’t deserve it like he did.

But I will tell you that there are things that I have tried to follow in my Dad’s footsteps in accomplishing, and I would like to share them with you, with the hope that maybe you or someone near you can be inspired by him.

First, be honest. No matter how hard that might be, tell people the truth. And do it with grace — with an arm around them or a hand on their shoulder.

Second, be a “giver.” I’m not talking about financially giving, necessarily. I am talking about being someone who finds a passion for something that benefits someone else and pouring yourself into that. Being a “giver” means you will bring life and positive energy to any room you walk into, and we don’t have enough of that kind of people in the world.

Finally, finish the job. My dad was of the thinking that “you don’t quit until the job is done.”

For him, that meant late nights in the work building at our house. It meant Saturdays and sunny days spent lying on his back on a piece of cardboard, staring up at the bottom of a vehicle or piece of farm equipment.

I got none of his creativity. I have none of his ability to fix stuff. Ninety-five percent of everything I try to make or build fails. And I know how to operate a car, but I will never understand how it really works.

But I hope that someday, the person charged with standing up to say a few words about me will be able to say that I was at least ok at these three things.

Thanks, Dad. See you soon.

The post What my dad taught me appeared first on News Now Warsaw.

]]> By Roger Grossman
News Now Warsaw

WARSAW — You’ll see a lot of printed columns and videos in tribute to fathers in the days leading up to Father’s Day this Sunday.

Please add me, quite proudly, to that list.

My dad was a big strong guy. He was about 5’10” tall, with a barreled chest and a strong jaw.

He never lifted weights, but he was strong as an ox.

He was a tractor mechanic at a small sales and service operation in the tiny town of Athens east of Rochester.

He worked there for his entire adult life — basically from the time he graduated from Plymouth High School in the late 1940’s until he suffered the first in a series of strokes over the course of a week that took his life in 2005.

As I stood in front of the church and spoke of who Dale Grossman was that early spring day, I described him as a man who was always in control but never controlling. He was the kind of person who seemed to know everything about every kind of combustible engine ever made.

He could listen to a running tractor as its owner held up the telephone receiver to the kitchen window and have a 90-percent success rate in diagnosing the problem.

My dad could take any tractor made to perform any job and make it sing a song of his own choosing.

He was creative and clever. He took the oddest collection of inanimate objects and turned them into something that was functional if not aesthetically pleasing. The doghouse in my backyard, made of old pallets and leftover roofing shingles, is the perfect example of that.

Another is the temporary air filter he created using one of the socks he was wearing underneath his work boot.

He was also a very ironic man.

As strong as he was with a tool in his hand, he was quiet and unassuming.
In my 18 years at home, I can remember him raising his voice only three times…THREE! I am sure that he wanted to let his voice roar more often, but he chose to hold it in instead.

He never saw himself as a teacher, but he stood in front of a group of people at his church and opened the Word every week.

In a world where there are only “takers” and “givers,” he was a master giver.

A farmer would call the shop in Athens in the late afternoon and ask him to stop by their place on the way home to take a look at one of their machines — and he never said “no.”

And that farmer, realizing the time Dad devoted to swinging by on the way home, fed him supper. Dad had every right to charge him for that time, but he never did. He told the farmer, “Supper is all the payment I need.”

He spent many Thursday evenings driving through the countryside, stopping at people’s houses to see if they had a home church and talking to them about Jesus.

And when his chest stopped heaving and he breathed his last that Wednesday night, twenty years ago, many people lost something in their lives — devoted one-woman husband, faithful dad, trusted spiritual leader, reliable handyman, and friend.

I realize that many of you reading this don’t have or never have had that kind of relationship with your own dad.

I am so sorry. I know this time of year can be very painful for you, or it used to be and now it’s just not anymore.

I am not my dad. When my loud mouth is silenced, those who remember me will not do so with the same loving tributes as they did with Dad. I accept that as truth. I don’t deserve it like he did.

But I will tell you that there are things that I have tried to follow in my Dad’s footsteps in accomplishing, and I would like to share them with you, with the hope that maybe you or someone near you can be inspired by him.

First, be honest. No matter how hard that might be, tell people the truth. And do it with grace — with an arm around them or a hand on their shoulder.

Second, be a “giver.” I’m not talking about financially giving, necessarily. I am talking about being someone who finds a passion for something that benefits someone else and pouring yourself into that. Being a “giver” means you will bring life and positive energy to any room you walk into, and we don’t have enough of that kind of people in the world.

Finally, finish the job. My dad was of the thinking that “you don’t quit until the job is done.”

For him, that meant late nights in the work building at our house. It meant Saturdays and sunny days spent lying on his back on a piece of cardboard, staring up at the bottom of a vehicle or piece of farm equipment.

I got none of his creativity. I have none of his ability to fix stuff. Ninety-five percent of everything I try to make or build fails. And I know how to operate a car, but I will never understand how it really works.

But I hope that someday, the person charged with standing up to say a few words about me will be able to say that I was at least ok at these three things.

Thanks, Dad. See you soon.

The post What my dad taught me appeared first on News Now Warsaw.

]]> https://www.newsnowwarsaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/roger.png Free Fishing Weekend arrives Saturday https://www.newsnowwarsaw.com/free-fishing-weekend-arrives-saturday/ Wed, 29 May 2024 18:20:24 +0000 https://www.newsnowwarsaw.com/?p=93644 By Roger Grossman
News Now Warsaw

I realize that Father’s Day is still a couple weeks away, but my dad popped into my head this week.

It’s Free Fishing Weekend in Indiana this coming weekend.

My dad didn’t just take me with him fishing, he taught me how to fish. He taught me how to put line on a pole, how to tie the knots, and how to read whether my bobber was being blown by the wind or something was tugging on my bait.

My dad also used that time while we were fishing to talk — meaningful, conversations about a lot of different subjects. And my dad was not big on deep conversations. He was happy to participate in them, but he almost never initiated them. When we were fishing, though, it was different.

It was always comfortable, and his timing was always right.

One of the last days I spent with him was a Friday in August of 2005. I was in a boat the size of a bathtub with my dad and my only brother. We fished for hours with nothing in the buckets to show for our trouble. A brief rain shower came through. We got soaked, and apparently the fish got hungry. 63 bluegills later, my dad said to us, “that was the best day of fishing I’ve had since your grandpa died” (he had died more than 30 years before
that).

My brother and I agreed that it was our best day too, mainly because it was his best day.
Four months later he had the first of a series of strokes. Three months after that, he was gone.

I don’t get the fishing gear out now that I don’t think about him, about that day, and about the gift he gave me in the form of a love for fishing.

I bring that up because Indiana is offering a “Free Fishing Weekend” this weekend.

On Saturday and Sunday, you don’t need to have a fishing license to fish in Indiana. You are still required to follow all the rules of fishing set by the DNR. Those rules include how many fish of a certain species you can catch in one day and how long a largemouth bass must be for you to keep it … among other things.

The purpose of this designated weekend is to get people who don’t fish or haven’t for a long time to grab a pole and get back out in a boat or on a Hoosier shoreline.

Dig those poles out of storage, grab the kids and get them out there this weekend. But be warned — they might fall in love with it, and so might you. And you might just find yourself in a conversation that will change a relationship forever in the best possible way.

I’d say that’s worth a lot more than the price of a fishing license.

Just so you know, the price of an annual fishing license for someone who lives in Indiana is $23.

That might feel like a lot of money to you but let me put this in some perspective.

If you fished three times a month from May to September — that’s five months. And let’s say you caught enough fish to clean and eat once a month — that would be five meals worth of filets. That would be less than $5 per meal.

Go to a grocery store and try to buy fish to feed your family for a meal for less than $5.
Spoiler alert: you can’t.

Indiana residents must be at least 64 years of age to be eligible to buy a Senior Annual or Senior Fish for Life License. The Senior Fish for Life License is valid for the rest of the holder's life and includes the trout salmon stamp. Indiana residents who were born before April 1, 1943, do not need a fishing license when fishing in Indiana waters.

And you don’t need a license if you haven’t had your 18th birthday yet. You don’t need to have a license if you are active in the military and home on leave.

And, oh by the way, even if your bobber doesn’t do any funny dances or disappears, the fresh air and time spent on the water is still worth it.

Let’s be 100 percent honest — outside of Minnesota and Wisconsin and parts of Michigan — Kosciusko County is the envy of the entire country because of the 120 natural lakes we have here within our border. Take advantage of that. Don’t waste it.

And kids (especially you adult kids), don’t be afraid to take the initiative and take your dad fishing!

There are no DNR rules about that this weekend either.

The post Free Fishing Weekend arrives Saturday appeared first on News Now Warsaw.

]]> By Roger Grossman
News Now Warsaw

I realize that Father’s Day is still a couple weeks away, but my dad popped into my head this week.

It’s Free Fishing Weekend in Indiana this coming weekend.

My dad didn’t just take me with him fishing, he taught me how to fish. He taught me how to put line on a pole, how to tie the knots, and how to read whether my bobber was being blown by the wind or something was tugging on my bait.

My dad also used that time while we were fishing to talk — meaningful, conversations about a lot of different subjects. And my dad was not big on deep conversations. He was happy to participate in them, but he almost never initiated them. When we were fishing, though, it was different.

It was always comfortable, and his timing was always right.

One of the last days I spent with him was a Friday in August of 2005. I was in a boat the size of a bathtub with my dad and my only brother. We fished for hours with nothing in the buckets to show for our trouble. A brief rain shower came through. We got soaked, and apparently the fish got hungry. 63 bluegills later, my dad said to us, “that was the best day of fishing I’ve had since your grandpa died” (he had died more than 30 years before
that).

My brother and I agreed that it was our best day too, mainly because it was his best day.
Four months later he had the first of a series of strokes. Three months after that, he was gone.

I don’t get the fishing gear out now that I don’t think about him, about that day, and about the gift he gave me in the form of a love for fishing.

I bring that up because Indiana is offering a “Free Fishing Weekend” this weekend.

On Saturday and Sunday, you don’t need to have a fishing license to fish in Indiana. You are still required to follow all the rules of fishing set by the DNR. Those rules include how many fish of a certain species you can catch in one day and how long a largemouth bass must be for you to keep it … among other things.

The purpose of this designated weekend is to get people who don’t fish or haven’t for a long time to grab a pole and get back out in a boat or on a Hoosier shoreline.

Dig those poles out of storage, grab the kids and get them out there this weekend. But be warned — they might fall in love with it, and so might you. And you might just find yourself in a conversation that will change a relationship forever in the best possible way.

I’d say that’s worth a lot more than the price of a fishing license.

Just so you know, the price of an annual fishing license for someone who lives in Indiana is $23.

That might feel like a lot of money to you but let me put this in some perspective.

If you fished three times a month from May to September — that’s five months. And let’s say you caught enough fish to clean and eat once a month — that would be five meals worth of filets. That would be less than $5 per meal.

Go to a grocery store and try to buy fish to feed your family for a meal for less than $5.
Spoiler alert: you can’t.

Indiana residents must be at least 64 years of age to be eligible to buy a Senior Annual or Senior Fish for Life License. The Senior Fish for Life License is valid for the rest of the holder’s life and includes the trout salmon stamp. Indiana residents who were born before April 1, 1943, do not need a fishing license when fishing in Indiana waters.

And you don’t need a license if you haven’t had your 18th birthday yet. You don’t need to have a license if you are active in the military and home on leave.

And, oh by the way, even if your bobber doesn’t do any funny dances or disappears, the fresh air and time spent on the water is still worth it.

Let’s be 100 percent honest — outside of Minnesota and Wisconsin and parts of Michigan — Kosciusko County is the envy of the entire country because of the 120 natural lakes we have here within our border. Take advantage of that. Don’t waste it.

And kids (especially you adult kids), don’t be afraid to take the initiative and take your dad fishing!

There are no DNR rules about that this weekend either.

The post Free Fishing Weekend arrives Saturday appeared first on News Now Warsaw.

]]> https://www.newsnowwarsaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/roger.png