Talk to your parents and elders who offer wisdom in these stressful times

Posted 7 November 2020 at 8:38 am

Editor:

With so much that can been taken as negativity, or at the very least, stressful. I hope this attempt at spreading some positive makes the cut.

I would like to say Happy Birthday (Nov. 6, 934) to my dad, Charles H. Hunt Jr. He would have been 86. He worked for the NYSDOT for 34 years as a welder, working on Canal Barges and I’m sure other things.

He was also President of the local chapter of the CSEA for a period of time. During which he was very vocal about the risks of lead poisoning. A thing he was all too familiar with, being diagnosed with it himself. He wrote and spoke directly to Congressmen, helping raise the awareness of lead poisoning to where it is today. (The “acceptable” lead levels, as it relates to lead poisoning, in the 1980s are shocking!!)

He passed away March 7, 2009. And on that deeper note, it’s strange. I somehow can’t imagine him in today’s world. I learned so much from him. Often, I find, it’s things I didn’t even realize I learned until much later.

In this age of global pandemic, political uncertainty and just general uneasiness on a scale never seen before, I would love to sit and talk to him. Even for just a few minutes.

If you have a decent parent in your life, talk to them. If nothing else, they offer a different perspective. It’s being open, able and willing to see things differently that leads to not only realizing things about yourself, but also growing and evolving as a person. And, when you think about it, isn’t that the basic meaning of life?

Charlie Hunt

Syracuse, NY (Albion native)