Today I’m going to talk about my dad for a bit. Earlier this year I traveled with him to some remote areas of Ethiopia on site visits to Mercy Corps projects. Around 40 years ago he helped to start this humanitarian aid group. Today they’re in around 40 countries and share a seat at the big boy’s table of international NGOs. He retired this year but was by far MC’s most active board member - constantly in the field acting as a liaison between the board, the projects and the home office. This is all while working full time as an attorney at a firm in Portland (where he racked up more pro-bono hours than just about any other lawyer in the state - and recently organized a nationwide team of lawyers to fight illegal voter roll purges targeting minorities.)
When I was in High School, he spent his sabbatical in the newly independent Kazakhstan training the lawyers who would go on to write their country’s first constitution. A few years back he traveled to Indonesia with less than 24hrs notice to meet with the government there to save a Mercy Corps initiative opening up a micro-finance bank designed to help farmers and small businesses that would otherwise have no access to credit. I could keep going for pages and pages.
Today is his birthday so I wanted to give him a shoutout. He’d probably hate it but he can’t figure out Instagram so I don’t care. Anyway… he is my hero and I want the world to know about him. He taught me how to be a good person and has been the biggest inspiration in my life. He came from nothing, devoted his life to service, and has made an enormous impact on the world that most people will never know about.
Happy birthday Dad! Thank you - I love you - enjoy retirement! You deserve a break!