They come in every shape and size and this weekend, America will
pause for a moment to commemorate their roles in shaping lives –
they, of course, are fathers.

“I’m proud of my father,” said Cathy Freeman, who was shopping
on Main Street Friday afternoon.

She took a moment to share a memory from her childhood.

“I was disciplined as a child,” Freeman said. “He would never
hit us; he would take us on his knee and talk to us.”

And that was certainly effective, she said. Norman Childs, her
father, taught her to stay positive and “keep smiling.”

Father and son duo Joe and Mike Butler, who run Man’s World on
Main Street, have been working together since 1979 in the family
business.

“I was working in here nights after school,” Mike Butler
said.

“I had a stroke in April of 1981 and he had to run things,” Joe
Butler said.

“I learned a lot,” his son said, laughing.

“We’ve had some pretty good years together,” Joe Butler said,
smiling at his son. He explained the two get along well and have
found ways to complement one another in the workplace.

“What’s nice is when we do the buying…” Mike Butler started to
say, and his father finished his sentence, “he does the buying for
the younger group.” Smiling, the son added, “he’ll pick something
out, and I’ll say, ‘nah, I don’t think so.’ So he does the buying
for the older group.”

As the Era reporter and photographer left the store, the father
and son continued their work day with an air of love, respect and
mutual admiration apparent to any who stopped by.

Strolling on Main Street in the Friday afternoon sun, Theresa
Bond spoke with fondness of the memories of her late father, Samuel
Vicere.

“He came to the U.S. from Italy when he was seven,” she
explained. “He could do everything, I thought.”

Her father worked at Dressers more than 40 years, she said, and
would come home from the factory to work in his garden. He wasn’t
an educated person, but he still taught his family a lot, Bond
said.

“He was more of a stay-at-home person,” she said, smiling at the
memory. “You had to push to get him to socialize.”

Yet he volunteered at his church, helping to “put up blocks” to
build what was then the Assisian Hall at the St. Francis of Assisi
Church.

“He could do a lot,” Bond said.

And fathers also encourage their children to do a lot.

Dwayne Zimmerman, owner of the Grocery Stretcher on Main Street,
said his father’s best advice to him was “probably that I can do
it.”

Zimmerman’s father, Jim, is a trucker who encouraged his kids to
“keep on trying because you can do it.”