Fathers’ Day, the underappreciated holiday, one where I frequently reflect on its sadder aspects but, this time, a bit of introspection seems in order. 

I didn’t get to really know my father until very late in life; he and my mother separated when I was three and for many years, until I was fourteen, I was told that he’d died.  During most of those years the paternal role in my life was filled by my step father, Leon Kokkins, a New Yorker of Greek descent, one with a great deal of love to give but not terribly responsible (as a result of which he and my mother separated when I was fifteen).  By then however, I was a boarding student at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York, and father figures abounded there.  Memorable among them was Leopold Hedbavny, Jr., then the dean of faculty but eventually, the headmaster (my mentor and eventually my boss), and there was George Chamberlin, the father of one of my classmates who took a special interest in me, and Abe Rothchild, the father of another of my classmates.  After Eastern there was the Citadel and at the Citadel, perhaps the greatest father figure of them all, and not just with respect to me but with respect to thousands of cadets: Thomas Nugent Courvoisier, the Boo, the Citadel’s Lord of Discipline but with a heart big enough to care for us all, especially for those, like me, who needed him most.  So today, I salute them all although none of them are here among us anymore, at least not physically.  But across the veil I think they sometimes gather to see how I’m doing which keeps me on my toes.

And now two of my three sons are fathers and I’m a grandfather.  My third son, the youngest, is a world class uncle, or so I understand.  And I have many, many former students, starting with the 1969-70 academic year, many of them seemed like sons and much later, daughters to me, and they, in their turn, are now parents.

All of them are meaningful to me and provide me with many reasons to dwell on the links between parents and their children and children and their parents, repositories of great joys and great sorrow, of wonderful memories but also, reflections on opportunities missed.  And opportunities just around the corner.

A complex but beautiful tapestry.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2026; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet and aspiring empirical philosopher) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.