To all of our readers and my colleagues who are fathers, and to their fathers, I wish a Happy Father’s Day on this last day of spring.

My Dad worked very hard to provide for us and there weren’t a lot of extras until I was well into high school, but Dad believed passionately in being informed. He always asked his mother-in-law, my grandmother, to give him a Newsweek subscription for Christmas every year, and he always made sure we got home delivery of the Washington Post and Manassas Journal Messenger. With not a lot of diversions back in those simpler times, his choices led to the love of reading about current events becoming ingrained in me at a young age.

As I got older and started a family of my own, travelling to dinner at Dad’s on Saturday nights became a ritual. We would all sit in the living room and watch “Inside Washington” and the “McLaughlin Group.” My father would rail against the views of “that liberal, Carl Rowan” and my affinty for pundits and political discussion was cemented.

I miss him.