The year was 1970, and it was the Sunday before Thanksgiving. The pastor of the small church my family attended had just asked the congregation for an "offering of thanksgiving" -- we were to write down what we were thankful for and place our lists in the offering plate.

I started writing: parents, sisters, house, friends, food. Trite, maybe, but even as a teen-ager, I knew I had it good. I kept scribbling away on my list. My dad, on the other hand, was done in a nanosecond.

One word was the extent of his blessings.

Not good, I thought, but understandable. Even though he was the proverbial eternal optimist, my dad had plenty of reasons not to be thankful that Thanksgiving. Just that summer he had been diagnosed with cancer and the outlook was not good; the crutches that he now had to use were tucked underneath his seat. Not long after that he had lost his job, completely without warning. He had a son-in-law in Vietnam. Two daughters in high school, looking forward to college. A mortgage. Car payments.

Suddenly, what Dad had written down became more important than my list of blessings. In fact, there was a flicker of realization that all of those things I was so grateful for -- at least the material things -- might be gone by the time the next Thanksgiving season rolled around.

I quit writing, obsessed with what my father had written down. What one word would capture all his blessings.

"Wife," maybe. My two sisters and I knew our parents loved each other; their relationship had given us a security a lot of kids never know. "Family," perhaps. My sisters and I knew Dad loved us, too. It would be impossible to guess how many of our hurts he healed and tears he dried with the words: "You know, honey (or sport or tiger), your dad is the luckiest man in the world. He's got the most wonderful wife and the three most beautiful daughters in the world." That message always ended with a grin, a wink and a hug.

Maybe, the word was "God." My father's faith was no secret; he didn't talk about it, he just walked it in a powerful, humble way.

Then, the unthinkable struck me. What if the word was "nothing"? What if, with all that had happened to him, my father just couldn't give thanks.

I pondered that possibility. Who could blame him if he couldn't?

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As I think of that Thanksgiving past, I am struck by the fact that for, perhaps, millions of Americans that same scenario is their Thanksgiving present: an uncertain future. Maybe it's job uncertainty or no job and no job prospects clouding the holidays. Maybe it's a health issue that has to be tackled without health insurance. Maybe it's too much month after each payday. Maybe it's all of the above.

For many, including many in Homer, it's a bleak season, indeed. But Homer residents once again have shown through the holiday basket program and a variety of other programs, they stand ready to help their less fortunate neighbors. No matter how bad things look, in this uncertain world there's always someone less fortunate.

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That's something my father understood well. In his difficulties, I never once heard him complain. Nine years after that Thanksgiving of 1970, at the age of 55, my father died. But all the while he battled cancer, he lived well. After losing his job, he started his own business, which he sold before his death, allowing he and my mother to "get completely out of debt for the first time in our married lives," as my mother would tell me in a letter about a year after his death. He saw his two younger daughters graduate from college, debt free. He saw his son-in-law return from Vietnam. He was around for the birth of his grandson.

Oh, and that Thanksgiving Sunday so long ago, my dad could see me struggling to figure out that one word that embodied all his blessings. He flashed me his slip of paper, along with a wink and a grin.

"Everything" was what it said.

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Happy Thanksgiving, from all of us at the Homer News.

-- Lori Evans,

Editor and publisher