Jack Stallard

Editor’s note: This column first published on Father’s Day in 2006. Don Capps — Pop — will turn 84 in a couple of weeks.

I’m not really sure what my step-father was expecting back in 1983 when he married my mom.

I lived in Tennessee, so I wasn’t on hand to watch their courtship. I’ve heard stories though, and I do know a couple of things for certain.

Don Capps met a pretty redhead, and not even the fact she had five rowdy sons could scare him off. I’m sure it helped that the sons ranged in age from 14 to 26 and none of them lived with mom.

Man. Did that ever come back to bite him.

Today is Father’s Day, and all fathers who hang around to teach, love and guide their children should be celebrated. Fathers who teach, love and guide children with whom they share no biology deserve a medal.

I was 16 and living with my real dad in Tennessee when Don and mom got married. My brother Randy lived in Texas, and when I grilled him for information he said Don treated him well and spoiled our mother rotten.

That was all I needed to hear.

My parents split up when I was three. Over the years, I never heard either one of them say a negative word about the other. Things just didn’t work out, but two decades after they divorced they still cared deeply for one another.

My mom told me more times than I can count how much dad spoiled her, and I don’t think she was spoiled again by another man until Don came along.

I finally got to meet Don when I visited the summer after he married mom, and I liked him immediately. He drove a big rig, talked like a cowboy, worked hard, realized I was on vacation and didn’t expect me to work hard and was quick to crack a joke or laugh at one of mine.

Mostly though, he loved my mom like crazy.

In 1985, I moved to Texas to stay. My oldest brother, Bob, was living with mom and Don then, but Don never hesitated when I asked if I could move in while I attended Kilgore College.

Since I wasn’t a guest anymore, there were rules. Since I was 19, I tested the rules.

I was of legal drinking age then, and the folks didn’t mind if Bob and I drank a beer around the house. Their stash was off limits though, and the one time we decided to test that rule Don didn’t get mad. He got even by taking two grown men outside and working our backsides into the dirt clearing brush with axes, picks, shovels and chain saws.

Did I mention Bob and I both suffered from horrible hangovers, it was 100 degrees and Don had three fires going so we could burn the brush? At one point I threw up breakfast, lunch and dinner….as far back as the sixth grade.

Don never said a word about the booze heist Bob and I had committed. He didn’t have to, and there were no hard feelings.

Bob got married five years later and I tied the knot in 1998. Don was the best man at both of our weddings.

Don , “Pop” as he is known to all of my brothers, has never changed in the 23 years since he inherited me and my brothers. All the guys ever asked was that he love and spoil our mom, and Don did that in remarkable fashion until cancer took her from us.

Because of that, he could have treated me and my brothers like dirt and we would have still loved and respected him.

For some reason he decided to become much more than a step-dad to five rowdy boys with whom he had nothing in common but an unconditional love for a pretty redhead.

Thanks Pop, and happy Father’s Day.