My Dad is the Best, Coolest or Funniest in Town

All submissions were entered in a raffle to win a prize for their father. Victor Barocas and Jeff Budd, both of Johns Creek, each won a $100 gift card to McKendricks.

Herb Goldberg of Atlanta and Mitchell Garber of Dunwoody each won a $100 gift card for Cafe Intermezzo.

Victor Barocas – Johns Creek
When I think of my dad, I think of how lucky I am to have a such a man. Some dads are just around not being active, but my dad has always been there when I needed him most. He is a comedian, best friend, mentor, mensch, a ben-adam, and a rock. Not only do I love my dad, I also cherish the times we have together in both working together and outside of work. There is a cliche that I often hear in circles, and that is “Any man can be a Father, but it takes a REAL man to be called DAD.” I am very proud of my dad, and I love him very dearly.
David Barocas

Herb Goldberg – Atlanta
By far, I have the funniest father… At 96 years old, my father still tells a joke to anyone who walks into the house! His timing is still perfect and his memory is impeccable. He always gets a laugh and will laugh along with his audience! He is simply adorable!
Susan Goldman

Mitchell Garber – Dunwoody
A Gift
By the time he was 21, my Zayde, zichrona l’vracha, had lost both his parents. His mother died when he was very young, and his father died during his first year of college. They were buried in a graveyard in Atlanta.
When he and my Bubbe, who had been living in Florida for several decades, returned to Atlanta to live closer to us, he visited the graveyard and found their headstones overgrown and covered in moss. For the next few years, he and my father would go down on Father’s day, and spend close to an hour spraying and scrubbing the stones.
“Y’know, Mitch,” my Zayde once told him “I’m the only one who does this anymore.”
“What are you talking about?” my Dad replied “I’m right here.”
“That’s true. Hey, promise me, when I’m gone, you keep coming down here to clean these.”
“And what about when I’m gone?”
“Well,” he said, “I’m not worried about that.”
When my Zayde passed away, my dad spent every day of the following year going to minyan to say kaddish. Even when he had to go on business trips, he always made sure there was some group of Jews he could meet with. There’s a tiny temple in Florida which has continued to send him mail to this day, after he made a small donation as a thank you.
He became even more deeply involved with the community at our synagogue, and I often went with him on Sunday mornings, to make sure we had the 10 people we needed. It was the first time I began putting on tefillin, learning to wrap the leather around my hand to make a shin-dalet-yud, as my Zayde had taught him.
And on every Father’s Day of the past seven years, he has gone to clean the graves. He tells me how amazing it looks when he’s done, how all the other stones look like something out of a horror movie, but those two look brand new. “I realize now it’s a gift” he said, “the last one my father gave me. To have this thing I can keep doing, that I did with him.”
When my father expresses his feelings about being a dad, he often suggests he didn’t do a great job. “I was never great at interacting with you as kids,” he told me, “Our relationships got better as you got older, but it’s not that I changed, it’s that you did.” It’s something he kind of expected – after all, most of his favorite memories with his dad are of when they were both adults: The time his dad spent ten minutes talking him through the apartment door, thinking he was outside the building; how they conspired to surprise my grandmother for her 75th birthday by bringing us all on the cruise without telling her; every Duke basketball game they attended together.
I’m not old enough to have those kinds of stories yet. What I have, I think, are smaller things: the late nights we spend discussing philosophy and science fiction, much to the chagrin of my Mom; going to synagogue on Saturdays and that year of Sunday minyans; making and solving hilariously over-complicated word-riddles. I don’t know how many of those things I’ll still have when he’s gone, but they’re amazing now.
“Maybe we don’t have our thing yet, Robbie,” he told me, and maybe that’s okay; maybe I’m a bit too impatient to find it. After all, I’m 21.
Happy Father’s day, Dad. And I look forward to the many to come.
Robbie Garber

Jeff Budd – Johns Creek
My dad is the funniest dad in town because he is always very willing to break out in song and dance with me whenever WHEREVER!!! It’s always a fun and silly time with him!
Julie Budd