My Dad

My dad was always the first to open these campaign messages, the first to forward them to friends — including some who definitely didn’t ask for them — and the first to tell me which ones he liked and which ones he didn’t.

So this is about my dad, who died unexpectedly this week.

When I was 10, he took my brother and me to an anti-war rally. Years later, I had to sit across from him at dinner — my voice shaking — to tell him I had joined the military at the height of the War on Terror. It wasn’t an easy conversation.

When I was deployed during the Fukushima nuclear disaster, someone called the Pentagon demanding to know if I was safe.

That was my dad.

When I testified before Congress to stand up for the rule of law and human rights at Guantanamo, he sent the video to everyone he knew.

That was my dad.

He never owned a new car. He spent weekends fixing his trucks in the driveway and taught me how to change my own oil.

We couldn’t afford big vacations, but he loved the outdoors and gave us something better. He taught us to respect and appreciate nature by experiencing it directly — camping, backpacking in the Sierras, hiking the California coast. He thought ice cream tasted better after five days in the woods.

He was right.

He took me to my first San Francisco Giants baseball game when I was three months old, coached my Little League teams, and managed an over-50 men’s softball team called the Mooseheads. He self-published a book called Legends of the Mooseheads, which is likely the only book in the world about men’s softball and philosophy.

That was my dad.

My earliest memories are of construction sites. When my brother and I were old enough, we had to help him — hang sheetrock, mix cement, dig fence ditches, clean paint brushes, whatever was needed. At the end of the day, when we could barely lift our arms, he’d say, “I hope this will be your motivation to study hard in school.”

He recently told me he pushed us so hard on education because he believed it was our ticket to a better life.

He was the first to text me after watching me give the commencement speech at UC Berkeley last spring, where I returned decades after receiving both my undergraduate and law degrees from Cal. He knew the literal blood and sweat it took to get there. And for him, every drop was worth it.

St. Patrick’s Day was his favorite holiday. Every year he would cook all day to prepare a feast, pour a Guinness, and we would read Seamus Heaney poetry around the table. Our favorite poem was “Digging.” After surviving throat cancer, talking became very difficult. Yet he still mustered the strength to read it aloud to his grandsons last year.

Like half of America, he had no retirement savings and survived on Social Security. He lived in a mobile home that Mollye and I helped him buy. He never cheated, lied to get ahead, took advantage of anyone, or resented people who had more. In his later years, he volunteered with a local organization building tiny homes for homeless people.

That was my dad.

He wasn’t perfect. He knew his demons. But he put the best of everything he had into his sons, and into trying to make this world a kinder and gentler place.

I know you can’t forward this email, Dad.

You don’t need to.

You’ve done enough.

— Josh

Doug Fryday
1951 — 2026

Digging

BY SEAMUS HEANEY

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound

When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:

My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds

Bends low, comes up twenty years away

Stooping in rhythm through potato drills

Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft

Against the inside knee was levered firmly.

He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep

To scatter new potatoes that we picked,

Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.

Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day

Than any other man on Toner’s bog.

Once I carried him milk in a bottle

Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up

To drink it, then fell to right away

Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods

Over his shoulder, going down and down

For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap

Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge

Through living roots awaken in my head.

But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests.

I’ll dig with it.