Is Your Father Alive?
A Father’s Day Tribute To
Some Special Father-Figures in My Life
By Samuel Koranteng-Pipim, PhD; June 18, 2017
2016 was a particularly trying year for me. Within the span of six months (from June to December 2016), I lost my biological father and three special father-figures and/or role-models. These painful experiences of bereavement form the backdrop to this Father’s Day reflection on some very exceptional men who had been father-figures in my life.
The title of the present reflection (“Is Your Father Alive?”) is borrowed from a series of questions posed by the Governor of Egypt to the children of Jacob who had traveled to Egypt to purchase grain. (Unbeknownst to Jacob’s children, that Egyptian governor was none other than their own brother Joseph, whom years earlier they had sold away). That Governor of Egypt—and trusted deputy to the Pharaoh—asked the sons of Jacob:
“Is your father still alive? Have you another brother?... Is your father well, the old man of whom you spoke? Is he...
