By Alan on Jun 15 in Blog tagged alan, Alan and Suzanne osmond, army lead, as He did, barrack, challenges, church, dedication died, education, eight boys, eternal, example, Family, family life, forever, George, George and Olive Osmond, good meals, help others, impacted, Jesus Christ, knowledge, lare family, Like Father, Like son, live again, love, love at home, loving home, married, memories, nurtured, order, organization, Osmonds, osmonds second generation, parallel, passed away, point the way, prayer, regimentation, respect, righteous, role model, same way, showed me, Sons, spirit, spirit world, Suzanne Pinegar, tender, The Family, traditions, truth, watched him, worked hard | 2 Comments
Father’s Day – “Like Father, Like Son”
“Having been born of goodly parents”, I was blessed to be the third member of a family of eight sons and one daughter of George and Olive Osmond. We grew up in the town of Ogden, Utah with fond memories of a wonderful family life.
My Mother, Olive, was so kind
and tender as she nurtured us children. She love to cook and taught us music in a most wonderful and loving home. Her parents were both educators and my mother would have been too, but she fulfilled her first priority and married my father and had a large family. Because she loved education, she asked my father to build a schoolroom in the attic of our home where she used her skills as a teacher and theologian to teach us children many truths.
My Father was my hero and my role model. We called him “Father” out of respect and I wanted to be like him when I grew up. I was by his side when he built, plumbed, wired, and remodeled homes as a great carpenter. I watched him and was by his side when he milked cows, hauled hay, irrigated the orchard and fields, or as we stamped and packaged postal items at the post office that he had. Father also loved to sing. I sat behind him while he was driving the car and as we sang together, he would sing in harmony with Mother. That was how I learned to sing harmony. Learning that skill truly impacted my life. Father taught me how to fish, to hoe sugar beets and how to drive the tractor and haul hay. He always involved my brothers and me in his work projects and led by example. He always stood by us when the going got tough or was challenging. You see, Father had been an army sergeant and knew how to lead men. Several evidences of that training showed up in how he raised our sister Marie and us eight boys.
One example of that was when we got older and our home needed more bedrooms. Father decided to build on to the back of our house and built what he called, a dormitory. Yes, you are right, it was like an army barrack with seven military 
metal framed army cots and blankets, foot lockers at the end of the beds, and open closets where our clothes needed to be neatly hung and arranged as there where regular inspections that occurred. He knew how to lead and train military men in the army so like them, Father taught us in many of the same ways and how to have order. Some neighbors had asked him if the way he was raising his kids wasn’t ‘regimentation’. He would just smile and respond back saying; “I look at it as organization.”
I remember many times when he helped friends by serving them. My Father and Mother were always doing things to help others. They started the Osmond Foundation to raise money for deaf children, two of which were my older brothers. This was a pattern of my father and I wanted to be like him, “Like Father, Like Son.” He was a hard worker and organizer and gave freely of his time in headed up several fundraising projects within the church and the community.
Like my father, I too, found and married the most wonderful girl in the world, Suzanne Pinegar, and she is my eternal partner. Suzanne has blessed me with eight wonderful
sons. As a father, I tried to raise them the best I knew.
I can look back and see a parallel in many of the same ways and traditions that I learned from my father. Those patterns and traditions of life now exist among us as a family with our sons and their families. Yes, they honor me and call me Father and they have learned to work hard and to never give up. Yes, they also love
music and have excelled in it masterfully. I told them to get “real jobs” and they did get good educations with a love to learn. Yes, they love the out of doors like I did as a son and are all Eagle Scouts. Seven of them so far have served full time missions and have returned and married. Yes, they grew up in a home with respect, order, good cooking, love, and with religious convictions that honors our Lord Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father. We learn from Jesus’s example that even what He did, was as His Father has done; “Like Father, like Son”.
This Father’s Day, I reflect back on my father’s life and how much he showed me by example the way to be and to become. He taught us to be positive and to never give up when we were challenged and would say, “You can do it”. He also taught us that “You can be what you want to become, if you become what you want to be.” He was hard working yet a righteous man with a tender “marshmallow” heart”, as my mother would say, as he blessed his family and took us all to church. He served in the bishopric and held several other church callings in which he blessed others. We never had a meal together without first having a word of prayer and giving thanks and blessing the food. We always had family prayer at night and even before every show that my family and I did later when we became entertainers. When major decisions were made, we would counsel with the Lord together in kneeling family prayer seeking inspiration and giving thanks. This was the way we grew up because it was the way he did.
I remember the day my mother passed away and which was a hard thing and then not long after that when my father died. It is not easy to see them go but it is those times when the knowledge of that they had taught us gave us the understanding that we would live again and be with them. When my Father died, I was the first one to be by his side. I saw him lying cold and still on his bed. His body was there but my Father’s spirit wasn’t. I shed some tears and held his hand as I offered a prayer of gratitude to my Heavenly Father. I thanked Him for giving me the greatest earthly father I could ever have and for the good man that he was. It was then that I honestly started to smile as I knew he was now once again with my Mother in the Spirit world. I looked at him and said, “Father, save me a place, up there.”
Some day, I too, will graduate and do as my Father, my Savior, and my God have done, and live on eternally. ”Like Father, Like Son”.
