u/AgainforthrFirstTime

As far as I can tell, there is no truth to the rumor that Doug and Emmy Joe’s conversation with Freddie the Frog prior to filming an episode of the New Zoo Review, went something like this,

“ Freddie, are you high?”
“No Why?”
“ Well your eyes are all glassy and you’re not wearing pants”

Little League was everything

A Father’s Day Reflection

As Father’s Day approaches, I wanted to share these two photographs and a newspaper article from the New York Daily News from many years ago.

The man in these photos is my late father, Thomas E. Redmond.

In the first photo, he is featured in a newspaper story about his efforts to locate runaway children and bring them safely home. In the second, he is doing what he did so often: talking with young people, building trust, and helping them find a safer path.

He was far from a perfect man. In many ways, that was part of his perfection.

My father taught my siblings and me an important lesson: look at the whole person, not just a flaw. Too often we focus on someone’s mistakes and forget their character, their heart, and the good they bring to the world.

The article highlights something he did quietly and without recognition. On his own time and often with his own money, he worked to bring runaway children home. There was no reward waiting for him. A New York City police officer’s salary in those days was modest, but he believed helping these kids was simply the right thing to do.

Many of these children came to New York chasing a dream or running from a temporary disagreement at home. Waiting for them were predators eager to exploit their vulnerability.

Long before child trafficking became a national conversation, my father understood the danger. He saw these children not as statistics, but as somebody’s son or daughter.

So he made it his mission to bring them home.

The photographs attached to this post capture that commitment. They show a police officer who refused to look the other way when a child needed help.

The irony is that if my father attempted some of this work today, he might find himself buried under policies and liability concerns. Many of those safeguards exist for good reasons, but I suspect a man like my father would still struggle to stand by while a child was in danger.

Knowing him, he probably would have done it anyway.

This Father’s Day, I find myself thinking about how many parents were able to hug their children again because one police officer cared enough to act.

That is a legacy worth remembering.

Darren Redmond, M.Ed.
The Darren Redmond Podcast
Around the Ballpark Podcast

Peace and joy to everyone everywhere. All roads lead to accountability.