Two songs touch me deeply as I still mourn his passing. One is Eddie Fisher’s 1952 hit “O My Papa,” which touts the gentleness of a father.

Oh, my papa, he was so wonderful.

Oh, my papa to me he was so good.

No one could be, so gentle and so lovable.

Oh, my papa, he always understood.

The other is John McDermott’s “The Old Man,” which dwells on memories as his father is buried. Even though my mother in no uncertain terms forbade me to a speak of my father as “my old man” – a common phrase in JP in the 50s – McDermott does it with reverence.

I thought he'd live forever, he seemed so big and strong

But the minutes fly, and the years roll by

For a father and a son and suddenly when it happened

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There was so much left unsaid

No second chance

To tell him thanks

For everything he's done.

There are only a few movies with which I am familiar that extol the noble virtues of fatherhood as exemplified by my dad as well as the many other outstanding dads. As Atticus Finch in “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Gregory Peck epitomizes integrity as a lawyer as well as gentleness and understanding as Scout’s widowed father. In “The Yearling” the same Gregory Peck offsets the depression of his wife, played by a sullen Jane Wyman, in the rural drama about a loving father who understands his son’s affection for a young deer inhabiting the Florida Everglades. Edward G. Robinson, known for playing a villain in most of his movies, provides a counterpoint to this in “The Vines Have Tender Grapes”: Robinson’s role as a doting Norwegian father focuses on his love for his beloved daughter Selma, played so well by Margaret O’Brien in a rural Wisconsin setting.

Wales is the setting for Donald Crisp to exemplify hard toiling fatherhood over the years to his coal-mining sons in Richard Llewellyn’s novel, “How Green Was My Valley,” which was adapted into a film in 1941 and later into TV series. With a litany of hard-to-pronounce Welsh names, the movie sadly reveals this hard-working man’s stubborn refusal to forgive one of his sons for striking against the mine owners. The prolonged sullenness of Gwilym causes him to lose points with me: undoubtedly my father would have forgiven me for opposing him on a picket line.

Father’s Day: I’m grateful that some songs and movies have captured glimpses, if not the essence, of my late father. Yeah, maybe there is some truth to be found in the title of the old television series, “Father Knows Best.”